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Spring 2009 - February Jacob Perlow Events
New Judaisms: New Movements, New Media, New Directions
Monday, February 9-Tuesday Feb 10, 2009
At this conference we bring together some of the top scholars in the field of Jewish Studies to discuss the ways in which Judaism is developing right now. We explore some of its major developments in the 20th and 21st centuries, thinking of them historically and in terms of New Age religions. New Age religions are typically syncretistic, they stress inclusivity, their members trust less in large institutions, they focus more on individual experience rather than on doctrine, and often they develop on the grassroots level or by networks that rely on new media. They formulate and communicate their messages differently, too. Often they develop their ideals and their guiding principles collectively, and because they communicate these using new media, the substance of their messages may differ as well. At this conference we examine contemporary Judaism through the lens of New Age religiosity, to see if there are any changes in the roles of Jewish institutions. We discuss Judaism and new media- considering how new media might be changing Jewish messages. Finally, we look at Jewish syncretism, in terms of the way it draws upon other traditions, and inversely, we think about how other traditions may be drawing upon Judaism. In short, we want to think about whether Judaism is behaving similarly to, or differently from, other New Age religions.
Schedule of Events:
Monday, February 9:
4:30-6:15 pm: Session 11. Introductions
2. Pinchas Giller, Professor in Medieval Jewish Thought, American Jewish University: Is there such a thing as Jewish Meditation?
6:15 pm-7:30 pm: dinner break
7:30 pm-9:15 pm: Session 2:
3. Boaz Huss, Associate Professor, Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University: The Association of Hebrew Theosophists' - Jews and the Theosophical Society in the late 19th and early 20th century.
4. Shana Sippy, Doctoral Candidate, Columbia University, Little Boys and Long Locks: Feminism, the First Haircut and the Reinterpretation of Gender Among Progressive Jews
Tuesday, February 10
4:30-6:15 pm: Session 3
5. Chava Weissler, Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Department of Religion Studies at Lehigh University: Virtually Jewish: Jewish Community on Second Life
6. Ted Merwin, Assistant Professor of Religion & Judaic Studies, Dickinson College: Secular Jews, Jewish Food: Eating Jewish Identity in America
6:15 pm-7:30 pm: dinner break
7:30 pm-9:15 pm: Session 4
7. Jody Myers, Professor of Religious Studies at California State University, Northridge: Crossing Boundaries: Kabbalah for Non-Jews
8. Marla Segol, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Skidmore College: Begging, Borrowing, or Stealing? New Age Religion and Kabbalah
Spring 2008 Jacob Perlow Lecture
"The Hedgehog's Dilemma: On the necessity and the impossibility of understanding religion"
Steven M. Wasserstrom, the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College
Wednesday April 2, 2008 at 7 pm
Emerson Auditorium
Author of Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, which received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion, Professor Wasserstrom is also author of Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos, a crucial text in the study of theory and method in contemporary scholarship in religion.
Professor Wassterstom will be on campus for several days, visiting several classes and joining in a panel discussion with faculty from across the disciplines - well beyond those just in the Humanities to include Education Studies, Management and Business and more. In his lecture - open to the public - he will speak from his own experience about why it is important to understand religion today, and what stands in our way in our attempts to do so.
Spring 2007 Jacob Perlow Lecture
"Kabbalah: Right Now"
Conversations with the Scholars: A series of lectures with scholars of contemporary Kabbalah: October 8-9, 2007
There’s no getting around it: kabbalah has changed in the past thirty years. It’s easy to get kabbalistic texts, and easy to find interpreters of them. Its wider circulation is due in part to technology allowing inexpensive mass production and distribution of information, such as cheap printing and the internet, in part to changing Jewish attitudes about esoteric knowledge and who has the right to access it, and in part to changing, post-modern attitudes about religion as it is de-emphasizes institutions and places more emphasis on personal practice and ‘spirituality.’ This has led to a change in both the canon of kabbalistic texts and in the community of its practitioners.
