Morning Service w/Limmud Scholar Kristine Garroway

Join us February 17 & 18 for a special Shabbat of learning and inspiration as we welcome Dr. Kristine Garroway as our Shabbat Limmud Scholar. Dr. Garroway’s theme for weekend will be Hidden Narratives: Forgotten Children.

Dr. Garroway is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. She has spent time studying and researching in Israel and has participated in excavations at Ashkelon, Tel Dor, and Tel Dan. Garroway’s scholarship focuses on children using archaeology and texts of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia. She has published in various scholarly journals and is a regular contributor to thetorah.com. Garroway’s books include: Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household (Eisenbrauns 2014), Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts (Society of Biblical Literature 2018), and The Cult of the Child: the Death and Burial of Children in Ancient Israel (Oxford, forthcoming). She is the recipient of the Biblical Archaeological Society’s 2019 Publication Award for Best Book Relating to Hebrew Bible.

Friday, February 17

• 6:00 p.m., As a highlight of our Shabbat evening service, Dr. Garroway will deliver the d’var Torah and speak on the topic: He who curses his father or mother…

Saturday, February 18

• 9:00 a.m., Join us on Shabbat morning for bagels, coffee and a fascinating session on the topic: Hide and Seek: Finding Children in the Bible. Dr. Kristine Garroway is at the forefront of a new field in biblical studies, called “childist interpretation.” This field seeks to highlight children the biblical world. Join her on a tour of biblical texts, ancient Near Eastern culture, and archaeological remains to uncover the incredible value children held in the biblical household.
• 10:30 a.m., Dr. Garroway will participate in the Shabbat morning Chapel service by offering the d’var Torah: The boy-king Josiah (in haftarah for Shabbat Shekalim)

Don’t miss Dr. Garroway as she participates in the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston’s Yom Limmud at Beth Israel on February 19 where she’ll teach: Where’s the Potty on Noah’s Ark: Retellings of Noah and the Ark in Jewish Children’s Literature. The story of Noah’s Ark is one of the most well-known stories from the Hebrew Bible. For those “in the know” it is a story of genocide carried out by God. The retelling of this narrative is found in various forms of children’s literature, from bibles, to folktales, to straight up secular fiction stories. Studies of Noah’s Ark in Christian children’s literature note a shift in the retellings; they focus less on God’s reasons for genocide and more on Noah or the happenings in the ark. In this session we will investigate six Jewish retellings of the Noah story aimed at children ages three to eleven. We will examine two Jewish folktales, two Jewish children’s bibles, and two secular stories and uncover how fantastic literature, specifically the genres of fable and fantasy, have become the popular means of imparting this story to Jewish children. We will ask questions of how such retellings of Noah’s Ark are meant to highlight a truth, moral or lesson to children.