Summary: Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld. Rabbi Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld gave this lecture, recorded live, on November 17, 2016, as the third of four lectures in Mechon Hadar's 2016 Fall Series, "Faith and Doubt in the Modern World." The series was presented in partnership with the Samuel Bronfman Foundation in memory of Edgar Bronfman. It has long been considered a truism that Israeli society is deeply divided between "hilonim" and "dati'im" -- between secular and religious Jews. Unlike the North American Jewish community, where there are countless options for communal affiliation and personal practice and belief, the religious landscape in Israel has been seen as largely black-and-white, with little room for "shades of gray". While the secular-religious divide persists -- often with a good deal of mutual hostility -- in many aspects of Israeli social and political life, a more nuanced picture can be seen in the writing of contemporary Israeli poets over the last several decades. Many self-identified "secular" writers wrestle deeply in their poetry with their relationship to Jewishness, to the legacy of the Bible and rabbinic texts, and to the personal search for God. Through a close reading of selected poems, we will explore the religious struggles of these secular writers and consider how they might speak to our own experiences of faith and doubt in the post-modern era. Rabbi Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld is Dean of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College. A beloved teacher and mentor to young adults, Rabbi Cohen-Anisfeld spent 15 years working in pluralistic settings as a Hillel rabbi at Tufts, Yale and Harvard universities; she has been a summer faculty member for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel since 1993.
