Courses
HEBREW SEMINARY SUMMER SEMESTER 2025 COURSE OFFERINGS
June 5, 2025 – August 15, 2025
No classes June 19th and July 4th; all Summer 2025 classes meet online.
Classes are open to rabbinic, pararabbinic, and auditing students.
(All class times are listed in Central Time)
The Human Body as an Instrument of the Divine: Jewish Mystical Somatic Practices
Instructor: Rabbi Jonah Rank
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM CT
Beginning Biblical Hebrew
Instructor: Rabbi Shari Chen
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
Survey of Prophets
Instructor: Rabbanit Dr. Devorah Schoenfeld
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
Human Development
Instructor: Dr. Stephanie Kutzen
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM CT
Modern Books in Jewish Thought
Instructor: Rabbi Jonah Rank
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
Readings in the Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Makkot
Instructor: Rabbanit Goldie Guy
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
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The Human Body as an Instrument of the Divine: Jewish Mystical Somatic Practices
Instructor: Rabbi Jonah Rank
Mondays 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM CT
This advanced course provides an overview of some Jewish somatic spiritual practices, including Jewish mystical approaches to dance, movement, breath, song, and speech. Comfort in understanding Hebrew texts is a prerequisite for this overview of these Jewish mystical sources in their original languages.
Beginning Biblical Hebrew
Instructor: Rabbi Shari Chen
Mondays 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
In this course we will continue to explore and learn key Biblical Hebrew concepts. We will continue to use The First Hebrew Primer Third Edition textbook by Simon, Resnikoff and Motzkin, published by EKS Publishing Company.
Survey of Prophets
Professor: Rabbanit Dr. Devorah Schoenfeld
Tuesdays 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
What was a prophet in Ancient Israel? What was their role in society? Who could be a prophet, and what kinds of messages did prophets bring? How have they been read, and to what purposes have their writings been applied? We will examine these questions from the perspectives of Jewish tradition, contemporary academic scholarship and Jewish-Christian relations.
Human Development
Instructor: Dr. Stephanie Kutzen
Tuesdays 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM CT
This course prepares students for social sciences competencies, knowledge about human development, preparing emerging Jewish leaders to understand cognitive, emotional, and social and environmental processes at varying life stages of the individuals, families, and communities they serve. Objectives of the course will be met by using the psychological theory of Dr. Erik Erikson and Syndemics theory that intersects with development when harmful social conditions impact on healing growth.
Modern Books in Jewish Thought
Instructor: Rabbi Jonah Rank
Wednesdays 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
The modern Jewish library presents more voices and more genres of writing than did the corpus of Jewish writings in any other period of history. In this course, we will read several books that challenge frameworks of Jewish thought, and we in turn will author personal theological statements that respond to questions that catalyze Jewish dialogue: What is God? What is holy? For what are we truly responsible for in life? What will become of our souls? Our course will provide the space for both building our relationships with (relatively) new books in Jewish thought and developing our skills as theologians, as emerging Jewish leaders, in articulating our own answers to great questions Jews ponder.
Requirements
Required reading for this course will be based on the following five books:
- Dr. Mara Benjamin, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (Indiana 2018)
- Dr. Tamar Biala (ed.), Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash (Brandeis 2022)
(optional to read the original Hebrew edition instead: תמר ביאלה, דרשוני: מדרשי נשים [ידיעות אחרונות, 2009]) - Rabbi Dr. Neil Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Jewish Lights 2000)
- Rabbi Dr. Shai Held, Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2009)
- Professor Chaim N. Saiman, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Princeton 2018)
Readings in the Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Makkot
Instructor: Rabbanit Goldie Guy
Thursdays 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM CT
How much can we trust the word of a witness? What is our responsibility to safeguard another’s well-being in this world? Are we culpable if we make mistakes that could be deadly? In this course, we will study sugyot from the first and second chapter of Makkot which touch on these big questions, while delving into the laws and punishment of false witnesses (eidim zomemim), and the laws of one who murders by accident their punishment of exile in cities of refuge. Our core texts will be sugyot from the first and second chapter of Tractate Makkot (“Lashes”) which addresses punishments meted out by the court. Through these texts we will build skills for reading Talmudic texts.