Whole and Broken Tablets: Aging in Rabbinic Literature
Learning With Your Own Havruta
Course Details
In this four-session course, we'll study passages from Tanakh, Talmud, and classical Midrash about old age. Beyond the general reverence for the elderly that the Rabbis demanded, what did they think about the actual experience of aging? What are its gifts and challenges? We will consider the implications of the Rabbis' thinking about old age both from the perspective of those aging, and from those who love and care for them.
Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg is faculty at Hadar. He received rabbinic ordination both from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and from his teacher, Rav Elisha Ancselovits. He also holds a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Micha’el has served as associate professor of rabbinics at Hebrew College, and as the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center in Washington Heights. He is the author of Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2018), and with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, he is the co-author of Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law (Ktav, 2017).
