The Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies

Speaker: Dr. Lawrence Fine, Irene Kaplan Lewiant Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Mount Holyoke College

Location: Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center; Reisterstown, MD

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?

The Lenell G. Ammerman Memorial Study Retreat