Library Events

Join us for one of our upcoming library events.

All in-person events will be held at the Klau Library in Cincinnati.


Royal Women at Ugarit: Reconceiving the House of the Father (Hybrid Event)
with Christine Neal Thomas
Thursday, February 20, 12:30 pm ET
Klau Library and Online

Love and murder, internecine conflict, accusations of adultery, intrigue, and diplomacy. Join us for a fascinating event in which Christine Thomas will present the findings of her new book, Royal Women at Ugarit: Reconceiving the House of the Father, inviting you to travel to Ugarit in Late Bronze Age Syria to see how royal women were positioned at the center of their political world. This insightful investigation of the pivotal roles women played in the exercise of power challenges traditional gendered models for ancient Near Eastern society, which in turn informs and transforms our understanding of the portrayal of women of the Hebrew Bible.

esther scroll

Behind the Laughter: How the Purim Shpiel Came to America (Zoom Event)
with Zev Eleff
Tuesday, March 11, 12:30 pm ET
Zoom Only

The origin of the modern Purim play can be traced back to the Eastern European yeshivas of the early nineteenth century. They were developed as satires, meant to offer the school administration a window into how the students truly felt about the yeshiva. As it moved to the US (and HUC, too), it assumed the same role, while taking on certain American sensibilities.
Rabbi Zev Eleff, Ph.D., is President and Professor of American Jewish History at Gratz College. He is the author, most recently, of Dyed in Crimson: Football, Faith, and Remaking Harvard’s America. This event is cosponsored by the American Jewish Archives.

pirke avotThe Moral Dilemma Created by a Religious Canon: Reflections on How to Read, How to Teach, How to Live (Hybrid Event)
with David Aaron
Tuesday, April 29, 12:30 pm ET
Klau Library and Online

With the intensification of approaches in cultural studies that call into question the morality of social developments–everything from feminism to colonialism to contemporary takes on Marxist theory—engagement with a religious canon raises all sorts of questions that challenge a person’s and a community’s ethical values. How should we read misogynistic or racist passages? How should we teach texts that assume a class system most today would find undesirable? How can we base our lives on texts whose ethical sensibilities regarding fairness and justice are radically at odds with out own? By limiting a community’s modes of self-expression to a canon, religious authorities sought to sustain the power interests of those already in control. Canons, whose fundamental purpose is exclusionary, are designed to influence the formation of values with a religious community. We who inherit a canon can only alter those values through interpretation. But is this enough? Doesn’t the very existence of a canon limit the degree to which a community’s values can be updated? Every time we insist on starting with a document of the canon, are we not handing a posthumous victory to the previous generations who did everything in their power to control the varieties of discourse possible within the religious community? Or, is canon always surmountable and nothing more than a formalism incapable of exerting significant control over the evolution of a religious community?

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