Exile and Home: Tales of Traveling Rabbis, 3-Part series with Gila Fine

Why does a great rabbi return to the town that had banished him? Who is the immigrant rabbi cruelly humiliated by his new havruta? And what happens when a man from Babylon marries a woman from Israel? The Talmud is riddled with travel narratives, stories of rabbis who leave their former lives behind and set out into the unknown, disoriented in unfamiliar territory, disparaged by unfriendly locals. This course looks at four such narratives, exploring the trials and tribulations of the traveling rabbis and the lessons they must learn before they can arrive at their destination. (If you remember, the first series the Gila taught for CSP was also about travel stories in the Talmud; this is a continuation of that series, but with an emphasis on difficult and trying stories, which Gila selected because of their relevance to the difficult situation at hand.)