Spirituality and Storytelling
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| Venue: | FIU Biscayne Bay Campus, WUC 155 |
Mitch Chefitz, respected spiritual teacher, innovative pulpit rabbi, and acclaimed writer will speak on "Spirituality and Storytelling" on Wednesday, February 11, 2009, at 7:30 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, will be held in room 155 of the Wolfe University Center on FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus, 3000 N.E. 151st Street, North Miami.
"Many traditions transmit spiritual teachings by way of storytelling," Chefitz said. "The advantage of storytelling over direct teaching is that stores can be heard and appreciated no matter the level of the listener. The novice hears only the narrative, but the adept finds within the story a conduit to the Divine." Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, concurs. "Chefitz audaciously claims that he can tell us stories that will burrow in our souls and remain there. And then he proves it," he said. Chefitz is the author of two novels-The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moshe Katan and its sequel, The Thirtythird Hour: The Torah of Moshe Katan-and a collection of stories, The Curse of Blessings. Copies of Rabbi Chefitz's books will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Chefitz recently stepped down as rabbi of Temple Israel of Greater Miami, following 22 years as rabbi of the Havurah of South Florida, a nondenominational "synagogue without walls" rooted in Jewish spirituality or Kabbalah. Before that, he was associate rabbi of Temple Beth Am in Kendall, and is a past president of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami. He was educated at MIT and Berkeley and was a line office in the U.S. Navy, with service aboard destroyers off Vietnam and later in the Mediterranean during the 1967 Six Day War.
The program is co-sponsored with FIU's Center for the Study of Spirituality and the Department of English.
