Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler
Advanced Kollel: Executive Ordination, Class of 2021
Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler, who grew up in Toronto, is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at HUC-JIR in New York. She is the author of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (SUNY Press, Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, 2017); And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing (Wayne State UP, 2004), and translator / co-Editor with Carole Balin of To Tread on New Ground: Selected Hebrew Writings of Hava Shapiro (Wayne State UP, 2014). She is also co-editor of These Truths We Hold: Judaism in an Age of Truthiness (HUC Press, 2022). In 2017 she was appointed Co-Editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, a leading scholarly journal in the field of Jewish Literature. She is excited to share the title of rabbi with the many students she has taught at HUC-JIR.
publications and media
Title | Type | Category | Topic | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Keren Journal: Volume 4 | Dvar Torah | Keren Journal | 5783/2023 | |
The Sotah Ritual: Mistrusting Women and Their Torah Study | Dvar Torah | Bamidbar | Naso | 5783/2023 |
The Akeidah Through the Lens of Poetry | Dvar Torah; Multimedia | Holiday; Video Divrei Torah | Rosh Hashana | 2021/5781 |
Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler - Maharat's 9th Annual Semikha Ceremony | Multimedia | Graduations | Ninth Semikha Ceremony | June 15, 2021 |
Sicha Nine ‐ The Art of Translation of Hebrew: Lit., Film & TV | Multimedia | Panels and Discussions | February 7, 2021 | |
Word Arks | Dvar Torah | Bereishit | Noach | 2020/5781 |
Truth on the Mind | Dvar Torah | Bereishit | Chayei Sarah | 2018/5779 |
Beyond Mrs. On | Dvar Torah | Bamidbar | Korach | 2019/5779 |
Listen Up and Hear | Dvar Torah | Devarim | Haazinu | 2020/5781 |
mentions
Title | Publication | Published |
|---|---|---|
Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation | SUNY Press | September 2017 |
books
September 2017
Movies and Midrash uses cinema as a springboard to discuss central Jewish texts and matters of belief. A number of books have drawn on films to explicate Christian theology and belief, but Wendy I. Zierler is the first to do so from a Jewish perspective, exploring what Jewish tradition, text, and theology have to say about the lessons and themes arising from influential and compelling films. The book uses the method of “inverted midrash”: while classical rabbinical midrash begins with exegesis of a verse and then introduces a mashal (parable) as a means of further explication, Zierler turns that process around, beginning with the culturally familiar cinematic parable and then analyzing related Jewish texts. Each chapter connects a secular film to a different central theme in classical Jewish sources or modern Jewish thought. Films covered include The Truman Show (truth), Memento (memory), Crimes and Misdemeanors (sin), Magnolia (confession and redemption), The Descendants (birthright), Forrest Gump (cleverness and simplicity), and The Hunger Games (creation of humanity in God’s image), among others.