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Rabbi Klapper will be speaking at Yeshiva University on February 16 at 11:30 on "Gerut: Some Interrelationships of Policy and Psak".
The Center for Modern Torah Leadership, led by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, is recruiting outstanding men and women for this year's group of Summer Beit Midrash Fellows, July 6 through August 11, 2010 (tentative dates). The Summer Beit Midrash is an intense and exhilarating learning program that allows advanced students to pursue compelling questions with intellectual rigor and ethical integrity in the framework of a warm and challenging Orthodox community, and to experience themselves as active contributors to the halakhic conversation. This year's seminar is expected to center on the theme "Informed Consent in Halakhah".
The Summer Beit Midrash will be held in picturesque Sharon, Massachusetts and will provide food and housing for all fellows. Stipends and transportation subsidies are available for qualified participants on a rolling admissions basis.
For further information, please go here to view the brochure and here to download an application, or contact us at moderntorahleadership@gmail.com.
Weekly Dvar Torah
The current issue of Hakirah (thanks Dov:)) features the latest round of a debate between Rabbi Natan Slifkin and Rabbi Saul Zucker on the question of whether Rashi was a corporealist. I confess a suspicion that both sides, as they occasionally recognize, are somewhat off the mark. The magical midrashic word k’b’yakhol (= as if it were possible) means that traditional Jewish thinkers are not really obligated to make clear to others, and perhaps not even to understand themselves, whether statements about G-d are intended as metaphor or literally, or what degree of separation is needed between metaphor and nimshal. Furthermore, the Rambam’s definition of forbidden corporealism, which includes the ascription of emotion to G-d, ends up, as Shlomo Pines pointed out, making all speech about G-d impossible. Any Maimonidean speaking about G-d, therefore, simply assumes that everything said is with the stipulation k’b’yakhol. I tend to think as a result that one can almost never demonstrate corporealism or incorporealism – at best one can demonstrate self-perception as corporealist or noncorporealist, and these self-perceptions are often not in accord with others’ definitions.
Click here to read more.
Shabbat Shalom!
Now on the Website
Go here to hear Rabbi Klapper's presentation "Gerut Lechumra" and other forbidden stringencies: The position of the Terumat HaDeshen and its contemporary implications that he refers to in this Dvar Torah.
Go here to listen to "Beruruah and Rabbi Meir: What if a woman were just like a man?".
SBM Alumni News
Mazal Tov to these alumni:
Adina Polen ('02) on her engagement to Ariel Mayse
Rob Golder ('o9) on his engagement to Sarah Steinberg
Elli ('97) and Pesha Fischer on the birth of their daughter Shlomit Ahuva
If you have any news to share with the SBM alumni, please let us know at moderntorahleadership@gmail.com.
The Teaneck parlor meeting and shiur has been postponed for a few months. Thank you for all your interest. If you have any suggestions for other meeting locations, please contact us at moderntorahleadership@gmail.com.
