Jonah: Can people really change?
ONLINE
THURSDAYS, 12-1:30pm (ET), Oct. 15, 22, 29; Nov. 5
Jonah called out to God, and He answered; “Out of the belly of the nether-world I cried, and God heard my voice.”
--Jonah 2:3
Course Description:
Why does Jonah run from his mission? Why is he furious when Nineveh repents and is spared, and why does the book end on a question it never answers? What looks like the story of a reluctant prophet and a big fish is really one of the sharpest arguments in the Bible about human freedom, moral responsibility, and whether transformation is even possible. Reading the text closely against the old philosophical fight between freedom and determinism, we'll take Jonah's resistance seriously and ask what real change would require. By the end the question isn't about Jonah at all: are people truly capable of change, and what happens when God has more faith in us than we have in ourselves?
THURSDAYS, 12-1:30pm (ET)
Dr. Marina Zilbergerts is an author and scholar of Jewish literature and thought. From 2016 to 2022, she served as Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature (Indiana University Press, 2022) and the poetry collection You Were Adam (Wipf and Stock, 2022). Dr. Zilbergerts lectures widely on Torah and Jewish thought and regularly contributes to both scholarly and public intellectual platforms. With an undergraduate background in the sciences and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, her work bridges the sciences, humanities, and philosophy. Her current book project, Consciousness and the Bible in the Age of AI, reflects her interdisciplinary approach to Jewish texts.
