When Jews Argue: Between the University and the Beit Midrash

Ethan Katz (UC Berkeley); Elisha Anscelovits (Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies); Sergey Dolgopolski (University of Buffalo); Deena Aranoff (UC Berkeley); Duncan MacRae (UC Berkeley); and Masua Sagiv (UC Berkeley) at UC Berkeley, March 22, 2024.

This book panel focuses on a new volume of work, "When Jews Argue: Between the University and the Beit Midrash," by Professor and CJS Faculty Director Ethan Katz.

As panelists discuss, this book raises fundamental questions about the academic and traditional study of Jews and Judaism. The book re-thinks the relationship between the world of the traditional Jewish study hall (the Beit Midrash) and the academy: Can these two institutions overcome their vast differences? Should they attempt to do so? If not, what could two methods of study seen as diametrically opposed possibly learn from one another? How might they help each other reconceive their interrelationship, themselves, and the broader study of Jews and Judaism?

This book begins with three distinct approaches to these challenges, which the editors call, respectively, expanding the canon, warm conversations, and defining our disagreements. Katz, Dolgopolski, and Ancselovits will present the book briefly, followed by critical commentary from Professors MacRae, Sagiv, and Aranoff.

Panelists will discuss and critique how the book follows the editors’ three approaches through an interdisciplinary series of pioneering case studies that reassess a range of topics including religion and pluralism in Jewish education; pain, sexual consent, and ethics in the Talmud; the place of reason and devotion among Jewish thinkers as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn, Jacob Taubes, Sarah Schenirer, Ibn Chiquitilla, Yair Ḥayim Bacharach, and the Rav Shagar; and Jewish law as a response to the post-Holocaust landscape. The authors and panelists are scholars of rabbinics, history, philosophy, law, Jews and gender, and medieval and ancient Judaism.