Student Profile
This curriculum is inspired both by my fellow student Lori Levine and by my professor Peter Machinist. The students that I will be teaching are members of my congregation that I am serving as student rabbi. They tend to be middle aged and older, and they are a self-selecting group of Jews, some of whom have non-Jewish spouses, who are interested in attending adult education opportunities at the synagogue on Saturday afternoons biweekly. They are a moderately to highly educated group, and their knowledge of Judaism and our sacred texts ranges from moderate to low. Their abilities as students consist of a wide range—some of them operate at a fairly plain text level while some are able to make connections and think of things on a more theoretical or metaphorical level. They care deeply about Judaism and want to learn more, or feel that the material is compelling when presented by a charismatic teacher.
Curriculum Justification
For many Reform Jews, opening up the Bible to any book in the prophets can be a scary or challenging task. The text itself is obscure and can seem like gibberish, and the concept of prophecy is not one that we are comfortable with or know much about. That being said, the prophets also provided some of the most formative texts for both Reform Judaism and Judaism in general. The prophets provided social commentary that has framed Jewish history and created a theology and theodicy that has influenced Judaism for its entire history. Prophecy is also an immensely important phenomenon that exists cross-culturally and even has resonances in modern culture (social commentary, authors who create dystopia novels, religious fire and brimstone folks).
This adult education curriculum is meant to use the Jewish prophets as a vehicle to engage in a bifocal analysis of prophecy. The first focus will be on the particularistic concerns of the Reform Jewish experience. We will explore the historical context that our Hebrew texts were created in and consider the ways that the prophets have shaped Jewish belief and history. We will also seek to understand prophecy in terms of its connection to the fundamental principles of Reform Judaism to make these texts relevant on a personal level to the congregants. The second focus will be to look at prophecy as a universal human phenomenon. By using the Jewish prophetic texts as gateways into prophecy, we will analyze different genres and motifs within the prophets. By looking at prophecy as a universal human phenomenon, we will seek to understand what human need these prophets are filling with their various roles, and we will explore ways that prophecy exists in our 21st century lives.
These classes will span nine sessions over the course of an academic year, happening one time per month and consisting of 90-120 minutes each. The curriculum will consist of an introduction and a conclusion with five units in the middle. The units will consist of motifs and genres within prophecy. Each unit will be covered over 1-2 class sessions. The units are organized in an order that seeks to go from most relatable (prophecy as social justice) to more challenging for the congregants (exploration of God). They are also organized to focus more on the particularistic Jewish concerns (social justice and history) and explore the universal aspects of prophecy (shamanism and exploration of God) later in the curriculum.
Essential Questions
-Historical: How can we see prophecy and the theology it created as a response to historical context? How might we use the text to understand the history and the role of the prophet in their society?
-Theological: How has the prophets’ experience with God shaped Judaism? How does this inform how we might experience God?
-Synthesis: How have the prophets shaped the theology of Reform Judaism (particularly with regards to social justice)? What are the universal aspects of prophecy we can see across cultures? What relevance does prophecy have for our lives? What human need does each type of prophecy fulfill?
Goals
-Present text studies of selections from the Hebrew prophets broken down by genre
-Get students to think about prophecy as a human phenomenon across cultures, time, place
-Present students with examples of prophecy cross culturally: ANE Mari and Assyrian, modern: Native American prophecy, examples of prophecy in modern culture: religious people who claim to be prophets, works of “prophecy” in literature
-Get students to think about the role of prophecy in Reform Judaism, as a way of accessing their own connection to God and the world around them
-Give the congregants a textual grounding in Jewish beliefs (particularly social justice beliefs and theology)
Units
1. Introduction
-Learners will brainstorm preconceived notions of prophecy
-Learners will analyze the difference between priestly religion (Leviticus as textual source) and compare to their notion of what a prophet does
-Learners will brainstorm the various roles a prophet inhabits, and will be informed of the five categories that they will study through this course
-Learners will consider the human need prophets fulfill based on the list of roles they come up with
-Learners will be informed of project they will engage in due at the culmination of the course, the project will be a way for them to personally engage with one of the units of study and immerse themselves in “prophecy” (Authentic Assessment, found in unit 7)
2. Prophecy and Social Justice
-Learners will describe the social justice issues brought up by the prophets (Amos, Deutero-Isaiah)
-Learners will analyze the historical Pittsburgh Platform and its references to the influence of the prophets
-Learners will analyze the current social justice work their congregation does and the website of the Religious Action Center to evaluate how “prophetic” Judaism is lived out today
3. Prophecy and History
-Learners will be able to describe the historical context that prophets operating around the Babylonian exile wrote in
-Learners will analyze the prophets’ place in their society and speculate how their message was received by society
-Learners will synthesize their information about the history and their encounter with the texts into a theology that these prophets were creating
-Learners will evaluate that theology and compare it to the theology modern Jews believe in
4. Prophets as Shamans
-Learners will analyze the shaman rituals of the prophets (acts of Elijah and Elisha)
-Learners will read cross-cultural examples of the Shaman character (Kwakiutl Native American Shamans, Handsome Lake prophecies, Mari Tablets from Ancient Near East)
-Learners will compare these texts to modern phenomena: mediums, ecstatic Holy Spirit preachers
-Learners will understand the universality of the shaman character
-Learners will analyze the human need that the Shaman character seems to fulfill
5. Prophecy and Apocalypse
-Learners will compare and contrast various images of apocalypse in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah, Daniel)
-Learners will understand that Christianity emerged in a context of the belief in Jewish Messianism
-Learners will evaluate the ways that Messianism persists as a belief in Judaism through analysis of the liturgy (Amidah, Aleinu)
6. Prophecy and the Encounter with God
-Learners will contrast the priestly way of encountering God with the prophetic way
-Learners will analyze a collection of prophets’ encounters with God (Amos’ calling, Isaiah throne room, Ezekiel vision, Jeremiah’s calling)
-Learners will be able to describe different modes of encountering God through prophecy
7. Conclusion
-Learners will synthesize the various roles that the prophets inhabit in the Hebrew Bible
-Learners will discuss which roles are relevant to them, which less so, and analyze why that is the case
-Learners will evaluate the role of prophecy in modern society by analyzing Orson Wells and 1984
-Based on this reframing, learners will create a working description of the importance of prophecy in our society and list out who occupies the role of “Prophet” in our culture
-Students will present their projects. Projects are an opportunity for the students to engage with prophecy by inhabiting the role of a prophet. They can do so by engaging with any of the units of study by
a. Writing a journal entry about a personal encounter they have had with God or a spiritual experience
b. Developing a spiritual ritual, could be for healing, visiting the sick, etc.
c. Writing a d’var Torah or bulletin article about a pressing social justice issue
d. Writing a letter to the editor in response to a local or national issue of interest
e. Coming up with something else on their own