VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Rothko Chapel is delighted to bring a distinguished roster of outstanding intellectuals, poets, musicians, and journalists to speak and perform during its 2009-2010 season of public programs. All programs are free and open to the public. The Rothko Chapel presents Encountering the Jewish Future: Marc Ellis, Director, The Center for Jewish Studies, Baylor University.   Thursday, April 29 at 7pm

Influenced by the Jewish ethical tradition and the dissonance of Jewish life after the Holocaust, with other Jews of Conscience, Professor Marc H. Ellis (pictured) has sought to rescue the Jewish ethical tradition in the face of the demands of the 20th and now 21st Century.

Professor Marc H. Ellis was born in North Miami Beach, Florida in 1952. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in Religion and American Studies at Florida State University, where he studied under the Holocaust theologian Richard Rubenstein and the American historian of the Catholic Worker, William Miller. He received his doctorate in History from Marquette University in 1980 where he was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta and the Jesuit Honor Society. Upon graduation he accepted a faculty position at the Maryknoll School of Theology in Maryknoll, New York, becoming founding director of their M.A. program and the Maryknoll Institute for Justice and Peace.

Professor Ellis was made full professor in 1988, and remained at Maryknoll until 1995, when he assumed a position first as a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions, and then a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, as well as a visiting professorship at Florida State University. Professor Ellis is University Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, where he first arrived in 1998.

Professor Ellis has authored and edited more than twenty books. Among them are: A Year at the Catholic Worker, Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century, Faithfulness in an Age of Holocaust, Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, Beyond Innocence and Power: Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power, Ending Auschwitz: The Future of Jewish and Christian Life, Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time, O’Jerusalem: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant, Practicing Exile: The Religious Journey of an American Jew, Out of the Ashes: The Search for Jewish Identity in the Twenty-first Century, Reading the Torah Out Loud: A Journey of Lament and Hope and most recently, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel.

Professor Ellis has published more than 100 articles and spoken at more than 250 universities, seminaries and academies in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. His writings have been translated into German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Hebrew, Korean and Urdu. His lecture topics include such diverse areas as Middle East policy; the Holocaust; the future of Israel; Jewish identity; Jewish-Christian relations; contemporary spirituality; and post-Holocaust Jewish and Christian thought.

Professor Ellis has been interviewed in a variety of documentary and interview formats, including the BBC, National Public Radio, C-Span and FrenchTV-24. He has authored numerous opinion pieces that have been published in diverse media outlets, including the Houston Chronicle and the International Herald Tribune.

Among other honors, Professor Ellis has been inducted into the Martin Luther King Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College. He was also honored at the 2000 national convention of the American Academy of Religion with an entire session devoted to discussion of his work.

For more than 30 years, as Founding Director of the Institute for Justice and Peace at Maryknoll School of Theology and Founding Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, Professor Ellis has been hosting events of public and religious significance. Among the many events notable for their international reach are the “The Future of Liberation Theology” (1988) – Keynote, Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, “The Next Fifty Years: Beginning a Millennium of Hope” (2000) - Keynote, Professor Richard Rubenstein, “Honoring Heschel at 100” (2007) – Keynote, Professor Susannah Heschel. In 2007, the Center for Jewish Studies also honored Hannah Arendt in a symposium dedicated to her work. In 2008, the Center for Jewish Studies sponsored an international conference, “On the Boundary: HoweverWhereverWhomever.” In 2009, the Center for Jewish Studies sponsored a conference “Texts and Otherness: Politics, Empire, and Post-Secularism in Religious Studies.” In 2010, the Center will sponsor a conference “Reimagining Paul.”

A major focus of the Center for Jewish Studies is its Annual Holocaust Memorial Luncheon held at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. Last year we held our tenth annual luncheon. In years past we have featured historians of the Holocaust, music that was composed in the death camps, children of Holocaust survivors and Germans, reflections on Holocaust literature, Christians and Palestinians reflecting on the Holocaust and the question of God after Auschwitz. This year our luncheon will feature a lecture on Christianity after the Holocaust.

As a public intellectual, Professor Ellis has spoken at the United Nations in New York and in Vienna, the Carter Center in Atlanta, the Truman Institute at Hebrew University, the James Baker Institute at Rice University, the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C., the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and, most recently, in Oslo, Norway at a conference on the 15th anniversary of the Oslo Accords. He has given endowed and keynote lectures in the United States, Israel, Canada, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines. Upcoming lecture engagements include the 92nd Street Y in New York, the Rothko Chapel in Houston, the Society of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and the Danish Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Professor Ellis serves on the National Advisory Board of the Middle East Council, the Editorial Board of Tikkun Magazine and the Board of the Society of Jewish Ethics.

Commentary on Professor Ellis’s work:

Senator George McGovern, former Presidential candidate: “This perceptive and well-conceived book offers the reader a masterful analysis of one of the most compelling issues of our age.”

Professor Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “Marc Ellis has demonstrated great courage, integrity, and insight in the very important work he has been doing for years. It has been an inspiration for all of us.”

The late Professor Edward Said, University Professor at Columbia University: "Marc Ellis is a brilliant writer, a deeply thoughtful and courageous mind, an intellectual who has broken the death-hold of mindless tradition and unreflective cliché to produce a superb account of post-Holocaust understanding, with particular reference to the Palestinian people and the moral obligation of Israelis and Diaspora Jews. He is a man to be listened to with respect and admiration."

Professor Susannah Heschel, the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College: “Marc Ellis has written a book for people who want to think. Challenging our conventional ideas, he forces us to reconsider our assumptions regarding Jewish identity and politics. What emerges is a fascinating and original reconfiguration of some of the most hotly debated political and religious topics today.”

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Judaism:“Ellis masterfully uses the central, Jewish story of Exodus and Sinai to call for a contemporary Jewish (and Christian) theology of liberation. He argues against current political policies based on Jewish vulnerability, with the Holocaust as the chief lens, and issues a prophetic call for contemporary Jews to return to the liberation theology embedded in the Exodus, seeking justice for all. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, that requires both sides to "embrace revolutionary forgiveness" as they find ways to come to less-than-ideal but tolerable resolutions of their conflicts, and it requires Americans living in a post-9/11 world to reevaluate their understanding of Muslims and Islam. Whether you agree with Ellis' conclusions or not, you cannot help but be stimulated by his serious and meaningful use of this central Jewish story to understand and respond creatively to some of the most pressing issues of our time."

Archbishop Desmund Tutu, Nobel Laureate: “Marc Ellis shows that the voice of prophecy has not been silenced in the Jewish community. We will all be the poorer if Ellis’ voice is not heeded but how wonderfully enriched if it is.”