Can the challenges for Orthodox Jewish belief raised by the world of secular biblical scholarship "from literary and archaeological sources" be met? We had a panel event at Yale where this question was answered in the affirmative.

Three Orthodox professors (Lawrence Schiffman, Shalom Carmy and Zelig Aster) suggested ways in which Orthodox Jews can embrace academic biblical scholarship and retain their traditional orientation towards the Torah.

After each panelist presented a 20 minute personal statement, the panelists fielded questions from the over forty attendees about the necessity of belief in Torah MiSinai as opposed to Torah min HaShamayim, the seeming factual conflicts between traditional and secular approaches and the degree to which feminism poses a challenge for traditional Judaism in the context of our sacred texts.

As Ben Bokser, Yale '09, exclaimed, "I thought that the biblical criticism panel was very interesting. I appreciated hearing the arguments between the different scholars and heard a lot of new ideas."

Click on the link below to hear the panel.