January Lunch and Learns with Rabbi Jamie Korngold and Dr. David Ilan

The Lunch and Learn program at the Boulder JCC is thrilled to present a series of learning and social opportunities for the winter/spring season. Everyone is welcome and all programs begin with a light lunch at noon. Advance registration is recommended to ensure enough seating and food. Learn more and register at www.boulderjcc.org or call 303-998-1900.

Thursday, January 16 our speaker is Rabbi Jamie Korngold, the Adventure Rabbi. Rabbi Jamie is an ordained Reform Rabbi and the founder of Adventure Judaism. She is nationally recognized for her innovative work combining religion and nature. She is the author of 11 books including “God in the Wilderness“(Doubleday 2008) and “The God Upgrade: Finding Your 21st-Century Spirituality in Judaism’s 5,000-Year-Old Tradition” (Jewish Lights, April 2011). 

Rabbi Jamie will be teaching on “The Role of Snakes and Serpents in Jewish Text.” Historically, serpents and snakes represent fertility or a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. In Jewish texts, the snake has a fascinating and complex role in the narrative of the Torah. They are blamed for Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden, and sent to bite the Children of Israel to punish them for complaining to God in the desert. In the showdown with Pharaoh, Moses transforms his staff into a snake. Join Rabbi Jamie Korngold to look at the texts together and try to understand why the snake is so reviled. Presented in partnership with Haver, Boulder Rabbinic Council.

Thursday, January 30 our speaker is Dr. David llan. David is currently on sabbatical for the year as a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Origins at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Ilan is the director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He has excavated at Tel Arad, Tel Megiddo, and Tel Dan. He specializes in mortuary archaeology, religion, and ritual in the Chalcolithic period, ground stone artifacts, and the Middle Bronze Age and the early Iron Age of the southern Levant. 

Dr. Ilan will be teaching about “The Origins of the Hebrew Alphabet (and Greek and Latin too).” Professor David Ilan will look at examples of the proto-Canaanite and early Hebrew alphabet and their archaeological contexts. You will learn to decode the paleo-Hebrew letters and we will look at more developed examples of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions. Finally, we will explore how the Semitic scripts were transferred to the Greek and Latin scripts.

Dr. Ilan will also be teaching at the Boulder JCC on April 2 and May 11.