Reading the Bible After the Holocaust

May 28-31, 2024 | US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., US | Deadline for applications: 15 March 2024

The 2024 Annual Faculty Seminar on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust will examine the profound and painful questions the Holocaust and its aftermath raise for Jews and Christians in regard to their texts and traditions.

These challenges have moral and theological implications, including on traditional interpretive paradigms and underlying hermeneutical assumptions about biblical texts, that affect members of each religion in unique ways. The seminar aims to explore these overlapping challenges alongside those distinctive to each tradition.

Topics will address the following: 

• The effect of the Holocaust on Jewish and Christian approaches to biblical texts; 

• Understanding and interpretation of historically “difficult” biblical texts;

• Reevaluation of the concepts of inclusion and exclusion; 

• Implications of “shared” biblical texts and the possibility for non-mutually exclusive interpretations;

• Scholarly approaches aiding Jewish and Christian readings of the Bible;

• How close examination of these religious traditions after the Holocaust can enrich our teaching and learning about religion, history, and interreligious relations today. 

Visit this website for more info and applications.

Image: Chaplain Samuel Blinder examines one of the Torah scrolls stolen by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum