Sunday 2 February 2020 – 7.00 pm – 9.30 pm

The Ethical Alef-Bet

In honour of the scribal vocation of Vivian Solomon, Rabbi Mark Solomon will lead us in study of a remarkable Talmudic passage that interprets the letters of the Alef-Bet as a moral and spiritual lesson in fundamental Jewish values. The Talmud then turns to strange permutations of the Alef-Bet, and the lesson takes on a darker tone, spanning the heights and the depths of being. You will never see the Hebrew alphabet the same way again.

Biography

Mark Solomon is Senior Lecturer in Rabbinic Literature at Leo Baeck College, where he has taught since 1991, shortly after he was ordained as an orthodox rabbi. He is part-time Rabbi of the Edinburgh and Leicester Liberal Jewish communities, and Interfaith Consultant for Liberal Judaism. He comes from Australia and lives in Friern Barnet, but travels constantly up and down the country.

About – Vivian Solomon Memorial Lecture

Sha’arei Tsedek has a long reputation for loving Torah and loving learning. This lecture, held each year in January, celebrates the life of Vivian Solomon z’’l, a Torah scribe and a lover of Torah. These lectures are an opportunity for in depth, scholarly and accessibly focus on aspects of the Torah as text and as story.

The 2018 Lecture: And He Kissed Him and They Wept: Emotion, the Unconscious and Ethics in the Writing of Torah, was given by Rabbi Shulamit Ambalu.

You can access the lecture itself here,  see images of the visual presentation here, and read Rabb Ambalu’s textual source sheet here www.sefaria.org/sheets/97057