Kesher Israel is proud to welcome Dr. Avivah Zornberg as our next scholar in residence on the weekend of May 2-3!

Dr. Zornberg will speak twice on Shabbat: after Kiddush on Shabbat morning (at about 11:45am) and again before mincha (at 6:00pm). A community lunch (reservations required) at approximately 1:00pm with Dr. Zornberg will follow her morning talk. Dr. Zornberg will speak on the following topics:

Bewilderments: The Narrative of the Spies  The turning point of the Israelites' wilderness journey is the narrative of the Spies. When the people declare their intention to return to Egypt, is it fear that drives them? Or is it deeper issues of love and hate, trust and skepticism? We will explore this central narrative through the prism of midrashic, literary, and psychoanalytic materials.

'To Be Or Not To Be:' A Tale of Five Sisters  The five daughters of Zelofchad figure in a unique brief narrative which throws them into a relation of some tension with Moses. We will study this intriguing narrative, with the help of midrashic and hassidic sources. In what sense can this be considered a feminist narrative?

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg was born in London and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, where her father was a Rabbi and the head of the Rabbinical Court. She studied with him from childhood; he was her most important teacher of Torah. She holds a BA and PhD in English Literature from Cambridge University. After teaching English literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she turned to teaching Torah. For the past twenty-five years, she has taught Torah in Jerusalem at Matan, Yakar, Pardes and the Jerusalem College for Adults. Dr. Zornberg also holds a Visiting Lectureship at the London School of Jewish Studies. She is the author of The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious (Schocken 2009), Genesis: The Beginning of Desire (for which she won the National Jewish Book Award, JPS 1995), and The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, (Doubleday 2001). She travels widely, lecturing in Jewish, academic and psychoanalytic settings.