What happens when desire, power, and vulnerability collide in a rabbinic story? In this class, we’ll dive into the provocative tale of “Libertina” (Heruta) and Rabbi Hiyya from the Babylonian Talmud (Kiddushin 81b)—a dramatic and unsettling narrative about temptation, performance, and what it means to be seen. We'll read the text closely with the help of Ruth Calderon's interpretation in A Bride for One Night, and draw on the insights of modern sex and couples therapist Esther Perel to explore questions of intimacy, control, and moral self-image.

Rav Rachel Adelman (PhD, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College, where she recently earned rabbinic ordination (2021). She is the author of several academic and popular articles in Jewish studies, as well as two books: The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha (Brill, 2009) and The Female Ruse: Women’s Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield Press, 2015), She just completed a new monograph: Daughters in Danger, from the Hebrew Bible to Modern Midrash (forthcoming, Sheffield). When not writing books, papers, or divrei Torah, it is poetry that flows from her pen.