Tasting the Tanakh: On the Role of Food in Biblical Narratives
Rabbi Joe Wolfson
Rabbi Joe Wolfson grew up in London and spent ten years studying, working, and loving life in Israel. He studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion and Bet Morasha, through which he received hissemikha from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. He thought he was going into politics and did degrees at Cambridge, where he was president of the Jewish Society and UCL. He decided to go into Jewish education and has taught texts on four continents primarily as a faculty member of London School of Jewish Studies. Beyond music, good books, cycling and HBO, Rabbi Joe is passionate about the way in which texts link up to larger issues of Jewish identity. He has worked in areas as diverse as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, religious-secular relations in Israel, and European Jewish communities.
What do Biblical narratives look like when approached from the perspective of food? Could there be a unified theory of eating in Tanakh, or are there as many meanings to Biblical food as there are flavours in the palate? Join us as stories from the garden of Eden to manna in the desert reveal surprising new dimensions.