Event Details

Please join us for a day of exploration on the theme of metamorphosis in Jewish thought and history. The scale of catastrophe and rupture in our current time prompts us to consider the process of transformation itself. Change is necessary, inevitable, and elemental. It is creation, evolution, miracle, and collapse. Metamorphosis makes us strange to others and unrecognizable to ourselves. It prompts resistance, ecstasy, and perplexity. This conference will host a variety of papers that consider the dynamics of metamorphosis in Jewish history, culture, and thought. Papers will examine the process of change itself, as well as conceptualizations of change as expressed in thought and literature.

Keynote address: "Poetics, Folklore, and Hermeneutics: Dialogic Approaches to Ancient Rabbinic Literature" by Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem

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Keynote address co-sponsored by the UC Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University and Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies

Schedule:

9:00: Arrival, Coffee, Welcome

9:15-10:15: Keynote Address - Galit Hasan Rokem (Hebrew University), with introduction from Daniel Boyarin (UCB)

10:30-12:00: First Panel (3) - Jeremiah Coogan (GTU), Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford), Jenna Kemp (UCB),  Erich Gruen (UCB, Chair)

12:00-1:00: Lunch (provided)

1:00-2:30: Second Panel (3) - Steve Zipperstein (Stanford), Viola Alianov-Rautenberg (German Historical Institute), Sam Shonoff (GTU), John Efron (UCB, Chair)

2:30-2:45: Short Break

2:45-4:15: Third Panel (3) - Aaron Hahn Tapper (USF), Deena Aranoff (GTU), Bruce Daniel Haynes (UCDavis),  Naomi Seidman (University of Toronto, Chair)

4:15: Concluding Conversation

4:30-5:30: Reception