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Weekend Study Retreats Archive
Memorial Day Weekend 2010
The Lenell G. Ammerman Memorial Study Retreat
Date: May 30th & 31st 2010
Location: Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center
Reisterstown, Maryland
‘Set Me as a Seal Upon Your Heart’: Spiritual Friendship in Jewish Mystical Tradition
- Love and Fellowship among the Companions of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the Zohar
The Zohar, the great kabbalistic literature of thirteenth-century Spain, depicts Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his circle of disciples/companions travelling the Land of Israel and engaging in mystical discourse. Why does Shimon bar Yochai insist on their loving one another? In what sense is the well being of the world, indeed the cosmos, dependent upon their loving relations?
- Spiritual Friendship among the Kabbalistic Fellowships of Sixteenth-Century Safed
The small village of Safed was the site of a great renaissance of kabbalistic life in the sixteenth century. What was the nature of the several kabbalistic fellowships (havurot) that flourished there?
- ‘Many limbs of a Single Body’: The Kabbalistic Fellowship of Bet El in Jerusalem
In the seventeenth century, a kabbalistic community developed in Jerusalem, known as Bet El. Inspired by Lurianic mysticism, the Bet El community fashioned an intimate group of individuals who believed that they should love one another as if they were a single organism.
- Love and Friendship in Hasidism
Love and interpersonal relations were central to Eastern European Hasidism. According to one Hasidic teacher, Reb Arele Roth, individuals are encouraged to associate with others who can help "wake" them up spiritually. We will also study the teachings of R. Avraham Kalisker who wrote about “cleaving to our fellows” when we are in need of personal inspiration.
With Dr. Lawrence Fine
 Dr. Lawrence Fine is the Irene Kaplan Lewiant Professor of Jewish Studies, and professor of Religion at Mount Holyoke College. He is a well-published scholar of Kabbalah and Hasidism with a special interest in mystical experience and practice, and mystical communities. He is the author or editor of five books, including Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period (Princeton University Press, 2001), and Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford University Press, 2003). The latter book was a finalist for the Koret National Book Award, and winner of the Choice Outstanding Book Award in Religion for 2004. He teaches for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and is active in the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. He lives in Amherst, MA, and teaches widely in the Jewish community.
Presidents Day Weekend 2010
The Josephine F. and H. Max Ammerman Study Retreat
Date: February 14th & 15th 2010
Location: Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center
Reisterstown, Maryland
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Israel: From the Exodus Through the Babylonian Exile in Light of New Archaeological Discoveries.
- The Exodus and Israelite Conquest
The account of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan
- David and Solomon
David and Solomon have both been the subject of controversies and debates. A reference to the ‘House of David’ was found in 1993 on an inscription in the north of Israel — the first extra-biblical mention of David yet discovered — allowing us to reconsider the evidence for David and Solomon.
- The Neo-Assyrian Destruction of Israel and the Ten Lost Tribes
The expansionist ambitions of the Neo-Assyrians from Mesopotamia in the eighth century BCE spelled an end to the kingdom of Israel and gave rise to the tradition of the Ten Lost Tribes. The question of where the exiled members of these tribes ended up continues to be debated.
- The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile
Nebuchadnezzar and the Neo-Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem not once but twice, burned the Temple of Solomon to the ground and exiled the leading citizens of Jerusalem and Judah to the far-away city of Babylon. An in-depth look at Jewish history during the Babylonian period.
With Dr. Eric H. Cline
 Dr. Eric H. Cline is Chair of the Department of Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures at The George Washington University. A former Fulbright scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with 26 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including seven seasons at the site of Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) in Israel. Author of eight books and more than 70 articles, he has twice won the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Publication Award for “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” and is perhaps best known for The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age (2000), Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel (2004), and From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible (National Geographic, 2007). His most recent book, Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, was published by Oxford University Press in October 2009.
Labor Day 2009
The Dr. Harvey H. Ammerman Memorial Study Retreat
September 6-7, 2009
Registration at 11:30 am, Sunday and Finishing at 3:00 pm on Monday
The Dr. Harvey H. Ammerman Memorial Study Retreat
Baruch Spinoza, The Radicalism of his Philosophy and his Excommunication: Toleration, Then and Now
- The controversies over philosophy in the middle ages
- Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza
- Moses Mendelssohn
- Pluralism out of the sources of Judaism
Prof. Raphael Jospe, Philosophy Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
 Dr. Raphael Jospe teaches Jewish philosophy at Bar Ilan University and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Rothberg International School. He is the author of seven books, including a 3-volume Hebrew history, Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, and most recently, a two-volume set in English, Jewish Philosophy: Foundations and Extensions. Dr. Jospe has also edited six books, and served as the editor of the Jewish Philosophy division of the Encylopaedia Judaica (Revised Edition).
Professor Jospe received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He previously taught at the Open University of Israel and at the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies of Brigham Young University. Besides his academic work, Dr. Jospe is heavily involved in inter-religious dialogue. He has taught at Christian seminaries, and lectured at the Vatican and at the World Council of Churches. He is a former chairman of the Jerusalem Rainbow Group (the oldest Christian-Jewish dialogue group in Jerusalem).
Dr. Jospe and his wife Darlene live in Jerusalem and have seven children, and he is a major in the Israel Defense Forces (reserves).
