The Center for Jewish Studies of The University of Chicago, in collaboration with Spertus, cordially invites you to:
A Jewish Theologian in Chicago: Themes in the Thought of Eliezer Berkovits
WHEN: Sunday March 6, noon to 7 p.m.
WHERE: Spertus, 610 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago
Speakers include:
· Rahel Berkovits, Lecturer, Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem
· David Ellenson, President, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious Thought
· David Hazony, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
· Marc Shapiro, Weinberg Chair of Judaic Studies, University of Scranton
· David Shatz, Professor of Philosophy, Yeshiva University
A light supper will be served following the symposium. This program is open to the community at no charge.
To register, please email rsvpberkovits@spertus.edu or call (312) 322-1773.
Eliezer Berkovits (1908-1992), late Chair of the Department of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, is now recognized as one of the important Jewish theologians and philosophers of the twentieth-century. A brave and innovative thinker, he engaged the concrete problems of the Jewish people during a period of momentous change. From the Holocaust to modern Jewish life in the State of Israel, his ideas explore the intersection of religion and modernity, and address with intellectual honesty and ethical courage issues such as agunot (abandoned wives), religious feminism, and conversion.
Born in Romania, Berkovits was a leading disciple of the great Rabbi Yechiel Weinberg of the Hildesheimer Seminary in Berlin, and received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Berlin. After fleeing the Nazis in 1939, he eventually made his way to Chicago, where he had a tremendous impact on Jewish life.
In Israel, a renaissance of interest in his ideas is underway, as a framework for resolving many of the issues of Jewish life in the modern world. His works are being republished, and many of them are being translated into Hebrew, English, French and Russian for the first time.
