Forbidden Fruit or Fallen Angels?: Ancient Jewish Perspectives on Free Will and Evil

Join for a special morning with Dr. Elsie Stern,

Professor of Bible at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, PA, as she concludes Westchester Reform Temple's Scholar-in-Residence Weekend.

Most of us know the story of the Garden of Eden and its explanation for why there is evil and suffering in the world. However, this was not the only story that Jews in antiquity told to explain the presence of evil and suffering. Please join Dr. Stern as she explores a story that offers a very different (and quite surprising) explanation for these aspects of human existence.

Dr. Stern is associate professor of Bible at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She received her B.A. from Yale University and earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty of RRC, she was a member of the Theology faculty at Fordham University and served as the Assistant Director for Public Programs at the Katz Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. At RRC, Dr. Stern teaches courses in Biblical history and literature and Judaism in late antiquity. Her research focuses on the ways in which the Bible has been encountered and experienced by Jews in synagogue and other communal settings. She is the author of From Rebuke to Consolation: Exegesis and Theology in the Liturgical Anthology of the Ninth of Av Season. She is also the author of several articles and is a contributor to the Jewish Study Bible and the Women's Torah Commentary.

For more information, visit www.wrtemple.org.