Memorial Day 2009
The Lenell G. Ammerman Memorial Study Retreat
May 24-25, 2009
Registration at 11:30 am, Sunday and Finishing at 3:00 pm on Monday
at Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center
Reisterstown, Maryland
Understanding and Interacting with Islam
- What is Islam?
The origin of the religion and how it developed
- Problematic issues with respect to Islam today and their place in the Quran
- Why, from the perspective of Islam, a new revelation was needed
- The Quran in more detail
Prof. Charles Butterworth, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
 Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, Charles Butterworth specializes in medieval Arabic and Islamic political philosophy. Pursuit of this academic interest has permitted him to live and study in most of the Arabic speaking countries of the Middle East and North Africa as well as in Europe. From time to time, he has lectured and taught at universities in Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Zaire, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Belorussia, France, Germany, Hungary, and Ukraine.
Professor Butterworth’s publications include critical editions of most of the Middle Commentaries written by Averroes on Aristotle’s logic; translations of books and treatises by Averroes, Alfarabi, and Alrazi, as well as Maimonides; and studies of different aspects of the political teaching of these and other thinkers in the ancient, medieval, and modern tradition of philosophy. Butterworth has also written monograph analyses of the political thought of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He is a member of several learned organizations and past-president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS) as well as of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de l’Histoire de la Philosophie et la Science Arabe et Islamique (SIHSPAI).
Trained in political philosophy and Arabic as well as Islamic civilization at the University of Chicago, where he received an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science, Charles Butterworth has also studied at the University of Ayn Shams in Egypt, the University of Bordeaux, and the University of Nancy in France (receiving a doctorate in philosophy from the latter). He received his B.A. from Michigan State University.
Presidents Day 2009
The Josephine F. and H. Max Ammerman Study Retreat
February 15-16, 2009
Registration at 11:30 am, Sunday and Finishing at 3:00 pm on Monday
at Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center
Reisterstown, Maryland
Abraham Joshua Heschel, As Guide of the Perplexed
- Heschel’s Life and Sacred Humanism
The biography and a religious response to world events
- The Bible as Holiness in Words
An experience of G-d for today’s seekers
- Prayer, Reverence and Social Responsibility
Heschel on civil rights, Soviet Jewry, the Vietnam War
- Israel, the Holocaust, and Spiritual Radicalism
Modern faith faces despair
Prof. Ed Kaplan, Department of Romance Studies, Brandeis University
 Edward K. Kaplan is Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities at Brandeis University, where he has taught courses on French, comparative literature, and religious studies since 1978. He was founding chair of the Program in Religious Studies and is Research Associate at the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry.
In addition to books and articles in French literature, he has published essays on Martin Buber, Thomas Merton, Howard Thurman, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. The first book on Heschel, Holiness in Words. A. J. Heschel’s Poetics of Piety (SUNY Press, 1996) was published in French translation in 1999. He has written the first intellectual and cultural biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel; volume one, co-authored with the late Samuel Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Prophetic Witness (Yale University Press in 1998), was a finalist in the 1998 Jewish Book Awards, Jewish Scholarship. Volume two, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972 (Yale University Press, 2007), won the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies.
In the field of French, Professor Kaplan has published three books on the 19th-century Romantic historian Jules Michelet and an integral interpretation of Charles Baudelaire’s prose poems, known as Le Spleen de Paris (University of Georgia Press, 1990). His translation of the prose poems, entitled The Parisian Prowler (University of Georgia Press, 1989; second edition with new preface, 1996), was awarded the Lewis Galantière Award in 1990 of the American translators Association for the best translation of the year.
Labor Day 2008 Study Retreat
The Dr. Harvey H. Ammerman Memorial Study Retreat
Sunday, August 31 – Monday, September 1, 2008
Pearlstone Center, Reisterstown, MD
Martin Buber and the Post-Holocaust Renewal of Faith
- The Encounter with God
- Wrestling with Biblical Beliefs
- Discovering Hasidism’s Attraction
- A Critical Appraisal of His Impact on Today’s Judaism - at the 130th Anniversary of His Birth
Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman, DHL, Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Jewish Studies, Rabbi Emeritus of Washington Hebrew Congregation
 Rabbi Haberman is the Founding Chairman of the Foundation for Jewish Studies and Rabbi Emeritus of the Washington Hebrew Congregation which elected him as its Sr. Rabbi in 1969. A native of Vienna, he was a student at Vienna’s University and rabbinical seminary when the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938. He fled to the U.S. to continue studies at the University of Cincinnati and the Hebrew Union College where he was ordained and earned the degree of DHL (doctor of Hebrew Letters) in modern Jewish philosophy.
He has taught as adjunct professor at Georgetown University, American U., George Washington U, the Wesley Theological Seminary and the Catholic Theological Union. A leader in inter-religious relations with Christians and Muslims, he preached at the White House and represented the Jewish faith in the Memorial Service at the National Cathedral in Washington after September 11, 2001.
He is the author of
- PHILOSOPHER OF REVELATION: The Life and Thought of S.L.Steinheim
- THE GOD I BELIEVE IN: Conversations about Judaism with 14 prominent Jewish Intellectuals
- HEALING PSALMS: The dialogues with God that Help you Cope with Life
He contributed several articles on Jewish philosophy to the new Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007) aside from many essays for scholarly publications.
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