28th Annual Summer Beit Midrash
June 30 - August 8, 2024
Young Israel of Sharon, Sharon, MA
About the program:
The Center for Modern Torah Leadership, the intellectual catalyst of Modern Orthodoxy, is proud to announce the 2024 Summer Beit Midrash. SBM Fellows are men and women from leading universities, yeshivot, and seminaries with advanced textual skills and a passionate commitment to learning Torah. They welcome the moral challenges of modernity as spiritual opportunities, and see recognition of each human being's Divine Image as a fundamental assumption and purpose of Torah study.
The Summer Beit Midrash is an intense and exhilarating learning program that allows Fellows 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. Dates are July 5 through August 8, 2024 at the Young Israel of Sharon, 100 Ames Street, Sharon, Massachusetts.
SBM is headed by CMTL Dean Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, with an array of distinguished guest lecturers. SBM Fellows will lead a variety of public learning opportunities during the seminar, including one-on-one study, thematic text-study groups, and formal classes. At the end of the summer, SBM fellows will write a formal Teshuvah based on the topic studied.
Previous SBM topics:
2006: The Halakhic Status of Christianity
2007: DNA Evidence and Mamzerut
2008: The Halakhic Credibility of Non-Observant Jews
2009: A Halakhic Ethic of Investigative Journalism
2010: Informed Consent in Halakhah
2011: Judaism and Art: Towards a Halakhic Evaluation of Beauty
2012: Psak, Ethics, and Industrial Kashrut: The Case of Bishul Nokhri
2013: Can You Be Sure You're Jewish If You Can't Prove It Halakhically?
2014: Halakhah and Disability: Is Access to Religious Experience a Right?
2015: Halakhic Competition Law
2016: Retroactive Remorse? Unstated Conditions in Contractual Relationships
2017: Mental Disabilities in Jewish Law
2018: Honoring Parents: Responsibilites, Rights, and Limits
2019: Editing Embryos
2020: Dina D'Malkhuta: Obligations and Limits
2021: Does Halakhah Recognize A Right To Privacy?
2022: It Takes A Village: Defining Techum Shabbat in the Modern World
2023: "If you don't permit this to him, he'll do (something worse)"; Psak, Policy, and Counterproductive Prohibition
For more information about the summer, please contact Rabbi Klapper at moderntorahleadership@gmail.com
