Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20 in the ballroom of Brown-Lupton University Union. She is guest of honor for the 14th annual Gates of Chai Lectureship, sponsored by Brite Divinity School and the Jewish Studies Program at TCU. Topic of her remarks will be “Jesus and Jewish-Christian Relations: Problems and Possibilities.”

 

A self-described "Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt," Dr. Levine combines historical-critical rigor, literary-critical sensitivity, and a frequent dash of humor with a commitment to eliminating anti-Jewish, sexist, and homophobic theologies.

 

Tickets are $20 for general admission and reserved parking or $75 for reserved seats, a pre-event reception and priority parking. Students are admitted free. Go to www.brite.tcu.edu

 

Dr. Levine is a graduate of Smith College, received her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University and has been recognized with honorary degrees from five institutions. Well-known to theologians and academics alike, she is the author of The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. She also is an affiliated professor of Jewish-Christian relations at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, England.

 

The Gates of Chai Lectureship is designed to promote informed, dynamic public dialogue and education on issues of relevance to contemporary Judaism. The Lectureship is sponsored through the generosity of Gates of Chai, Inc., in memory of Larry Kornbleet and family members of Stanley and Marcia Kornbleet Kurtz who perished in the Holocaust.

 

Previous Gates of Chai speakers include Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel, legal/political activists Morris Dees and Susan Estrich, Middle Eastern policy expert Dennis Ross and authors Rabbi Harold Kushner, Thomas Cahill, Chaim Potok and Bruce Feiler.