Our three-session class will grapple with a fundamental question at the heart of rabbinic education: What does it mean to read as a spiritual practice? We will think deeply about the place of learning Torah—most broadly construed—as key to our continuous processes of moral, religious, and intellectual self-formation. Rather than trying to “cover” a lot of textual ground, we’ll approach the readings as opportunities to “uncover” space for reflection on who we want to be as people and as Jews, and what type of lives we will live. We shall read the texts as spiritual or ethical prompts—not as a normative prescription or specific nudges to do the right thing, but as texts that spark a process of thinking, reflection, and discernment.
Class videos released each Sunday.
Registration for this class includes access to a WhatsApp discussion channel to explore the class with other students and with Professor Mayse.
Ariel Evan Mayse joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies and serves as the rabbi-in-residence at Atiq: Jewish Maker Institute (atiqmakers.org).
Previously he was the Director of Jewish Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. Mayse holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har’el in Israel.
His most recent publications include Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings for Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritsh (University of Pennsylvania, 2020); Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community and Life in the Modern World (Brandeis University Press, 2020), edited with Sam Berrin Shonkoff, and The Language of Truth in the Mother Tongue (Magnes Press, 2020, in Hebrew).
