Table of Contents & Contributors

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Savta, The Great Accompanier Kathy Kates

Kos Miryam Rachel Jacoff

Kadesh Gray Myrseth

Urḥatz Avi Strausberg

Karpas Sharon Cohen Anisfeld

Yaḥatz Jordan Schuster

Maggid The Four Questions Ziva R. Hassenfeld

Maggid Vehi She-amda Arthur Green

Maggid Storytelling Alice Shalvi

Maggid The First Passover Story Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Maggid From Barukh Ha-Makom to the Four Children Nehemia Polen

Maggid Go and Learn Joe Reimer

Raḥtzah Jane L. Kanarek

Motzi Matzah Ebn Leader

Maror Tamar Biala

Korekh Shoshana Meira Friedman

Shulḥan Orekh Gail Twersky Reimer

Tzafun Rachel Adelman

Barekh Jordan Brauing

Hallel Shayna Rhodes

Shefokh Ḥamatkha Lawrence Rosenwald

Nirtzah Micha’el Rosenberg

Shir HaShirim Abigail Gillman

Haroset

Rachel Adelman is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College. She lectures widely in North America and abroad, and has published poetry, articles, Divrei Torah, and books, most recently: The Female Ruse — Women’s Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible (2015). She is working on a new book, Daughters in Danger, from the Hebrew Bible to Modern Midrash.

Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld became President of Hebrew College in July 2018, after serving as Dean of the Rabbinical School from 2006 - 2017. Previously a Hillel rabbi at Tufts, Yale, and Harvard, and a faculty member for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, she is passionate about inviting her students to be creative participants in the ongoing dialogue through which Torah is revealed and renewed.

Tamar Biala received her B.A. in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University and an M.A. in Women’s Studies at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem. She taught at the Hartman Institute's teacher training program and in seminars for the IDF. Over the last decade she has edited two volumes of midrashim written by contemporary Israeli women, Dirshuni - Midreshei Nashim (Yediot Acharonot, 2009, 2018), and she is now preparing an English edition

Rabbi Jordan Braunig is the Director of Community Building at Tufts Hillel. He is honored to be a mentor, a teacher, a field guide and a friend to students during a transformative time in their lives. Jordan is also a writer, a poet and an Elul journaler.

Abigail Gillman is Associate Professor of Hebrew, German, and Comparative Literature, and affiliated faculty in Jewish Studies, at Boston University. She is the author of two books: Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann and Schnitzler (2009) and A History of German Jewish Bible Translation (2018). Her current research pertains to the mashal across Jewish literature; Aharon Appelfeld; and Jewish translation history.

Anita Rabinoff-Goldman is a fiber artist living in the Boston area. Her quilts have appeared in local, regional, and national juried shows. Her most recent work is called “Seeing Torah”, a visual response to the weekly Torah portion. Her work can be seen at www.anitarabinoffgoldman.com and on Instagram @seeingtorah.

Rabbi Arthur Green is Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College and Rector of the Rabbinical School, which he founded in 2003.

Rachel Jacoff , Professor Emerita of Compartive Literature and Italian Studies at Wellesley College, has written on Dante’s relationship to Virgil and Ovid. She is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Dante (2007), and co-edited (with Peter Hawkins) The Poets’ Dante (2001).

Ziva R. Hassenfeld was recently appointed the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on the tools and reading strategies young children employ when reading texts, as well as the pedagogies teachers use to support student textual interpretation, fluency and comprehension.

Rabbi Ebn Leader has been a student of Rabbi Arthur Green for the past twenty years. He teaches Talmud, Halachah, Hasidut and Kabbalah at the rabbinical school of Hebrew College, where he also focuses on sharing the practice of tefilah. With his teacher and other students, he edited Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from Around the Maggid’s Table (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013).

Rabbi Jane L. Kanarek is Associate Professor of Rabbinics and Associate Dean of Academic Development and Advising at Hebrew College. She is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law (2014), as well as the co-editor of Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination (2017) and Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens (2016), both of which were finalists for the National Jewish Book Award.

Rabbi Nehemia Polen, Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew College, is the author of The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (1994). His edited and annotated edition of The Rebbe’s Daughter: Memoir of a Hasidic Childhood (2002), about the life of Malkah Shapiro, was the recipient of a National Jewish Book Award. Most recently he co-authored, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Filling Words with Light: Hasidic and Mystical Reflections on Jewish Prayer (2004).

Rabbi Gray Myrseth is the Director of Youth Programs at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland, CA. Ordained by Hebrew College in June 2017, Gray has also worked as a chaplain and an LGBTQ inclusion trainer and consultant. Their interests include poetry, Talmud, and outdoor adventures with their dog.

Joseph Reimer is an associate professor of Jewish Education at Brandeis University where he has taught for many years and directed the Institute for Informal Jewish Education. He is currently writing a book on celebrating Shabbat at Jewish summer camps.

Gail Twersky Reimer is the founder and recently retired executive director of the Jewish Women’s Archive. She and Judith Kates co-edited two anthologies of Jewish women’s writings –Reading Ruth: Women Reclaim a Sacred Story (1994) and Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days (1997).

Rabbi Shayna Rhodes was ordained at Hebrew College Rabbinical School in 2008 and is now a member of the faculty and co-director of the beit midrash.

Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Rabbinics at Hebrew College. Formerly the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center in New York, he is the author of Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity (2018), and co-author of Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law (2017).

Lawrence Rosenwald is the Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he has been teaching since 1980. His current large project is called Sketch of a Pacifist Critic.

Alice Shalvi, Born in Germany in 1926 and educated in England, has lived in Jerusalem since 1949, where she taught in the English Department of the Hebrew University until retiring in 1990. From 1975 until 1990 she served in a voluntary capacity as Principal of Pelech Experimental Religious High School for Girls and from 1984 to 2000 as founding chairwoman of the Israel Women’s Network, the country’s major feminist advocacy organization.

Rabbi Jordan Schuster was ordained at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in 2018, where he currently serves as director of Mekorot and teaches courses in Mishnah, Tanakh and Hasidut.

Rabbi Avi Strausberg is the Director of National Learning Initiatives at Hadar, and is based in Washington, DC. She received her rabbinic ordination from Hebrew College in Boston and is a Wexner Graduate Fellow

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg lives in Jerusalem where she has been lecturing on Torah since 1980. She reads biblical narratives through the prism of midrash, literature, philosophy and particularly psychoanalysis. She teaches throughout the Jewish world, at synagogues, universities, and psychoanalytic institutes. She is the author of five critically acclaimed books. Her latest book is Moses: A Human Life (2016).