The symposium will be held in the traditional scholar format that includes talks and panel discussions.
Symposium Plan
We plan on holding a two day symposium that will be organized into three plenary sessions and an artistic performance event, as follows:
Day 1:
Opening: Welcome note
Artistic Reading of the Kamza Story
Introductory lecture:
The story, its context and historical events, contrasting viewpoints of traditionalist interpreters versus those of critical scholars.
Coffee break
Morning Session: Historical – Political
Plenary session: History, facts and myths
Chair: David Goodblatt
Lunch
Afternoon Session: Rationality and Religion
Chairs: Eli Berman, Joel Sobel
What Should I Do and Why? Using Talmudic Debate and Game Theory as Tools for Proscribing and Describing Human Behaviour. Decision making and modern results in history and social sciences versus religious study.
Coffee break
Public discussion
Dinner / Musical Event
Day 2:
Morning Session: Artistic / Literary
Chair: TBD (Shlomo Dubnov)
The session will deal with the story from Judaic and other religious literature perspectives. Debate and commentary dialectics, message propagation, portrayal of mytho-historical texts in contemporary / new media, role of interpretation in narrative understanding.
Lunch
Social Free Event – Tour of San Diego / TBD
Evening Performance: Kamza and Bar Kamza - Stories of Destruction
Debate-Play presenting the story in a sequence of acts and debates according to the Talmud text, using artistic enactment and engaging experts and public discussions of different story points in terms of philosophy, decision making, political forces, immanent versus transcendental views of God and etc. (up to 2 hours).