After Shabbat services and Kiddush lunch, join Rabbi Ira F. Stone to learn about Emmanuel Levinas’ approach to the Talmud and engage in text study together. Rabbi Stone served as Congregation Beth Shalom’s first rabbi and is currently the director of the Center For Contemporary Mussar. The Talmud is the central document of Rabbinic Judaism, yet remains a closed text to the vast majority of Jews. The traditional modes of Talmud study do not bring questions or methodologies that would resonate with contemporary Jews. However, the French/Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas pioneered an approach to Talmud that could serve the purpose of rendering a text that often appears to be consigned to a frozen historical moment into a meaningful guide for contemporary religion. No registration needed to join for services, lunch, or the learning. 

Ira F. Stone is currently the director of the Center For Contemporary Mussar. He was Rabbi of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in center city Philadelphia from 1988 until 2014.  Before coming to Philadelphia he served as spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle, Washington for nine years.  Rabbi Stone is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara where he received a BA in Religious Studies.  He attended the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and graduated from The Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1979 with a Masters of Hebrew Literature and was ordained as a rabbi at that time. Rabbi Stone has written articles on theology and rabbinics for various journals including Conservative Judaism, Wellspring Journal, Middlebury College Magazine and Kerem His first book, “Seeking the Path to Life” was published in 1992 by Jewish Lights Publishing.  His second book, “Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud” was published in 1997 by The Jewish Publication Society.  His new book, “A Responsible Life: Mussar As A Spiritual Path,” was published by Aviv Press in the Fall of 2006. His commentary om the classic Mussar work Mesillat Yesharim was published by JPS in 2010. His latest book written with Dr. Beulah Trey was published in 2019 by IUniverse is In Search of the Holy Life: The kabbalistic roots of Mussar.

He has also published poetry extensively in various journals and is the author of collections such as Sketches For a Book of Psalms, The Really Perfect Poems Has an Infinitely Small Vocabulary, and most recently, Toward Eighty.

Rabbi Stone served as lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary and adjunct and visiting lecturer in Modern Jewish Thought at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.