Please join us for a Lifelong Learning program with speaker, Prof. Christine Hayes.

Humor and Play in Ancient Rabbinic Literature

In many legends and stories, the Talmudic rabbis depict God in shockingly human terms: the divine being wears tefillin and prays, studies Torah, weeps, makes mistakes, and suffers correction by humans. Were the rabbis just having fun? Or were these anthropomorphic representations of God grounded in a subversive resistance to prevailing Greco-Roman ideas about the divine? This lecture considers the ancient rabbis' use of humor and play to explore and express the "seriously" distinctive character of Israel's God.

Dr. Hayes is the Sterling Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus in Classical Judaica at Yale University. Her most recent book, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives, received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship and the 2016 Jordan Schnitzer Award from the Association of Jewish Studies.