Live @ Drisha: Winter Week

What does it mean for Chanuka to be the only major holiday invented in the post-biblical era? Through hassidic sources, we will explore Chanuka’s message regarding novelty and creativity in our Torah and in our lives.

A central observance of Chanuka is the recitation of Hallel on all eight days; on Purim Hallel is not recited. We will study the significance of this distinction.

The observance of Purim centers around the Megillah, which becomes part of the canon. Chanuka, by contrast, focuses on the lighting of the candles, a Temple ritual. We will discuss the implications of each.

When the Hasmoneans ruled Judea in the second and first centuries BCE, hundreds of thousands of pious Jews were comfortably settled in Egypt – with no plans to return to their homeland. We will discuss what these Jews practiced, how they related to the land of Israel and the Jerusalem Temple, and what it meant to assimilate into the Greco-Roman world and still identify as a Jew.

Dying for a cause is considered by many the most noble form of death, and dying for one’s faith has a long and complicated history. The first Jewish martyrdom stories are from the books of Maccabees, and we will look at how this idea is used in that context, and then how it evolved and developed over the following centuries, in early Christianity and into rabbinic Judaism.

We will explore the earliest sources that retold the dramatic story of Chanuka, and will consider how ancient retellings of Chanuka changed over time – and why.

We will conduct a detailed analysis of the significance of the commonalities the festivals of Chanuka and Sukkot.

The Talmud tells about the origins of Chanuka in a way that closely parallels a talmudic legend about Adam’s first encounter with darkness. As Chanuka begins, we will study these talmudic texts to illuminate our own encounter with the darkness and with the holiday of Chanuka.

Part of Drisha's Winter Week of Learning 2015 on Legend, History, and Halakhah: Rabbinic Judaism in the Context of the Hellenistic World

Part of Drisha's Winter Week of Learning 2015 on Legend, History, and Halakhah: Rabbinic Judaism in the Context of the Hellenistic World

Part of Drisha's Winter Week of Learning 2015 on Legend, History, and Halakhah: Rabbinic Judaism in the Context of the Hellenistic World

Part of Drisha's Winter Week of Learning 2015 on Legend, History, and Halakhah: Rabbinic Judaism in the Context of the Hellenistic World

Part of Drisha's Winter Week of Learning 2015 on Legend, History, and Halakhah: Rabbinic Judaism in the Context of the Hellenistic World

Part of Drisha's Winter Week of Learning 2015 on Legend, History, and Halakhah: Rabbinic Judaism in the Context of the Hellenistic World

As Channukah is a rabbinic holiday, it becomes in Chassidut a metaphor for the power and potential of oral law. By lighting Channukah candles, we become exposed not only to the unrevealed part of Torah but to unrevealed realms of our own lives and surroundings. How can Channukah be understood as a celebration of potential not yet actualized and dreams not yet made real?

This lecture compares Martin Buber's emphasis on mutuality in dialogue with Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas' philosophies of dialogue. While Rosenzweig and Levinas share much in common with Buber, they stress the fundamentally asymmetrical nature of our relation to others (we owe others something but they don't owe us anything) and to God (God commands us; we don't command God). We will explore the implications of these three philosophers' ideas for interreligious dialogue as well as their use of gendered language to make their claims.