Theology, Gender, and Justice | Judea Reform Congregation, Durham, NC
Free
at Judea Reform Congregation
1933 W. Cornwallis Road
Durham, NC
More Info / Registration
Rabbi Michaelson will be the scholar in residence for this weekend at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham, North Carolina.
Friday Night, 730pm: God Does Not Exist, God is Existence Itself: An Introduction to Nondual Judaism
God-concepts evolve over time. In the beginning, our Western ancestors were polytheists, animists, and nature-worshippers. Later, they developed monotheistic notions of one God in the sky, and a philosophical monotheism of one unchanging deity. Still later, they came to see God as all that there is — in Kabbalistic language, as Ein Sof, the Infinite, filling and surrounding everything in the world, including every molecule in your brain and thinking your thoughts. This nondual (“not-twoâ€) view is strikingly similar to non-Western concepts of non-self (i.e., that the notion that you are a separate “self†is only one way of looking at things) and contemporary neurological accounts of the brain and mind.
Saturday morning, 9am:Â Jacob’s Wrestling with Masculinity: A Gendered Lens on Parashat Toldot
How does the story of Jacob complicate conventional understandings of gender? What is conveyed, in the text and in later interpretations of it, about masculinity, leadership, and eros? In this Torah study, we will explore these and related questions.
Sunday morning, 10am:Â Spirituality and Social Justice in the Age of Fake News
What does serious, engaged spiritual practice look like at a time in which societal conceptions of decency and fairness are challenged by a nativist minority and their elected leader? What are the ways in which our present social/political moment affects how and why one might engage in spiritual practice in a serious way?
