“Sex, Family, and Human Nature: Jewish Explorations”

with Rabbi Mark Gottlieb and Miriam Krupka (Monday Session) and Alan Rubenstein and Raina Weinstein (Tuesday Session)

One of the most vigorously contested areas of modern life in the West is the very question that the opening of the Torah foregrounds.  When humankind is created in the first book of Genesis, we are told:  “And God created the human in His image/ in the image of God He created him/ male and female He created them.” Moreover, the climactic moment of the story of the first pair of humans in the garden of Eden comes when the two of them eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The result of this is not the sort of insight we might expect: The man and woman, about whom it was just recently said “And the two of them were naked, the human and his woman, and they were not ashamed” now have a different orientation to their nakedness: “And the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves loincloths.”

The early chapters of Genesis are only the beginning of a long exploration in the Jewish canon of the nature of human sexual difference. How important to human flourishing are the biological differences between men and women? How do our sexual appetites relate to our whole psyche? Is the traditional Jewish view of marriage grounded in unchanging facts of nature? In revealed law that must be re-examined as social conditions change? Or merely in social conventions that become outdated and need to be tossed aside or overcome?

 

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Rabbi Mark Gottlieb

Chief Education Officer | The Tikvah Fund

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb is chief education officer of Tikvah and founding dean of the Tikvah Scholars Program. Prior to joining Tikvah, Rabbi Gottlieb served as head of school at Yeshiva University High School for Boys and principal of the Maimonides School in Brookline, MA, and has taught at The Frisch School, Ida Crown Jewish Academy, Hebrew Theological College, Loyola University in Chicago, and the University of Chicago. He received his BA from Yeshiva College, rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, where his doctoral studies focused on the moral and political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. Rabbi Gottlieb’s work has been featured twice in the Wall Street Journal and his writing has appeared in First Things, Public Discourse, SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, The University Bookman, Tradition Online, the Algemeiner, From Within the Tent: Essays on the Weekly Parsha from Rabbis and Professors of Yeshiva University, and, most recently, Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith. He is a trustee of the Hildebrand Project and serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. He lives in Teaneck, NJ, with his wife and family.

Miriam Krupka

Ms. Miriam Krupka Berger currently serves as Dean of Faculty at the Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan, NY, where she has taught Tanakh and Jewish Philosophy since 2006. In addition to her current role, she shapes Judaic Studies curriculum, teaches interdisciplinary seminars, and is heavily involved in student Israel Guidance, faculty professional development and the student AIPAC group. Mrs. Berger completed an MA in Jewish Philosophy from Columbia University where her thesis work focused on the messianic writings of Isaac Abarbanel. Ms. Krupka has lectured widely to adult audiences in a variety of venues and sees Biblical Text as the foundation for all thoughtful philosophical discussion.  Miriam currently lives in Teaneck, NJ with her husband, Dr. Ari Berger. She is the proud mother of sons Etai, Gavriel, and Shai.

 

Alan Rubenstein

Alan Rubenstein was educated in Liberal Arts at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, and also at Georgetown University. He was a senior consultant for the President’s Council on Bioethics and currently serves as Hanson Scholar of Ethics at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. At Carleton, he teaches ethical thought through close reading of great literature of the West—in particular, Plato, the Hebrew Bible, and Shakespeare. He is currently Director of University Programs for the Tikvah Fund. His published essays have focused on the philosopher Hans Jonas, the Hebrew Bible, and Judaism in middle America. He is married and a father of three children.

Raina Weinstein

Raina Weinstein is a staff reporter for the New York Sun. She previously served as an Assistant Director of Tikvah Online Academy. Originally from Washington, DC, Raina studied at the University of Chicago as a Stamps Scholar, and she graduated with a degree in Fundamentals. Her studies have taken her to Jerusalem, Berlin, and Dushanbe (Tajikistan). She is an alumna of several Tikvah programs, including the Tikvah College Fellowship, and has taught for Tikvah Online Academy and the Truman Scholars Program.

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