The Los Angeles Lectures

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The Los Angeles Lectures

All of these lectures were recorded at a major American Reform synagogue, where Marc Gafni together with the senior Rabbinic leadership had co-initiated a cutting edge spiritual initiative, whose goal was to introduce sacred study as a core spiritual practice. The program hoped to demonstrate that it was possible to invite cutting edge, sophisticated and educated adults to engage with humility and integrity in the spiritual practice of sacred text study, as part of a commitment to lifelong learning and growth.

Marc Gafni’s belief, shared with the senior leadership of the temple, was that if the study is deep and real from both the mind and the heart then not four or five, or ten or twenty, or thirty folks will come out and attend but hundreds and even thousands of people will attend. Not for a one-time gig lecture but for some level of ongoing study. This is, of course, in marked contrast to the present state of study in most modern religious temples and churches, particularly of the more liberal and progressive variety.

This belief was fully validated by the initiative. For the greater part of the program, hundreds of educated lay people, who had been alienated from the spiritual practice of deep engagement with sacred text, came to participate on an ongoing basis. For example, the Soul Print Lecture Series (which is available in the Products Section under Course Offerings on this website) drew approximately five hundred people per lecture, as did many others. The initiative was an eloquent testimony to the compelling power of the spiritual practice of Sacred Text Study.

For a fuller description of the initiative, see the short essay in the Tikkun Olam/Social Activism section called, Adult Development and Growth, which gives a brief description of this initiative.

provided by Marc Gafni

Stream the audios below. The audios in each topic are organized in playlists. If you click on an image, the first audio of the playlist begins to play. At the end of it, the next one, and so on… If you want to scroll through the different audios, click on the little icon with the six squares on the bottom.