"The Role of Religion in Healing the Liberal-Conservative Divide: Lessons from Israel" will be a panel discussion featuring: Tehila Friedman, a member of the Israeli Knesset (Blue and White Party) and former chair of Ne'emanei Torah va'Avodah, a modern Orthodox movement promoting pluralism and democracy; and Ofer Zalzberg, director of the Middle East Program at the Herbert C. Kelman Institute, an Ussher PhD Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin, and formerly a senior analyst in the Crisis Group's Middle East Program. The discussion will be moderated by David Barak-Gorodetsky, Israel Institute Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Registration for this webinar is required; register at https://uchicago.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_u2JGDP-cROGRFYHiBkbuBA.

Date: January 28, 2021
Time: 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Matthew Johnson, PhD Candidate, Germanic Studies, University of Chicago, will present a paper for the Jewish Studies Workshop. The link for the zoom session and an advance copy of the paper will be available at the workshop website https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/. For more information, contact the workshop coordinators, Benjamin Arenstein, barenstein@uchicago.edu, or Ido Telem, telem@uchicago.edu.

Date: February 1, 2021
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/

Divinity School Area Assistants, as part of their diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts, will be hosting Zoom programming with the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) on February 2, 2021.

Kris Trujillo, Director of Studies for the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and Bonnie Kanter, Student Affairs Administrator will explain how Divinity School student can get involved with the Center through the CSGS Workshop, Working Group and/or a Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies based on the coursework students are taking. They will also discuss faculty whose research focuses on gender/sexuality and answer any questions.

Please email Hector Varela-Rios (hmvarelajr@uchicago.edu)for the Zoom link.

Date: February 2, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Steed Davidson, Professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, McCormick Theological Seminary, will present a paper for the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Reception Workshop. Registration is required for this zoom event. For information and/or to register, please contact the workshop coordinator, Doren Snoek, dsnoek@uchicago.edu.

Date: February 8, 2021
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/hebrewbible/

Today's Jun Zhou Lecture in Theravada Buddhism will be given by Aleix Ruiz-Falqués. The lecture will be delivered via Zoom.

This series of lectures on Theravada Buddhism is supported through a generous gift by Mr. Jun Zhou.

The earliest Pali treatises composed by Buddhist monks and laymen in Myanmar (Burma) were mostly grammatical works. Several reasons have been given to explain why grammar and philology took such an important role in the formation period of Theravada communities in Myanmar (11th century CE onward). It is mostly agreed upon by scholars that Pali grammar was a necessary tool that facilitated the understanding of the canonical and commentarial literature of Theravada Buddhists. Whereas this explanation is in many ways satisfactory, it fails to account for the singularity of grammar. Why grammar only? Why don't we have other Pali treatises on philosophy or ethics? Why don't we have a corpus, even if small, of devotional poems and chronicles? Surely there must be some important message in such loud silence. The present talk is a preliminary attempt at understanding this silence, or rather an attempt to show that there is no silence at all. In order to do so, I will survey major grammatical treatises written in Myanmar by eminent scholars of the past, and I will comment upon the inventory of topics covered by the Pali grammarians, from morphological derivation of words to logic and epistemology, the relationship between language and reality, theories of sound and communication, ultimately, a thery of what the "Word of the Buddha" (buddhavacana) actually is. By so doing it will be shown that Pali grammars carry a powerful set of ideas that define early, and to some extent modern Theravada in Myanmar.

Bio

Aleix Ruiz-Falqués (Barcelona, 1982). BA Classics (University of Barcelona), MA Sanskrit (University of Pune), PhD Pali (University of Cambridge). My research focuses on the Pali scholastic tradition in general and specifically on the tradition of Burmese Pali grammarians. I also do translation work from Pali and Sanskrit to Spanish and English. Currently I work as a Pali Lecturer at the Shan State Buddhist University, Taunggyi (Burma).

Date: February 9, 2021
Time: 11:20 AM - 12:50 PM

See: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lecture-by-aleix-ruiz-falques-tickets-132832404297

Erin Galgay Walsh, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, University of Chicago Divinity School, will present a paper for a joint meeting of the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Reception Workshop and the Early Christian Studies Workshop. Registration is required for this zoom event. For information and/or to register, please contact, Doren Snoek, dsnoek@uchicago.edu.

Date: February 15, 2021
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/hebrewbible/

David Barak-Gorodetsky, Visiting Israel Institute Fellow at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, will present a paper for the Jewish Studies Workshop. The link for the zoom session and an advance copy of the paper will be available at the workshop website https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/. For more information, contact the workshop coordinators, Benjamin Arenstein, barenstein@uchicago.edu, or Ido Telem, telem@uchicago.edu.

Date: February 15, 2021
Time: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/

Jessie DeGrado, Assistant Professor of Ancient Middle East Studies, University of Michigan, will present a paper for the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Reception Workshop. Registration is required for this zoom event. For information and/or to register, please contact the workshop coordinator, Doren Snoek, dsnoek@uchicago.edu.

Date: February 22, 2021
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/hebrewbible/

Today's lecture by Pyi Phyo Kyaw of King's College is part of our Jun Zhou Lectures in Theravada Buddhism Series. Her lecture is entitled "The Infinite Method: Mathematics of the Paṭṭhāna."

The Paṭṭhāna, the seventh text of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, deals with the functioning of causality and interdependence in Theravāda thought. It uses the mathematics of enumeration and combinatorics to plumb the depths of causality. The emphasis on the Paṭṭhāna in Burmese Buddhism has been influenced by sociopolitical conceptions, developments and institutions. This paper focuses on a more technical aspect of the Paṭṭhāna – the Saṅkhyā-vāra, ‘Enumeration sections’. I examine the Paṭṭhāna through analysis of its mathematics, demonstrating not only the types of mathematics being used to further understand the nature and depths of causality, but also close parallels between the mathematics of the Paṭṭhāna and the mathematics of ‘combinatorics’.

Dr Pyi Phyo Kyaw is Dean of Graduate Studies and Lecturer in Theravada Studies at Shan State Buddhist University, Taunggyi, Myanmar. She is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London, United Kingdom. She studied BA in Economics and Management at Oxford University, before completing MA in Buddhist Studies at SOAS in 2010, and PhD in Buddhist Philosophy at King’s College, London in 2014. She has undertaken meditation practice within different meditation traditions in Myanmar for the past 14 years. She has also undertaken monastic training in Myanmar as a precept-nun in a meditation centre based at Pyay (formerly Prome) in 2007 and 2015.

She specialises in Burmese Buddhism, Abhidhamma (Theravada analytical philosophy), Theravada meditation, Buddhist business practices, and Buddhist ethics. She also teaches Vipassana meditation in Budapest, Hungary.

This series of six lectures on Theravada Buddhism is supported through a generous gift by Mr. Jun Zhou.

Need an accommodation to attend a Divinity School event? Please contact Suzanne Riggle in advance at 773-702-8219.

Date: March 2, 2021
Time: 11:20 AM - 12:50 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/buddhiststudies/2019/07/08/the-jun-zhou-lectures-in-theravada-buddhism/

The Divinity School is pleased to offer a series of lectures on various topics in Theravada Buddhism. Today's Jun Zhou Lecture in Theravada Buddhism will be given by Anne Blackburn of Cornell University.

This series of lectures on Theravada Buddhism is supported through a generous gift by Mr. Jun Zhou.

Need an accommodation to attend a Divinity School event? Please contact Suzanne Riggle in advance at 773-702-8219.

Date: March 8, 2021
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM