Events & Calendars "Protest, Prison and Purim: A Rabbi Remembers 1965 in Selma, Alabama"

Rabbi Saul Berman, a leading Orthodox thinker and teacher, was part of a group of clergy who responded to a plea from Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for clergy to participate in voter registration campaigns and demonstrations in Selma, Ala., in March 1965. Arrested twice, he will share his motivation for that participation, his experiences while incarcerated with other activists and memories of the March from Selma to Montgomery.

Rabbi Berman will be introduced by Norm Jones, Ph.D., Amherst's chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Rabbi Berman was ordained at Yeshiva University, from which he also received his B.A. and his M.H.L. He completed a J.D. in law at New York University and an M.A. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Rabbi Berman has served in pulpits in Berkeley, Calif.; Brookline, Mass.; and Manhattan and run Edah, an organization invigorating Modern Orthodox thought and religious life. Currently, Rabbi Berman is professor of Jewish studies at Stern College and the Rotter Fellow in Talmudic Law at Columbia University Law School. Rabbi Berman is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica and is the author of numerous articles published in journals such as Tradition, Judaism, Journal of Jewish Studies and Dinei Yisrael. His book entitled Boundaries of Loyalty: Testimony Against Fellow Jews in Non-Jewish Courts was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press.