Chave Weissler, Ph.D., author, groudbreaking scholar, and professor of Jewish civilization at Lehigh University, will present two public lectures as part of her visit to Fairfield University as its 2002 Judaic Studies scholar-in-residence.
Monday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m., Weissler will speak on “Jewish Renewal: Revitalizing Contemporary American Judaism.” The talk will be held in the university’s Charles F. Dolan School of Business and will reflect her recent research into the Jewish renewal movement and how it fits into America’s spiritual marketplace.
On Tuesday, April 23 at 2:30 p.m., Weissler will present a second lecture in Multimedia Room 101 in the library. The title of this afternoon lecture is “Voices of the Matriarchs: Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women.” It will focus on her 1998 book by the same name, which won the Koret Award for Outstanding Work in Jewish History in 1999 and was a National Jewish Book Award finalist.
Weissler was born in Washington, D.C., in 1947. She attended Brandeis University and studied abroad her junior year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Because the Jewish Theological Seminary of America did not accept women at the time, she took a job as a secretary in the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., where she continued to make use of her Hebrew.
Weissler earned a master’s degree in library service from Columbia University in 1970 and received a doctorate in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. In 1998, she joined the factuality at Lehigh University and was promoted to full professor in 1999.
The Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies is under the direction of Ellen M. Umansky, Ph.D. The Weissler lectures are free and open to the public. Reservations are recommended.
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