LITERATURE + LECTURES

The Jewish Community Center of Houston Presents the 22nd Annual Bunny and Leo Horvitz Scholar-in-Residence Program, January 31 - February 18, 2010. Featuring Dr. Yair Zakovitch, (pictured) Father Takeji Otsuki Professor of Bible, Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew Bible: Literature, Ideology, Interpretation.

Dr. Yair Zakovitch's is the Father Takeji Otsuki Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition, he has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Graduate Theological Union. In Israel, Professor Zakovitch is a well-known lecturer, teaching regularly at teachers' seminars, continuing education programs, and appearing regularly on radio and television. His primary interests are literary analysis, the history of beliefs and ideas, historiography, and early Jewish and Christian interpretation of the Bible.

Lectures:

Opening Night Lecture: Literary Archeology and the Beginning of Exegesis
Sunday, Jan 31 • 7:30 p.m.
This lecture is about reconstructing pre-biblical traditions by using post-biblical versions of these stories. Story-elements that were rejected by the biblical writers, including texts that were found to be too sexually explicit or reflected polytheistic beliefs, continued their lives orally and reappear in later texts, when their appearance was no longer threatening. In this lecture Professor Zakovich will take one story and reconstruct its history, demonstrating the various techniques and phenomena of biblical exegesis.

New Program! Mid-Residency Lecture: Canonization and Interpretation
Sunday, Feb 7 • 11:00 a.m.
The canonization of the Hebrew Bible was a gradual process and as such, its diverse texts speak to one another and interpret one another. This lecture will demonstrate the affect of the changing structure of the Canon on our interpretation of the Bible as a whole.

Closing Lecture: Why was the Torah Given at Sinai?
Wednesday, Feb 17 • 8:00 p.m.
The Exodus is the most important event in biblical history, equal only to the Creation. It was important for the Jewish tradition to emphasize that our Torah is different and distinct from all other cultures and law-codes. Therefore, there is a great emphasis placed on the fact that the Torah was delivered directly from God to the Israelites in the wilderness. In this closing lecture, we will nevertheless uncover that there are many similarities between our Torah and the texts of surrounding societies at that time.

Mini-Courses:

Great Biblical Characters
Three Mondays, Feb 1, 8 & 15 • 8:00 p.m.
The history of the people of Israel is told through the biographies of flawed characters. Why does the Bible choose to present imperfect heroes? In this mini-course we will listen to the many different textual voices, which together tell the story of each life, and we will try to better understand the motives of the writers and editors of each biography.

Politics, Religion, and Sacred Space
Two Wednesdays, Feb 3 & 10 • 8:00 p.m.
Religion and politics are always linked, and biblical traditions about sacred places are never naive. Instead, they always express covert polemics against other places and against other religious and cultic concepts. In these two lectures, we will uncover the polemics between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, as they are expressed in the traditions about their sacred places.

Miracles and Miraculous Birth
Two Thursdays, Feb 4 & 11 • 8:00 p.m.
Although we are all familiar with the miraculous stories of the Bible, the Bible has no term for miracle. Was the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the manna that rained down from heaven, or the acts of the prophets Elijah and Elisha not perceived as miraculous by the early writers and readers of the Bible? Additionally, miraculous births seem to be a key element in the biography of biblical heroes. In these lectures we'll try to answer these and other questions about the biblical understanding of miracles.