Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi, Ph.D., a groundbreaking scholar of Hebrew Bible and Jewish ethics, will teach on “Reading Torah as Family Stories” as part of the Global Day of Jewish Learning. Organized by Limmud of North America, the Nov. 17 program will feature virtual study sessions under the theme of “One People.”
Mbuvi is the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s fellow on race, culture and Jewish ethics. Previously, she served as the college’s vice president for academic affairs and was the first African American to lead an American rabbinical seminary.
Mbuvi’s session will focus on how stories are central to forging a family’s sense of identity and connection. She plans to discuss the way stories from the Hebrew Bible define and transmit the identity of a people understood as a family writ large.
One of the most interesting things about the Biblical texts, said Mbuvi, is how they put a reader in conversation with other others across geography and generations.
“Part of the power of Torah and Torah study is that it nourishes our imagination beyond what seems real and possible and imaginable based on our context and experience,” she said. “That can guide and sustain and inspire us.”
