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SAMUEL & ALTHEA STROUM ANNUAL LECTURE SERIES ~ APRIL 14, 19 & 21, 2004
Professor Susan Handelman will present “Find Yourself a Teacher:
The Mentor-Disciple Relation in Jewish Thought
and Contemporary Cultural Studies”
Susan A. Handelman, Professor of
English at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, will
deliver the 2004 Samuel and Althea
Stroum Lectures. Her topic is “Find
Yourself a Teacher: The Mentor-Disciple
Relation in Jewish Thought and Con-
Susan Handelman temporary Cultural Studies.” The
lectures will take place in Kane Hall 220,
beginning at 7:30 PM each evening.
Professor Handelman is a teacher extraordinaire, named
a “Top Ten” teacher at College Park (Diamondback student
newspaper) and “Teacher of the Year” (University of Maryland
Panhellenic Association). She received the Distinguished
Scholar-Teacher Award 1989–1990 (University of Maryland).
Professor Handelman has been a professor of English at
the University of Maryland and a visiting professor at the
“WEISSLER” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6
(a feature it shares with Hasidism); use of the language of therapeutic
culture and acceptance of the centrality of the individual
in her spiritual and psychological path; and a commitment to
social justice and a left-liberal political stance.
In her second lecture, Weissler observed that the preponderant
majority of Renewal’s members (although only about
half of its leaders) are women. This reflects what historians
call the “feminization of American religion” since the nineteenth
century: as religion has become associated with the
private domain, women have come to predominate in American
religious life. Judaism’s public rituals, by contrast, have
historically been dominated by men. Because men have more
options for Jewish life than women, they may also feel they
have more to lose by affiliating with Renewal. Moreover,
Renewal is explicit about using feminist and gender-neutral
God-language. Since the imagery and language the Western
traditions use for God reflect and reinforce certain types of
social structures and hierarchies — God was called “King” in
biblical times because kings were the most honored and powerful
members of society; God was called Father because
fathers are the heads of the household — feminist theology
argues for non-hierarchical God-language and a democratic
social organization. Renewal Jews therefore also turn to
kabbalah and its feminine imagery for the Divine.
In her third lecture, Weissler described the way Renewal
transforms the kabbalistic notion of the Four Worlds from a
theory of the cosmos to a teaching about the nature of the
self. In the fourteenth century, kabbalists invoked the concept
in order to bridge the gap between a transcendent divine and
the world of multiplicity and pain. Later, Lurianic kabbalah identified
the four worlds with states of meditation at stages of the
liturgy, as the mystical adept strove to draw near to the
Godhead. In Hasidism, the doctrine became identified with
inner aspects of the psyche, in keeping with Hasidism’s tendency
to psychologize kabbalistic cosmology. Jewish Renewal
even further “psychologized” the four worlds by interpreting
them as aspects of human existence. Many renewal liturgies,
Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
At the graduate level she has taught at the Interdisciplinary
Program in Gender Studies: Core Course in Gender in Language
and Literature, Literary Theory, and Critical Thought
and The Teaching of Literature. She has taught courses on
The Old Testament and Literary Criticism, Reading the Bible:
Problems of Interpretation, American-Jewish Literature,
Women in Jewish Literature, and Literature and Ethics.
Her primary research interest is literary criticism and Jewish
studies, especially the relation of literature to the
philosophy of religion.
Professor Naomi Sokoloff Awarded
the Samuel and Althea Stroum
Chair in Jewish Studies
At the pinnacle of university recognition
of faculty excellence is the
position of endowed chair. These
positions publicly acknowledge
superior scholarship, and reward
the best faculty at the university.
In 1985, through the extraordinary
generosity of Samuel and Althea
Stroum, the only endowed chair
at the Jackson School was established.
It remains one of only three
endowed chairs in the entire Col- Naomi Sokoloff
lege of Arts and Sciences.
This year, the Stroum Chair has been awarded to
Naomi Sokoloff, Professor of Near Eastern Languages
and Civilization, Women’s Studies, Hebrew
Language and Literature, and The Holocaust. She will
hold the chair for three years, using the resources
provided by the chair to support her research and
her program at UW. In return, she will give public
talks and present a colloquium during winter quarter
2004. Other planning is in process.
for example, interpret the Sabbath morning liturgy as a “spiritual
journey.” Instead of focusing on the divine end of the
equation, Renewal emphasizes the self, answering the questions
who am I, what is my place in the cosmos, and how can
I encounter the Infinite?
Renewal’s transformation of the Jewish mystical tradition,
Weissler argued, should be understood both as part of a broad
set of changes in American religious life and as an extension of
the development of Jewish mystical thought. In that sense,
Renewal has attempted to create a “Jewish language” in which
to express and shape contemporary American spirituality.
~ Marina Rustow
HAZEL D. COLE FELLOW, 2002–2003
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