Professor Marc Z. Brettler

Website : http://people.brandeis.edu/~brettler/
Residence : Boston, Massachusetts

Biographical information
Marc Brettler is the Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies and chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He has taught at Brandeis University, Yale University, Wellesley College and Middlebury College. He has also taught in various adult Jewish education settings, including the Wexner Heritage Program and the innovative Me'ah program in Boston. He is actively involved in many aspects of Jewish communal life, and has served on the board of Boston's Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center and the New Jewish High School.

A graduate of Brandeis University, he has published and lectured widely on metaphor and the Bible, the nature of biblical historical texts, and gender issues and the Bible. His most recent books are Biblical Hebrew for Students of Modern Israeli Hebrew, published by Yale University Press, and Reading the Book of Judges, published by Routledge. His book The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, in now available in paperback from Routledge Press. He is an associate editor of the recently published new edition of the New Oxford Annotated Bible, and has contributed to all the volumes of My People's Prayer Book, for which he has also written the introductory essay "Prayer in the Bible and the Use of the Bible in Later Jewish Prayer." He also has written two books for Sheffield Academic Press, Minhah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour of his 70th Birthday (with Michael Fishbane) and God is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor, Supplement to the Journal for the Study of Old Testament. He has just completed editing (with Adele Berlin) The Jewish Study Bible which is the first Bible to explore in a serious fashion how modern Jewish scholars interpret the Bible. He has appeared on the television series "Mysteries of the Bible," and was heard on the National Public Radio show "All Things Considered." He is also committed to applying innovative methods to classroom teaching, including teaching via the internet, and is the recipient of the Michael A. Walzer Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Marc Brettler has spoken as scholar-in-residence or has offered lectures in numerous synagogues (of all denominations) throughout the U.S. and at several JCCs. He has also taught rabbis at various professional conferences. Brettler has spoken at a variety of non-Jewish institutions, including colleges and universities, and most recently, as part of a program on "People of the Book" at the Boston Public Library. Brettler is actively involved in teaching Jewish adults in the Me'ah program, and he has a sense of the interests of the adult community.

Discussion topics
Topics and presentations concerning all aspects of the Hebrew Bible, especially as they are connected to the new publication, The Jewish Study Bible, that he has co-edited for Oxford University Press.

• How Should Jews Read the Bible? - A discussion on how the Bible should be understood within the Jewish community.
• Is the Bible True?
• Biblical Prayer
• Women and the Bible
• The Modern Study of the Bible and Contemporary Jewish Belief - As part of such a discussion, Marc Brettler is also comfortable teaching a class or Torah Study relating to the topic at hand.

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