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The
History of the Bible Text and its Transmission through the Ages. Just how fixed (or how
uncertain) is the text of the Hebrew Bible? What textual variance is built
in? How was the text transmitted to us? Who have been the key figures in that
process? What was the profession of scribe like? What was the profession of
early printers like? What difference have technological innovations made? |
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What
Is Torah and What Are We Supposed to Do with It? How do Jews define
“Torah”? If one doesn’t believe that God dictated the Torah to Moses, then what
makes it sacred? How do we read Torah profitably? How do Midrash and Kabbalah
approach the Torah text? How many authentic meanings can a word or verse
have? |
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Philology: How Do We Know What Ancient Hebrew Words Mean? Biblical dictionaries are assembled by folks centuries after the Bible was composed; how do they decide what a word means in such an ancient language? What does a dictionary really tell us about what a word means? What do we learn from a word’s root meaning? Or from a closely related languages? Why do experts sometimes offer diverse opinions about what a given word means? How to Think Like an Ancient Israelite: Decoding the Bible’s Gender Clues. What went without saying between the composers of biblical books and their ancient audience? How does our interpretation of the text change depending upon our assumptions as readers? |
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Gender
at Mt. Sinai.
According to the Torah, were women present for the Revelation at Sinai or
not? How do we know? |
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God’s
Gender.
What gender is the deity that the Torah presents to its audience? How do we
know? |
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The Art and Science of Bible Translation. What goes into preparing a translation of the Bible? How is it different from simply looking up words in a dictionary? Why do translations so often differ from each other? Which of the existing translations is the best? |
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The
Haftarot: Liturgical Diversity and the Conventions of Publishing. Where does a haftarah
come from? How do the editors of chumashim know which haftarah is the right one? Why do
haftarot sometimes differ from one chumash to another? What do these differences tell us
about ritual pluralism in Jewish history? |
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What Does the
Traditional Ketubah (Wedding Contract) Teach Us Today? |
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Jewish
Marriage and Divorce a Thousand Years Ago. |
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Jewish
Religious Pluralism a Thousand Years Ago. |
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The Torah’s Criminal Laws as Spiritual Discipline. Is it true that the classic Rabbis regarded the Torah’s criminal laws as primarily a tool for personal growth, with little practical import? If so, how did pre-modern Jewish communities cope with crime? |
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Everyone
Who Stood at Sinai: The Role of Laypersons in Developing and Applying Jewish
Law. Historically, not only rabbis but also lay persons have
helped to determine Jewish law and its application. What do rabbinic and
historical texts tell us about this little-known aspect of Jewish communal
governance? |
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Medieval
Initiatives to Address Physical Violence by Jewish Husbands. How does our understanding of domestic violence shift when we treat women as
history’s subjects rather than as its objects? What happens when we focus on
human strengths rather than weaknesses? What do we learn from history when we
read aloud vignettes of real-life cases, as extracted from medieval legal
records? |
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“Did
Maimonides Really Say That?” Examining the Claim That He Condoned
Wife-Battering.
A thorough review of a terse legal statement
and the controversy it has engendered. |
Updated 2 November 2009 • Culver City, California, USA