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Nathaniel Berman
Telephone: 917-493-2996
Email:
Nathaniel Berman has been studying Kabbalah for 25 years. From Azriel to the Zohar, from Cordovero to Luzzato, it’s a never-ending, thrilling contrast with a Modern Orthodox education that culminated in Gush Etzion. In his day job, he is a professor of international law at Brooklyn Law School, focusing on nationalism, ethnic conflict, and colonialism.
Is Kabbalah Feminist? Or, is it Just a bit Queer?
- Friday 1:20PM–2:35PM Embassy Room 2
Ritual and Prayer, Text and Thought
Does Kabbalah provide Judaism with its missing female side? Many feminists have thought so; others disagree. We will read some classic texts and ask: 1) Must we read such texts according to tradition, or, rather, seek a radical "rebellion of their images" (Scholem)?; 2) Can we bypass the feminist/non-feminist debate through attention to Kabbalah's gender-bending, androgynous, and trans-sexual depictions of gender? Does Kabbalah's secret, and power, lie in its being more than a bit "queer?"
Of Demons and Devils: Kabbalah and the "Dark Side"
- Saturday 10:20PM–11:35PM Embassy Room 1
Ritual and Prayer, Text and Thought
Demons and devils? In Judaism? Kabbalah, “Judaism’s unconscious,” teems with such creatures—Lilith, Samael, countless others. They are often deeply intimate with their holy counterparts. This side of Kabbalah shocks rationalists. Yet it is only through it that Judaism confronts our deepest experiences—conflicting cosmic forces, sex and violence, sense and non-sense. We will read some classic texts from this “dark side,” where Kabbalah is at its most imaginative and most true.
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