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Are Rejections of Religious Faith on the basis of its Irrationality Misguided?

Tuesday, November 17 2009 at 18.00
Jewish Library

The idea that religion is incompatible with a rational-scientific outlook is not new. It troubled Jewish philosophers of the middle ages and yet it continues to be an issue of controversy among Jewish thinkers to this day. There are several reactions that took place in Jewish thought to the supposed incompatibility. Secular and mystic thinkers share the thought that religious faith is irrational, and yet while the latter embrace it, the former reject it. Others claim that the incompatibility is merely apparent. What, then, is the relation between religious faith and scientific rationality, and how should believers and skeptics respond to this relation? 

Mr. Levi Spectre teaches at Paideia: November 9-20, 2009

Mr. Levi Spectre is a PhD candidate at Stockholm University and library fellow at the Van Leer institute in Jerusalem. Levi Spectre specializes in issues pertaining to philosophical accounts of knowledge, evidence, belief, rationality and justification.

 

Maimonides: Cultural Hero and Historic Figure  

Tuesday, October 20 2009 at 18.00
Sessionssalen

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimun, better known as Maimonides, is considered one of the most prominent intellectual figures of Jewish culture whose essays in Jewish law, philosophy, and medicine became cornerstones of Jewish culture. The discovery of the Cairo Genizah and the research that followed enables us today to know more about Maimonides’ life story as a private person. This lecture will introduce Genizah documents which shed new light on Maimonides’ biography and place him in the historical context of Cairo and its vivid multi-cultural ambience.

Dr. Miriam Frenkel teaches Medieval Jewish History in the Lands of Islam at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her recent book, The Compassionate and Benevolent; the Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages offers a new perspective on Jewish Medieval leadership.

 

Esther Superstar: Madonna’s Postmodern Kabbalah.

Tuesday, October 6 2009 at 18.00
Hollandersalen 

Since the late 1990’s Madonna has been studying Kabbalah and integrating Kabbalistic motifs in her cultural productions. This lecture will examine the sources of the Kabbalistic themes used by Madonna and analyze the postmodern features of Madonna’s Kabbalah as expressed in her music, video-clips, and children’s books and in her choice of the Hebrew name Esther.

Professor Boaz Huss teaches Kabbalah at the Goren-Goldstein Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He is an expert of various areas of Kabbalah, including the Zohar and contemporary Kabbalah.