Scholarstream 5782 features three distinct learning arcs that stand alone or flow into each other. Cultivating Our Relationships (series 1 & 2), Defining Our Sacred Spaces (series 3, 4, and 5), and Renewing Our Resilience (series 6, 7, and 8) will offer an exploration of who we are, where we are in relation to others, and how we move forward in this complicated world.

Register at the Rabbinical Assembly website for this series. 

Beth Yeshurun is a series sponsor - please use coupon code BethYeshurun21 to access all of the series in ScholarStream 5782 for free.

CLASS DESCRIPTION FOR SERIES 7

The series on Renewing our Resilience will begin on Tuesday, May 3rd at 7:00 PM CT. Please register by 4:00 PM CT on the Monday before each Tuesday session to make sure you receive the Zoom link.

“I Shall Not Fear”: Liturgy, Emotional Honesty, and Resilience

Tuesday, May 3rd | 7:00 PM CT | Teacher: Rabbi Jan Uhrbach

Description: Can praying other people’s words help build and sustain resilience? Using particular familiar examples from our daily and Shabbat prayer, we’ll explore the unique ways in which a regular prayer practice grounded in traditional liturgy can help strengthen us and give us honest hope in challenging and distressing times.

Psalms of Hope, Psalms of Comfort

Tuesday, May 10th | 7:00 PM CT | Teacher: Rabbi Cheryl Peretz

Description: Every Jewish prayer is an expression of lived experience in the moment in which it was written. Nowhere is this more evident than in the poetry of the Book of Psalms and the occasions for which the rabbis chose their individual use. In this session, we will examine selections from those Psalms used in our regular liturgy, asking what the psalmist might have been living through and what their experience and expression have to say about comfort, resilience, and hope.

Resilience in the Face of the Crusades

Tuesday, May 17th | 7:00 PM CT | Teacher: Dr. Raymond Scheindlin

Description: When the crusaders marched across the Rhine in the eleventh century and decimated the region’s ancient and prosperous Jewish communities, there was little the Jews could do to resist. Some were forcibly baptized, some were killed, some committed suicide, and some fled. Reflecting on the devastation, the survivors asked themselves why their generation had been chosen for such suffering, what it meant, and perhaps why they should even remain Jews. Their turmoil is recorded in chronicles and poems that deal with the emotional and intellectual upheaval of the times. The Hebrew Crusade literature that we will study is thus a monument of Jewish resilience in the face of disaster. 

The Kabbalah of Lekhah Dodi

Tuesday, May 24th | 7:00 PM CT | Teacher: Rabbi Reuven Kimelman

Description: Lekhah Dodi was composed in Safed of the 1550s by a Kabbalist (Shelomoh Alkabetz) for Kabbalists (such as Moshe Cordovero) to celebrate the kabbalistic meaning of the welcoming of the Sabbath bride. It operates on the four dimensions of kabbalistic reality simultaneously: space, time, human, and Divine. This session will show how all four axes coincide to crack the meaning of the refrain and the nine stanzas of Lekhah Dodi.