Pictured (left to right): Jerome Teller, Suzanne Teller, Sue Butler, William P. Butler
Faculty, students, administration, Governors, and Overseers gathered on Sunday, October 18, 2010 for the dedication of the new Teller Student Lounge at HUC-JIR/Cincinnati. The Teller Student Lounge is the gift of William P. and Sue Butler in honor of their friends Jerome and Suzanne Teller. The Teller Student Lounge features a "wi-fi cafe" complete with wireless internet access; a dining facility that can accommodate small groups or up to 80 people; and expansive and open areas conducive to informal meetings, study, reading, or simply gathering with friends. It is located on the first floor of the Faculty and Student Center, formerly the Sisterhood Dormitory, which now houses offices for faculty, the Cincinnati administrative staff, the Institutional Advancement staff, and student services and activities. "We are enormously grateful to Bill and Sue Butler for honoring their friendship with Jerry and Sue Teller by making possible this new state-of-the-art student lounge, which greatly enhances the quality of life for the rabbinical and graduate students on our Cincinnati campus," said Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC-JIR President.
Pictured (left to right): Dr. Alan Steinberg; Rabbi Shirley Idelson, Dean, HUC-JIR/New York; Dr. William Cutter, Steinberg Distinguished Professor Emeritus, HUC-JIR/Los Angeles; and Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener, D. Min.
Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener, D. Min., Clinical Director of the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counseling at HUC-JIR/New York, was presented with the Dr. Paul M. and Trudy Steinberg Distinguished Professorship in Human Relations and Counseling at Services on Thursday morning, December 2, 2010 at 10 am. Dr. Wiener presented the sermon, and a reception in her honor followed Services. "It is most fitting to present Rabbi Nancy Wiener with this Chair in recognition of her dedication to teaching, mentorship, program development, and research in the areas of pastoral counseling, all of which truly reflect the values and commitments of Dr. Paul M. Steinberg, in whose honor this Professorship was established," says Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC-JIR President. The Dr. Paul M. and Trudy Steinberg Distinguished Professorship in Human Relations and Counseling was inaugurated in 2004 through a generous gift from the Irma L. and Abram S. Croll Charitable Trust.
The HUC-JIR/Cincinnati School of Graduate Studies is proud of ten recent Ph.D. students and one ABD student who presented scholarly papers at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Atlanta on November 20-23, 2010.
- Dr. Jeffrey L. Cooley (Boston College): "Gilgamesh, the Book of Giants and Antediluvian Knowledge"
- Dr. Kristine Henriksen Garroway (HUC-JIR/Los Angeles): "Buried Dead or Alive: Were Children in Ancient Israel Considered People?"
- Dr. Andrew J. Riley (Xavier University): "More on Covenant Vocabulary in Akkadian"
- Dr. Kyle R. Greenwood (Colorado Christian University): "Proverbs of Ashes, Defenses of Clay: Isolating the Proverbs in Job"
- Dr. David Everson (Xavier University): "Pseudo-Jonathan's Nun Problem"
- Dr. Adam McCollum (Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, St. John's University): "Jesus the Humble Victor: Jacob of Sarug on Jesus' Combat with Satan"
- Dr. Jennifer Quast Noonan (Ashland Theological Seminary; Liberty University ): "Using Processing Instruction to Teach Biblical Hebrew Grammar: An Empirical Study"
- Dr. Michael Graves (Wheaton College): "'Apocryphal' Elements in the Qur'an and the New Testament as Portrayed in Muslim and Christian Scholarship"
- Dr. M. Jason Reddoch (University of Cincinnati): "Philo of Alexandria and the Peripatetic Good in DeSomniis II"
- Dr. Edmond Gallagher (Heritage Christian University): "The Apocrypha in Jerome's Canonical Theory"; "The Jews and the Old Testament according to Julius Africanus and Origen"
- Mr. Andrew Pfeiffer (HUC-JIR/Cincinnati): "Puns Intended: Aspects of Humor in Enuma Elish Tablet One"
On Friday, November 19, 2010, over twenty HUC-JIR/Los Angeles rabbinical students and their significant others attended Kabbalat Shabbat services at Temple Israel of Hollywood. Following services, the students had Shabbat dinner with members of the clergy of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Rabbi John Rosove and Cantor Danny Masseng. They discussed how the Temple Israel clergy team works together to create joyful worship experiences. This visit is the first in a new program initiated by Rabbi Dvora Weisberg, Director of the School of Rabbinical Studies and Associate Professor of Rabbinics at HUC-JIR/Los Angeles. The program reflects Dr. Weisberg's belief that the Los Angeles area congregations can be a powerful "learning lab" for HUC-JIR students.
