Friday Night:
The Universe in a Box:
Understanding the Tabernacle and the Temple
Jews have made art for millennia. But the fountainheads of all Jewish visual culture were the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Jerusalem Temples. Each element in these structures was an aesthetic symbol of a component of the universe, and the sacred precincts were an area in which images and representations forbidden to Jews in other contexts found a home. We will discuss the spiritual meaning of these symbols and their place in the Jewish imagination over the centuries.
Shabbat Morning:
Touching the Sacred: The Pregnant Emptiness of the Song of Songs
The Song of Songs—the most sensual book of the bible— is notorious for its disinclusion of the Name of God. But one might argue that God is most immediately and viscerally present in the Song, the one biblical book that earned Rabbi Akiva’s seal of approval as “the Holy of Holies.” The empty fullness or full emptiness of this exquisite poem will serve as a springboard for the discussion of presence and absence, immanence and transcendence, and the fullest possible range of responses to God’s apparent silence within a natural world so full of God.
Third Program (Saturday Night or Sunday):
Choose any listed individual lecture