Beth Am welcomes Dr. Akiba Lerner, of Santa Clara University, who will be delivering the 2021 Guthaner Lecture, virtually.

There are a lot of reasons for despair and to think that talking about hope is a bit naïve, given the myriad of challenges we face as a community, both locally and globally. To counter these spirals of despair, Prof. Lerner, in his lecture, Hope In the Midst of the Storm, will bring together resources from within modern Jewish thought to explore narratives of redemptive hope for taking on the ecological and social justice challenges of our day.

Dr. Lerner is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He received his B.A. from The University of California at Berkeley, and his Masters and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2007. He taught at Stanford from 2007-2009 and joined the Santa Clara faculty in 2009. His research focuses on modern Jewish thought, theologies of hope, Jewish social ethics, political philosophy, American pragmatism and contemporary liberal thought. His current scholarship focuses on Jewish thought, film and the dialectics of humanist and authoritarian themes within religion.

Public registration is now closed. To receive Zoom access information, please log in to ShulCloud and complete the form below. This event will also be livestreamed at betham.org/streaming.

The Guthaner Lecture is supported by the Ernst Guthaner Endowment Fund for Cultural and Educational Programming.