The National Office of Recruitment and Admissions has many exciting and informative upcoming events:
• HUC on the Road in Seattle at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle, WA: Lunch and Learn with Dr. Joshua Holo, Dean of the Los Angeles campus, on Thursday, December 16, 2010. www.huc.edu/admissions/hucontheroad
• HUC on the Road in Miami at Temple Beth Am in Coral Gables, FL: A full day of learning with Rabbi Michael Marmur and Cantor Bruce Ruben, Director of the School of Sacred Music, on Wednesday, January 12, 2011. www.huc.edu/admissions/hucontheroad
• This Year in Jerusalem? Check out the calendar of events coming from our Jerusalem campus. www.huc.edu/youth/college/jerusalem/
• Presented by the American Jewish Archives, during the Spring High School Retreat in Cincinnati on March 4-6, 2011, students and faculty will discuss "In the beginning...there was reform: How Judaism has maintained its relevance throughout history." www.huc.edu/youth/
• The Spring 2011 Open House is March 16-17, 2011 in Jerusalem and April 3-4, 2011 in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and New York. Free registration, travel subsidies, and home hospitality. www.huc.edu/openhouse
• Presented by the American Jewish Archives, the topic of the Spring College Retreat in Cincinnati on April 8-10, 2011 is "Going Green...burg: What Judaism has to say about living an eco-friendly life." www.huc.edu/youth/
• Are you going somewhere? Let us know if you are attending a conference, convention, retreat or other event and could represent HUC-JIR. Email jliss@huc.edu with your details.
Want the full scoop on these events and more? Visit www.huc.edu/admissions for the whole calendar!
Mrs. Agnes Herman, MSW, was recently honored by the San Diego Psychological Association with their 2010 Media Award at their recent conference in October 2010. The award is presented to "a member of the San Diego media who has made a significant contribution to the community in the past year in his or her coverage of psychologists and psychological/mental health issues." Mrs. Herman writes a weekly column called "Shades of Gray" for the North County Times in San Diego, CA. Mrs. Herman and her late husband, Rabbi Erwin Herman, provided the major gift to create the Jeff Herman Virtual Resource Center (JHVRC) for the Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation in 2001 at HUC-JIR/LA. The JHVRC is a web-based educational environment for all those interested in learning about Judaism, sexual orientation and gender identity. It contains the largest online collection of articles, texts, and websites on Judaism and LGBT topics in the world. http://elearning.huc.edu/jhvrc/
Celebrating Jewish Book Month, the Frances-Henry Library held its annual book sale from November 17-19. As is the Library's custom, the first day and the reduced prices, are exclusive to HUC-JIR students, staff & faculty. A pre-holiday season jewelry sale took place as well, with jewelry designed by a California artist and 20% of the proceeds donated to the Los Angeles Book Fund. Hundreds of books of Judaica, Hebraica, and of general interest were available for purchase. The Frances-Henry Library contains one of the largest Judaica collections in Los Angeles and boasts more than 100,000 bound volumes in its collection. It also houses a specialized collection of periodicals, mircrofilms, records, and compact disks. www.huc.edu/libraries/LA/
After the Reform movement broadcast online its first session devoted to reassessing itself, in mid-November, the comments poured in. One viewer suggested that the movement create a network of schools, camps, shuls and seminaries focused on "tikkun olam," the Jewish injunction to repair the world. Another said the movement should train five times as many rabbis and cantors to provide more entryways into Judaism through music, social action and prayer. Another wrote to express concern about the lack of civility in Jewish discourse, particularly concerning Israel. One asked how Jews could use media and technology to create community. It is exactly the sort of grass-roots input that members of the reassessment team, called the Reform Think Tank, want as they take a hard look at where American Jewry's largest religious denomination is today and where it ought to go in the future.
