Almost all of us are troubled by the cycle of plagues that befell the Egyptians whether it is the
apparent injustice of a punishment that resulted from God’s hardening Pharoah’s heart or the
seeming excess of a cascade of calamitous inflictions ending with the exorbitant ‘death of the
firstborn’.  We all want to understand why God had to go ‘over the top’.  In this class we will attempt to comprehend the symbolic nature of the plagues, the rationale behind the final affliction and the significance of 10 while gaining some insight into the meaning of the epidemic that has  overwhelmed us.

Chaim Seidler-Feller was Executive Director of the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA for 40 years. He is currently our Director Emeritus and is also the director of the Hartman Fellowship for Campus Professionals. He was ordained in 1971 at Yeshiva University where he completed a Masters in Rabbinic Literature. Chaim is a lecturer in the Departments of Sociology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is also a faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and of the Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was a founding member of Americans for Peace Now. The International Hillel Center granted Chaim the Hillel Professional Recognition Award “for blending the love of Jewish tradition with the modern intellectual approach of the university.” Chaim was a rabbinic consultant to Barbra Streisand during the making of the film Yentl.