A session by Aviva Zornberg-- Blogged by Anna

Today is the first official day of the conference--Shabbat was really just a pre-conference, with only 1/4 of the total conference-goers attending--and this uni is packed!!

This morning I attended a session with a speaker about whom I have heard great things--Aviva Zornberg--and all that I heard was correct, despite the fact that I was bracing to be disappointed (how could a speaker really appeal to everyone).

Dr. Zornberg, a teacher of Torah around Jerusalem and other places in the world, has a style of Torah analysis that speaks to me, I believe, because she treats Torah like a literary text. With her background as a professor of English literature, she references both great novelists and traditional and modern Rabbinic commentators as she trolls for insights on, in this case, the story of Esther. Today she quoted from Rashi (11th C.), the Rambam (12th C.), the Maharal (16th C.), the Talmud (5th-6th C.), the Sfat Emet (19th C.), Esther Rabbah (part of the works that make up the midrash, 4th C.), Pachad Yitzhak (20th C.), David Weiss Halivni (contemporary), Kafka (19th-20th C.), Henry James (19th C.), Hamlet (turn of 17th C.), and Yeats (19th-20th C.). What a range! What a great deal of preparation must have gone into this presentation!

During the session I was reminded of some of my greatest teachers, in particular those whose wide-ranging knowledge captivated me with insight and big ideas from a surprising array of sources, shedding light on the particular while taking inspiration from film, song, tradition, literature, literary criticism, art and more. This is the kind of preparation and opportunity for insightful, advanced learning that teachers must offer their students AND that all adults must be offered. (FYI I am a Jewish early childhood director, and thus this topic of inspiring children, teachers and parents is one that regularly motivates me, though I am only a novice). Some Jews may only remember the story of Esther the way they learned it as a child-- what a disservice we do to ourselves when we are limited by the simplicity with which we learned then. As adults we need to be challenged to learn in our own ways (al pi darko) and at our own levels, so that we gain maximal meaning from the stories we've learned over the years.