SHAVUOT BY DAYLIGHT
Please Register So We Have Enough Dairy (and Faux Dairy) Treats!
Shavuot Tish
Join us at us Ner Shalom to study with Rabbi Irwin Keller and Beit Midrash Dean Barbara Lesch McCaffry. We will continue to look at teachings that have been considered dangerous and identities that have been suppressed, both within Jewish tradition and more broadly. What are these ideas that have been considered taboo, and how have they hung on so resiliently, despite the best efforts of those who would stamp them out?
Join us in the Ner Shalom courtyard for this further honoring of forbidden and enduring wisdom (in person only).
4:00 PM
Banishing Our Forbidden Words
Barbara Lesch McCaffry
Barbara will lead us in a discussion of excerpts from Adrienne Rich’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” which speaks to how what is not said becomes taboo or forbidden. We will explore how it applies to a few poems and our own lives.
Barbara Lesch McCaffry, PhD, has been exploring and untangling the work of contemporary feminist writers and poets since her days as an undergraduate student and it remains a passion. She taught in Sonoma State's interdisciplinary program,the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, as well as in the Departments of English, American Multicultural Studies, Global Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Since 2000, she has also been actively involved in Holocaust and genocide education. She is currently the Dean of Ner Shalom’s Beit Midrash: Lifelong Jewish Learning.
5:15 PM
You, My Gazelle: Queer Love Poetry in the Jewish World
Rabbi Irwin Keller
Queer poetry and narrative have always been hidden in plain sight in Jewish literary history. In this session we will celebrate some Jewish love poetry in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, from the Middle Ages (Shmuel HaNagid and Yehudah HaLevi) and from more recent history (Emma Lazarus and Anna Margolin). Be prepared to be surprised––and delighted.
Rabbi Irwin Keller has been the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom since 2008. He is founder and faculty of the Taproot Community since 2017. He authored Chicago's first comprehensive human rights law, in effect since 1989, and served at the helm of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel of the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a founder of the Kinsey Sicks, America's Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet and is the author of Shechinah at the Art Institute: Words, Worry, Wonder (Blue Light Press 2024). He blogs at irwinkeller.com.