Seeing the “Other” in Jewish Canonical Texts

Adriane Leveen: “Biblical Narratives of Israelites and their Neighbors”

Matt Goldish: “Reading the Gospel through Talmudic Eyes: John Lightfoot’s Revolution”

Chair: Lori Fireman

This session was part of “Jewish Learning and the Non-Jew,” the 2017 Melton Coalition for Creative Interaction conference, hosted by JTS’s William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education. The Melton Coalition for Creative Interaction is a collaboration of the three centers endowed by Samuel M. Melton z”l at JTS, the Hebrew University, and The Ohio State University.

Adriane Leveen is Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Bible at Hebrew Union College. Her new book, Biblical Narratives of Israelites and their Neighbors: Strangers at the Gates will be published by Routledge Press. Leveen’s book Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers was published by Cambridge University Press (2008).

Matt Goldish is the Samuel M. and Esther Melton Professor of Jewish History at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on Sephardim after the Spanish Expulsion, messianism, and early modern intellectual history.

Lori Botnick Fireman is Program Coordinator for the Melton Center at the Ohio State University. She has been a Jewish communal professional for 23 years. For the last 18 years, Lori’s work has focused on multi-generational informal Jewish education, including among other things, family Jewish education programs in synagogues, Holocaust education for teachers, and most recently adult Jewish education programs in the central Ohio community. As Program Coordinator for the Melton Center, Lori manages the Center’s outreach programs, conferences, and concerts, student scholarships, recruitment, development, and all aspects of the Melton Center’s public “face.”