Midrashic Tales of Jewish Survival in Egypt
Learning With Your Own Havruta
Course Details
Every year at the seder we celebrate our liberation from Egypt. Surprisingly, however, the seder contains very little information about what our enslavement in Egypt was like or how we managed to survive our time there. Join us as we study rabbinic texts about what the Jewish people endured in Egypt and the strategies they used to survive and even flourish under Egyptian rule.
Along the way, we'll ask ourselves: what are the tools that enable human beings to endure oppression? What do human beings need, in times of trauma, to create meaning and even joy? What does it look like to insist on one's own humanity in a world that seeks to deny it -- and what might this teach us about what it means to be human in the first place?
Rabbi Tali Adler is faculty at Hadar, where she teaches Talmud, Tanakh, and parshanut. Tali earned a BA in Jewish Studies and Political Science at Yeshiva University, and received semikhah from Yeshiva Maharat. Tali has taught at a number of institutions including Kehilat Rayim Ahuvim, BBYO, and Harvard Hillel. She lives in Washington Heights with her husband and two children.
