Science in the Talmud

Rabbi Fishman will guide participants through text study and discussion of Science in the Talmud. This will set the stage for later developments in the medieval and modern periods. We will read passages from the Talmud that demonstrate the Rabbis' understanding of the planets and the earth's place in the cosmos, including the concept of the "seven heavens," movement of the sun, moon, and stars, and the place of the earth in the universe. He will demonstrate how the rabbis' views of the cosmos differed from the ancient Greeks', as well as from other contemporaneous Jewish writers such as Philo, Josephus, and the writers of the Apocrypha.

Facilitator: Rabbi John Fishman, Doctoral Candidate in Jewish History

Rabbi Fishman was ordained at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in 2002. He is currently living in Mountain View while completing his Ph.D. in Jewish Medieval History at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation topic is Alexander of Macedon in the Medieval Jewish Imagination. His Rabbinic ordination thesis was The Trials of Abraham in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer.

Fee: Free and open to the public.