“It started with a conversation that I had with my mother over 11 years ago,” said. Dan Weber, Ph.D., a second-generation member of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, who conceived the idea of having a statewide Bible study project.
His original idea was to examine one tractate (section) of the Talmud from cultural, historical, political, religious and social perspectives because all of these influenced how the rabbis viewed the world at their time.
But this idea languished until last year Weber discovered the book “How to Read the Bible” by Bible scholar James L. Kugel, formerly of Harvard University, now of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Weber’s inspiration was renewed, with the focus shifted to the Bible.
“A big issue today is religious intolerance,” said Weber. And bringing together community member’s different perspectives about the Bible may help counter that.
Quoting Rabbi David Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Weber said, “What makes a community? People who passionately disagree with each other and still agree to hold hands as they walk together through life.”
As a result, Weber and Kathy Jendusa, executive director of the WSJL, coordinated a committee to create a statewide project for studying the Jewish Bible.
This group includes Rabbi Steven Adams, spiritual leader of Congregation Emanu-El of Waukesha and current WSJL president; Jody Hirsh, Judaic educator at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center; Judaic educator Sherry Blumberg; and Steve Baruch, executive director of the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the educational arm of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
‘Incredible insights’
This past February, the project brought Kugel to speak at venues throughout the community and inaugurate the project. The project in March brought in Dena Aronoff, assistant professor of Medieval Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.
In addition, the project has assembled materials and outlines for the use of small study groups. Each group would examine an area of the Bible — a specific book and a theme within that book — for three months at a time, and each group could look at it from their own perspective, utilizing their own texts and commentaries or some of those provided by the project’s bibliography.
The committee’s intention is to bring together as many synagogue and organizational groups as is possible, and to include both Jewish and ecumenical groups, statewide.
In an interview, Hirsh said he would like to see the community rally around this project. His vision is to have “everyone in the city study the same thing and run into each other in the grocery store and talk about Torah [and] continue the conversation that has been taking place for over 2,000 years.”
“The Bible gets a bad rap as an archaic, Middle East document,” Hirsh continued. “It is one of the greatest literary works of Western culture. It has such incredible insights into what it means to be a human being. People 3,000 years ago had the same passions, fears, made the same mistakes.”
Blumberg has taught at Marquette University, UWM, Cardinal Stritch University, Sacred Heart School of Theology, and various synagogues. She is incorporating some of the project’s material into the Torah study class she teaches at Congregation Sinai on Friday mornings at 9:30 a.m.
“If [Bible study] is done well, everyone has a voice, an opinion, a question,” said Blumberg in an interview. “Education should be transcendent, social, and allow for growth. We have studied the Bible for thousands of years, yet we still study it, and find new lessons in it every day.”
The plan involves a multi-year process. Project organizers hope to end the first year with a statewide Shabbaton including guest speakers. At the end of the second year, they would like to be able to sponsor a study trip to Israel; the first week involving study with some of the people whose writings are used as resources, the second week travelling to visit some of the sites studied during the two years.
A number of groups have already begun, while some are still in the planning stages. The groups will follow the same basic outline, but will vary, based on their interests and their facilitators.
Groups being planned or in progress include those in Wausau at Mt. Sinai Congregation, La Crosse at Congregation Sons of Abraham, Madison at Beth Israel Center, Appleton at Moses Montefiore Synagogue.
In the Milwaukee area, groups have formed or are forming at Congregation Beth Israel, Anshei Sefard Kehillat Torah, and Lake Park Synagogue; the Lux Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Sacred Heart School of Theology; a Milwaukee Hadassah chapter; and the JCC, where Hirsh is co-facilitating a group with Reverend Andrew Warner of Plymouth Church on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.
Two facilitator trainings have been held already, with another to be held soon in Madison. According to Jendusa, organizers hope to hold teleconferences statewide as well.
The facilitator trainings include a group exercise to promote study of the Bible from many perspectives, including: archaeological, anthropological, mythological, Jewish commentary, theological, Christian perspectives, feminist, Bible as written by humans, literature, ethics and values, and as divinely revealed to Moses.
The project welcomes interested participants to join, form new groups, and attend more than one. Eventually, the society plans to have a Facebook page for facilitators to communicate with each other.
Moreover, information will be available within a few weeks on the WSJL website (www.wsjl.org), including materials, bibliographies, classes, and outlines of the studies of each group.
People interested are encouraged to contact Jendusa at the WSJL office, 414-963-4135.
The project has thus far been partially funded by The Nathan L. Berkowitz Memorial Fund, The Leslie S. Bern Memorial Fund, and the M. Michael and Sylvia Weber Memorial Fund.
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