Tell us about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?
a. Name: Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn-Harris
c. As Principal of Leo Baeck College (LBC), I run the only institution training rabbis for progressive (non-Orthodox) rabbis in the UK and one of only two such seminariesin Europe. I have overall responsibility for the institution, which includes everything from budgets to teaching to managing staff and most points in between. I teach a yearlong course on the megillot – Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther – with a particular emphasis on contemporary methodological and hermeneutical approaches. My personal academic research is focused on feminist interpretations of biblical texts, finding ways of incorporating classical rabbinic hermeneutics with feminist hermeneutics and reader-response theory to create modern midrash. In my teaching practice I am particularly keen that students should draw connections between the ways we read the biblical text and the impact these readings have on our communities. In the context of the Bible and sexual violence, I aim to help students discover and uncover the ways in which biblical depictions of sexual violence might shape both our personal and communal attitudes and approaches to dealing with this issue in the lives of real people.
In the year ahead, how will you contribute to advancing the aims and goals of The Shiloh Project?
a. During the coming year on the academic front I hope to continue to be able to write about issues relating to the Bible and sexual violence. On the vocational front, I am committed to continuing to ensure that LBC students have training on sexual violence, how to support congregants dealing with sexual violence, and, in particular, to run further workshops (a workshop was already run in the 2017/18 academic year) on the MeToo movement. From a personal perspective, I have recently become a member of Jewish Women’s Aid and hope to find more ways of working with JWA to support their work in the Jewish community.