HUC-JIR/Jerusalem started a program called Mezorim several years ago to train social workers, rabbis, educators and nurses to become "the first generation of Israeli pastoral caregivers," according to Dr. Ruchava Weiss, Mezorim's director. Its first 11 graduates included many Anglos but its second (current ) cohort is nearly all native Israeli, "an indication that spiritual care-giving for the sick is starting to enter the Israeli mainstream." But because few jobs exist in the field, HUC-JIR set up a clinic on its campus for patients to receive care from Mezorim-trained professionals.
On November 18, 2010, representatives of the Cincinnati Transgender community and its allies came together at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC) to commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance. Transgender Day of Remembrance is a global event held in honor of self-identified transgender individuals who lost their lives because of hatred, intolerance and indifference. The event was co-sponsored by the Cincinnati chapter of Human Rights Campaign, a non-profit organization that advocates for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, and representation from Greater Cincinnati Commitment, an initiative of the Cincinnatus Association that seeks to make Cincinnati a more tolerant, welcoming community. Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, the keynote speaker for the evening, also brought messages of support from the office of Mayor Mark Mallory
Dr. Sharon Gillerman, Associate Professor of Jewish History at HUC-JIR/Los Angeles, received the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch Book Award for Germans into Jews: Remaking the Jewish Social Body in the Weimar Republic. The Pacific Coast Branch Award is given annually for the best book that is submitted by a scholar who resides within the states and provinces from which the Branch draws it membership. Dr. Gillerman recently published "Producing Jews: Maternity, Eugenics, and the Embodiment of the Jewish Subject," in eds. Kathleen Canning, Kerstin Barndt, Kristin McGuire, Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects: Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s. London: Berghahn Publishers, 2010. She presented her conference paper, "The Uses of Emotion in Holocaust Education," at USC Shoah Foundation International Digital Access, Outreach, and Research Conference at the University of Southern California on March 25-26, 2010.
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Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Professor of Liturgy at HUC-JIR/New York, is receiving an honorary doctorate from Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania in June, 2011.
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Dr. David Ilan, Director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem, was interviewed and quoted in the December 2010 issue of National Geographic in an article on the historicity of David and Solomon. The "House of David" inscription from Tel Dan is also discussed. Click here to read the article.
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HUC-JIR is proud to present the first annual Wendy Kanter Memorial Concert featuring Michael Hunter Ochs & Band: Beyond Borders on Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 4:00 pm at the Scheuer Chapel at HUC-JIR/Cincinnati. The event will showcase One songwriter's journey through the Jewish communities of Oslo, London and Berlin - and to Israel, Jordan the West Bank...proving that music is truly the universal language. Free and open to the public.
Join us in Seattle at Temple De Hirsch Sinai for a day of learning on Thursday, December 16, 2010. The greater Seattle Jewish community is invited to participate in a presentation, discussion, and lunch from 12:00 - 1:30 pm with Dr. Joshua Holo, Dean, HUC-JIR/ Los Angeles & Associate Professor of Jewish History, on "Marranos, Sephardim and The Jewish Identity Crisis." Free and open to the public. RSVP required.
On Shabbat morning, December 18, 2010 at 9:15 am, Rabbi David Ellenson, President of HUC-JIR, will receive the 2010 Gitelson-Meyerowitz Distinguished Service Award for his exemplary scholarship on modern Jewry and his creative leadership of the Reform Movement's educational institutions. The award will be presented at Sutton Place Synagogue in New York, NY, by Dr. Susan Aurelia Gitelson in memory of Jerome Meyerowitz.
When the power went out at HUC-JIR/Los Angeles, students and faculty moved into the lobby to hold services. The power outage inspired creative use of spaces around the campus that received natural light.
Click here to view a larger image.
Alicia and Beatriz Kelemen of K4 GLASSART develop their work through the
use of varying designs, techniques, and materials that showcase the
desired optic effects, forms, and textures in a wide array of sculptures
and colors. Each menorah is created of dichroic fused glass; gold leaf
layer; and cobalt (left), sunset honey and pink (center), and clear and
gold (right). Each menorah measures 2" x 8 " x 1".$160 each, plus shipping and handling. To purchase, please contact: 212-824-2218, museumnyc@huc.edu. Please click here for a larger image. |