University of Pennsylvania Professor Dr. David Stern to speak at Fairfield University | Press Releases

Image: David Stern The Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies of the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University will lecture on David Stern, Ph.D., Ruth Meltzer Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Stern, who specializes in classical Jewish literature and religion, will present "The Passover Haggadah and the Jewish Imagination," on Monday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the dining room of the Charles F. Dolan School of Business.

"The Haggadah is the classic Jewish book about redemption; but it is also a book about imagining redemption," Dr. Stern said. "In this lecture we look at the Haggadah as a book, and at its illustrations in particular, to see how redemption is literally pictured. As we shall see, there is no greater work of the Jewish imagination than the Haggadah."

Dr. Stern serves as director of the Jewish Studies Program and teaches in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching since 1984. Dr. Stern's essays and reviews on modern Jewish literature and culture have appeared in The New Republic, Commentary, The New York Times Book Review, and Tikkun. He is also an editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History. Dr. Stern has written widely on midrash (the Biblical commentaries of the Rabbis), and is the author of several books including "Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature" (Harvard University Press); "Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature" (Yale University Press); and "Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies" (Northwestern University Press).

He is currently working on a book entitled "Through the Pages of the Past: Four Jewish Classics and the Jewish Experience," which traces the history of the physical forms of the Talmud, the Rabbinic Bible, the Prayerbook, and the Passover Haggadah, and the ways in which those forms have shaped the meaning and significance of these classic Jewish books.

Dr. Stern attended the Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh Talmudic Seminary in Yavneh, Israel from 1966-1968. He earned a bachelor's in English from Columbia College in 1972 and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 1980. Dr. Stern was a 2002 Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research.

There is no admission charge for Dr. Stern's lecture, but reservations are required. To register, please call Judaic Studies at Fairfield University at (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066.