This course is generously sponsored by Amy and Max Newman in honor of Daniel Mayer Newman, of blessed memory.
WINTER 2023 COURSE
Book Smart:
A Grand Tour Through the Vast Sea of Jewish Wisdom and Learning
A panoramic overview of 3000 years of Jewish learning, this course introduces you to the works that earned us the title “The People of The Book.”
You will experience the different genres that shape Jewish life, including Tanach, Midrash, Talmud, Halachah, Philosophy, Kabbalah, Musar, Chasidism, and meet the influential personalities who drove thirty centuries of Jewish scholarship.
Whether you’re meeting these texts for the first time or as a seasoned scholar, this course will inform and enrich all your Jewish learning.
BookSmart | Course Trailer
COURSE OUTLINE
LESSON OUTLINE
— 01
The Torah
We begin by addressing the question, “What is the Torah?” We discover how the whole of Jewish teaching (“the Torah” in its broader meaning) derives from the Chumash (“the Torah” in its narrower meaning). We also discuss the relationship between the “Written Torah” and the “Oral Torah,” and how these two components of Torah constitute a “partnership” of Divine revelation and the human toil of the mind.
We then introduce the twenty-four books of the Tanach. We explain the differences between Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim, and review the contents of each. We also see how the roots of the different “genres” of Torah—Midrash, Halachah, Kabbalah, Musar, etc.—are all in the “Written Torah,” as will be further demonstrated in each of the next five lessons.
LESSON OUTLINE
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