October 26, 2004—Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg is one of the world's leading Torah scholars.

The revered teacher also is considered "something of an anomaly. Until recently, Orthodox tradition has not often produced female scholars of Zornberg's stature," states Dan Pine (Jewsweek).

Encouraged to study the Torah and Talmud by her father, who headed the Rabbinical Court of Glasgow, Zornberg went on to earn a doctorate at Cambridge University and served a number of years on the English faculty at the Hebrew University in Israel. But she is "perhaps best known—and best loved—for her weekly Torah study, something that began as a kitchen-table-style enterprise and has since gone on to attract regulars from all over Israel," adds Pine.

A featured commentator on Bill Moyer's PBS program, Genesis The Beginning of Desire, Zornberg is an in-demand speaker and the author of Genesis: the Beginning of Desire, which won the National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction; and the widely acclaimed The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus.  Paul Wiliam Roberts (Washington Post) called it "quite simply a masterpiece," and wrote that he knew of "no other book that presents the enormous subtleties and complexities of rabbinic Biblical interpretation with such skill, intelligence, literary flair and sheer elegance of style."

Currently a member of the faculty of Israel's Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. Zornberg will visit Oberlin's campus this month to present the 2004-2005 Haskell Lectures: "The Exile of the Word: Biblical Language and Silence" in the Science Center's Craig Lecture Hall.

The first of the three lectures, "Seduced into Eden: the Beginning of Desire," will be at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 31; the second, "The Pit and the Rope: Joseph and Judah" at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, November 1; and the third, "Through the Looking Glass: Women in the Exodus Narrative," at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 3. Each lecture is free and open to the public. The Science Center is located at 119 Woodland Street.

The Haskell Lectureship is one of the most distinguished lectureships in the United States and was established in 1899 by a generous bequest from the will of Mrs. Caroline E. Haskell to examine "Middle Eastern literature in its relation to the Bible and Christian teachings."