Norms and Heterodoxies in Jewish Culture

Religion functions as a source of both normativity and radical transformation in human life. This is true in the history of Judaism, a religious civilization characterized both by the persistence of religious norms, as well as striking intellectual and cultural shifts over time. While some of these shifts are deemed heretical, others - perhaps no less radical - are incorporated into normative practice. How should we understand the process of Jewish cultural production and the roles of normativity and heterodoxy within it?  Are these opposing currents, or might they work together? Has Jewish Studies scholarship gravitated toward one of these impulses more than the other?
 

9:00am

Welcome

Deena Aranoff, Faculty Director of the Center for Jewish Studies

9:15am

Erich Gruen (UCB):

"Was Hellenism a Jewish Heterodoxy?"

10:00am

Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford):

“Heterodox Spatialities of Diaspora”

10:45am Coffee Break

11:00am

Eva Mroczek (UC Davis):
"The Hidden and Manifest Books: Hezekiah, Heterodoxy, and Canon in Jewish and Christian Lore" 

11:45am

Daniel Boyarin (UCB):
“Yahadut" as Heresy: The Nineteeth-Century Invention of Judaism

12:30pm Lunch Break

2pm

Deena Aranoff (GTU):

"Mothers Milk: Childrearing and the Production of Jewish Culture"

Coffee Break: 2:45pm

2:45pm
Naomi Seidman (GTU):

"A New Normal: How a Woman Negotiated Jewish Law and Founded a School System for Girls"

3:30pm

Rachel Manekin (U Maryland):

"We are Guilty on Account of our Daughters": The Dangers of the Uncharted Territory of Female Education

4:15

Concluding Reflections

4:30pm:

Reception

Thursday, April 6th, 2017 9:00am-5:00pm GTU Dinner Board Room 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley CA 94709