This conference brings together the premier scholars of contemporary kabbalah to explore the most fundamental questions about the practice of kabbalah right now. What is the difference between popular kabbalah and its traditional practice? Does the Kabbalah Centre teach ‘real’ kabbalah? Is it a cult? Does the absorption of kabbalah into popular culture, in literature, comics, and film harm whatever is “sacred” in Judaism? Is kabbalah still, or was it ever, the exclusive property of the Jewish tradition? How do contemporary Jewish movements ‘use’ kabbalah, and is this use legitimate?
Six scholars from around the world will present their research on these questions and others, and engage in serious debate about them and their implications. Please join us for a rigorous and exciting inquiry into Kabbalah: Right Now!
The Conversations:
Monday, October 8, 2007
Davis Auditorium, 7:00 pm
Boaz Huss
Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Kabbalah and the Politics of Inauthenticity: Controversies Over the Kabbalah Centre
Chava Weissler
Department of Religion Studies
Lehigh University
Performing Kabbalah
Jody Myers
Religious Studies Department
California State University
Marriage and Sexual Behavior in the Teachings of the Kabbalah Centre
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Davis Auditorium, 7:00 pm
Pinchas Giller
Department of Jewish Thought
American Jewish University
Finding Shar'abi: Issues in the Study of Early Modern Mizrachi Kabbalah
Harry Brod
Department of Philosophy and Religion
University of Northern Iowa
From Golem to Supermentsh: The Amazing Adventures of Jewish Superheroes
Zion Zohar
Religious Studies Department
Florida International University
Magic and Kabbalah Manipulation at the "service" of Jewish Fundamentalists-The Case of Pulsa Dentura
A collaboration between the Office of the Dean of Special Program and the Department of Religion
Spring 2007 Jacob Perlow Lecture
Pearl Abraham
"Orthodoxy: the End of Prophecy"
A lecture on the interconnection of religion and literature
Thursday, April 5, 2007
7:00 pm Davis Auditorium
 Pearl Abraham is the author of The Seventh Beggar, a finalist for the 2006 Koret Award in Fiction along with David Grossman’s Her Body Knows and Francine Prose’s A Changed Man. The Romance Reader, her first novel, a finalist for The Discover New Writer’s award, named ‘Best Book of 1995’ by Library Journal, selected as first title by Contra Costa Times of San Francisco, has also been on bestseller lists in Germany and The Netherlands. About Giving Up America, her second novel, one critic wrote “In spare prose, with painstaking attention to quotidian detail, the book magnifies the anticlimactic dissipation of love and unflinchingly dissects the familiar, and often irreconcilable tension between commitment and self-realization, daily partnership and romantic fantasy…A page-turner.” Abraham is also the editor of the Dutch anthology Een sterke vrouw: Jewish Heroines in Literature (Meulenhoff, 2000). Recent essays appeared in Who We Are (Schocken Books), The Michigan Quarterly, and “Forward.” Recent short stories have appeared in “Epoch” (Cornell), “Forward,” and Brooklyn Noir (Akashic Press). Her story "Hasidic Noir," won the 2006 Shamus Award for Best Short Story About A Private Eye. Abraham grew up in a Hasidic family, the third of nine children. She graduated from Hunter College and received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University. |
- Sidney Greenberg
- Robert Chazan
- Joy Levitt
- Charles Silberman
- Nisht Geferlach Klezmer Band
- Moshe Waldoks
- Henry Feingold
- Riffat Hassan
- A. James Rudin
- Marvin Wilson
- Wolf Blitzer
- David Harris
- Alan Mittleman
- Jerome Hornblass
- Steven Bayme
- Arthur Hertzberg
- David Grossman
- Jonathan Sarna
- Neil Gilman
- Jack Wertheimer
- Francine Klagsbrun
- Gary Rosenblatt
- Alan Berger
- Alan Fine
- The Saratoga Chamber Players
- John Felstiner
- Mary Lowenthal Felstiner
- Carolyn Forche
- Lawrence Fine
- Robert Goldenberg
- Raymond Scheindlin
- The Klezmatics
- Tom Segev
- The Klezmer Conservatory Band
- The Saratoga Chamber Players
- Samuel Bak Exhibit at the Tang
- Lawrence Langer
- The Isles of Klezbos
- Meir Zamir
- Nimrod Hurvitz
- "Hated Music" collaboration
