Textual Criticism: Techniques for Reform Jews Reading Torah

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How were our sacred texts produced?  How are they different than other documents produced by other cultures at the same time? How do these understandings help us, as Reform Jews, understand the text?

We will look at some tools that can help us understand the text in its context: how to applying modern literary and linguistic techniques to understanding the biblical text; how our rabbinic tradition helps us understand the text as Reform Jews; and how we can use our own experiences to help us decode the text’s relevance to our lives.

Rabbi Jordan Helfman
Mondays, August 12 & 19, 2013
10:00 a.m.

Please feel free to attend any and all you are able.

• The theme for the 29 July will be: “A Jewel in its Setting – The Tanach and the Ancient Near East”
• The theme for 12 August will be: “Intertextuality and Form Criticism”
• And on 19 August it will be: “The Chain of Rabbinic Tradition”

If you are interested in having any of these topics, yet are unable to attend, please be in touch, and Rabbi Helfman can teach similar topics in another timeslot.