B’nai Sholom, Huntsville churches team up for Amy Jill-Levine weekend

Amy Jill-Levine, a self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” will be the featured speaker at an interfaith scholar in residence weekend in Huntsville.

Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences in Nashville. Her books include “The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus” and “The Meaning of the Bible: What The Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us.”

She will be in Huntsville as the guest of Temple B’nai Sholom, Church of the Nativity (Episcopal), First Presbyterian Church and Trinity United Methodist Church the weekend of April 15.

All of her talks are open to the community at no charge.

On April 15 at 5:30 p.m. there will be a dinner at The Cooper House of Central Presbyterian Church. Reservations, which are $20 per person, are required. After the dinner there will be a Shabbat service at Temple B’nai Sholom, during which Levine will address the general theme of how Jews and Christians use and read scripture differently. An oneg will follow.

The April 16 lectures will be at Church of the Nativity. There will be morning sessions at 9:30 a.m. for “Jesus in his Jewish Context: Piety, Practice, Prayer and Politics” and 11 a.m., “The Bible and Sexuality.” At 1:30 p.m. she will address “How Jews and Christians Speak about the Middle East Differently.” There will be a lunch served between sessions, reservations are $12.

On April 17, Levine will deliver sermons at First Presbyterian Church at 8 a.m., “Finding the Pearl of Great Price” and 11 a.m., “Dangers on the Road to Jericho: The Good Samaritan in his Time and Ours.” She will lead Sunday School at Church of the Nativity at 10 a.m., speaking on “How to Hear a Parable: The Laborers in the Vineyard.”

Dinner or lunch reservations may be made by contacting one of the host organizations.