Radical Torah Salon: A Space for the Study of Radical, Queer, Feminist, and Challenging Torah
“The whole Torah depends on justice” –Rabbi Moshe ben Naḥman (the Ramban)
The Torah need not – and should not – support the status quo. Indeed, it may be understood as a deeply radical text, demanding a strong welfare society, the negation of personal property, and a constant striving for a better future. At the Town & Village Radical Torah Salon, we study texts – both ancient and modern – that can inspire radical transformation in ourselves and our world.
At each “salon,” we take up an essay, chapter, commentary, or source sheet that offers a new perspective on the Torah. On different weeks (or the same week!), we might study sources on wealth redistribution in the Talmud, read some feminist midrash, queer the weekly Torah portion, or delve into the responsa literature on labor organizing. Whether you’ve spent years in yeshivah or never went to Hebrew School, you are invited to contribute your unique voice to the conversation.
Thursdays 7:30 - 9:00 PM
- October 12, 2023: Models of Restorative Justice in Rabbinic Judaism: Positing and Problematizing “Ostracism” and “Excommunication” as Alternatives to Policing and Incarceration
Advocates for criminal justice reform and for the defunding of the police have proposed models of “restorative justice,” which seek community reconciliation and the reparation of harm. A few days after Indigenous People’s Day (October 9), we will examine the Indigenous roots of restorative justice as a popular idea in the United States, and then we will turn to an arguably similar model systematized in Babylonian Talmud Tractate Mo‘ed Qatan and outlined in Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah. We will ask whether or not the concepts of “ostracism” and “excommunication” – as community-based responses to harm that depend on reconciliation, forgiveness, and popular enforcement rather than on state authority or violence – have anything to offer the American criminal justice debate today.
We will read and discuss the essays of Dr. Liz Shayne, Rebbetzin Leah Ahavah, and Rabbi Elli Fischer, who offer models of honoring neurodivergent interpretations of Jewish texts. Studying Torah through lenses informed by autism, ADHD, and neurodiversity ideology contribute new (or very old) and sometimes radical modes of understanding Jewish tradition.
- December 14, 2023: The Witch, the Demon, and the “Qadesha”: Subaltern Studies as a Window to the Past (and Future?) of Jewish Popular Religion
During Ḥanukkah, we celebrate a rural uprising against the imperial monarchy. In North Africa and elsewhere, Ḥanukkah has also been a traditional time to celebrate the heroism of Judith and other Jewish women.
We will take Ḥanukkah as an opportunity to examine Ranajit Guha’s and James Scott’s work on modern South Asian peasant religion and resistance, alongside Silvia Federici’s Marxist feminist analysis of medieval European peasant revolts and early modern witchcraft. We will use these histories as lenses through which to understand biblical and rabbinic texts on religious rites in the outlying regions of Ancient Israel. With an eye to the pluralistic and feminist potentialities of “popular religion,” we will then turn to historically significant Jewish practices as possible models for localized ritual revivals: public fasts to protest climate change, defunct holidays recorded in Megillat Ta‘anit, and ‘Eid al-Banāt (celebrated during Ḥanukkah) as a celebration of women and girls.
The root of the word “tzedaqah” – often used interchangeably with “charity” – is “ק-ד-צ”: “justice.” In a time of global inequality, when our every financial decision has implications for workers around the world and for the very earth on which we stand, what are our responsibilities? Are the halakhot of the Chofetz Chaim and other traditional Jewish authorities still useful? Does Taqqanat Usha, arguably capping tzedaqah at 20% of a person’s wealth, apply under present conditions? Does the (quite Jewish) effective altruist movement offer us solutions? What are our responsibilities as individuals and as a community to grapple with and address global-scale humanitarian crises? We will study selections from the Chofetz Chaim’s Ahavat Ḥesed, Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save, and Rabbi Mary L. Zamore’s book The Sacred Exchange: Creating a Jewish Money Ethic (specifically essays by Dr. Alyssa Gray, Rabbi Neal Gold, and Rabbi Seth Limmer) as a starting point for grappling with these issues.
Admission is Free. To enroll, email adulted@tandv.org
