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Podcast: Jewish Ideas to Change the World
Episode: Dr. David Shyovitz - Till Death Do Us Part: Family Life and the Afterlife in Jewish Thought
Description: A virtual presentation by Dr. David Shyovitz.
“The family that prays together,” the famous adage goes, “stays together.” Indeed, many people of faith take for granted that religious observance strengthens spousal, parental, and inter-generational relationships. But to pre-modern Jewish theologians, it was far from obvious that the family was a religiously meaningful institution. Biblical interpreters, mystics, and moralists questioned whether bonds between husbands and wives, or even parents and children, were strictly human constructs, conventional means of structuring the social order–or whether they reflected underlying, preexisting, enduring spiritual realities. This lecture will explore the ways in which medieval Jews used escha...