Source: Rabbinic Torah Study Seminar
The Hartman Rabbinic Torah Study Seminar is an annual 10-day study program that enriches rabbis of all denominations and nurtures their capacity to inspire their communities, excite them by the Jewish tradition, and motivate them in their quest for meaning. During the summer 2014 seminar, June 30-July 10, 2014, the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute will explore and teach Jewish ideas relating to the pressing contemporary issues of war and peace.
In today’s world, "war" and "peace" are real categories and sources of anxiety. The State of Israel exists at the threshold of a readiness for war even as it pursues the agenda of peacemaking. Diaspora Jews are implicated in these conversations by their governments’ political agendas, and by a constant and changing array of geopolitical threats.
War and peace are also each independently sites of an array of major Jewish ethical questions:
- How do we balance the relative values of peace and security? What is the relationship between violence and peacemaking?
- How should the Jewish ethics of war evolve in light of the changing nature of war?
- How should Jewish values inform negotiations at the peace table, and decisions to use military force?
- What ideas and images about peace – in liturgy, ethics, and text – inform how we think about peace as a contemporary concern?
- What is gained and what is lost when “war” and “peace” go from being metaphors that animate Jewish sensibilities and become actual concerns?
- How has the experience of constant war informed the consciousness of Israeli and global Jewry?
The intensive, 10-day seminar comprises lectures by Institute scholars, tutorials and small group learning, as well as encounters with leading Israeli thinkers, artists, writers, politicians, and leaders of North American Jewry.
Rabbinic Torah Study Seminar is open to rabbis of all denominations from every corner of the globe who aspire to deepen their pluralistic knowledge of Judaism, expand their first-hand experience of Israel, and develop interdenominational dialogue.
Program and registration information is available here.