Course Description
One of the questions most commonly encountered and discussed within our world is, what does it mean to be – or how to be – a Jew. This course will take us on a journey to decisive, yet differing, texts connected only by their relation to this question. We will examine the Torah’s revolution and the creation of the Jew; we will turn to the Talmud with its own revolutionary study of the topic; and we will continue through Jewish philosophy and Kabbala and on to modern thinkers.
The course will give participants a greater understanding of this question that is often discussed superficially and without knowledge of how it developed over the generations. But more importantly, students will be exposed to a wide variety of ideas through which they will develop a stronger and deeper connection to their own Jewish identity.
Lecturer: Dr. Jonnie Schnytzer
About the Educator Dr. Jonnie Schnytzer
is a lecturer at Bar Ilan University's Multidisciplinary Department of Jewish Studies and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University. Jonnie's academic forte is medieval kabbalah and he has published two books on the topic (The Kabbalah of Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi and Joseph ben Shalom Asheknazi's Commentary on Sefer Yesira: A Critical Edition). Jonnie also orchestrated the publication and translation into English of the Judeo-Arabic literary piece from WWII in Morocco, The Hitler Haggadah (with Adi Schnytzer and Avishai Bar-Asher). Jonnie's debut novel was a Mossad thriller, The Way Back. Forthcoming Jonnie is orchestrating the publication and translation into English of a medieval Ethiopian Jewish Shabbat midrash, Tezaze Sanbat (with Qes Ephraim Lawi).
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