Meet the Professor: Beth Berkowitz
What classes are you teaching this semester?
I’m teaching a seminar on Talmudic Narrative this semester. The Talmud, a major Jewish text from the 7th century CE, is usually associated with its intricate legal argumentation, but its stories are just as elaborate and often just as perplexing. I’ve got an amazing group of students who are reading the stories and the scholarship with tremendous care and creativity. In this past week’s class, we read a talmudic story that furnishes the myth of origins for rabbinic Judaism. A rabbi named Yohanan ben Zakkai sneaks out of Jerusalem and asks the Roman ruler to give him a safe place, the town of Yavneh, for the Rabbis to regroup. At a couple moments in the story, a later rabbi criticizes Yohanan ben Zakkai, telling us what he should have said. We can all relate to that frustration – the thing we should have said in the moment! The students spent some time in class rewriting the story, imagining what would have happened if Yohanan had actually said those things. It turns out, Rabbi Yohanan may have said the right things after all. The students discovered brand new things about the story that I had never seen before!
What's your (heroic) backstory?
I’m a Jersey girl, as they say, from down the shore. The town I come from is called Brick, and the one next to it is called Wall -- as you can see, it’s not the most imaginative or glamorous place! Everything is really spread out down there, and you have to get in your car to go anywhere. There are some sidewalks, but barely anyone walks on them. As a teen I just fell in love with New York City. It seemed so full of life, so diverse. Living and working in New York City is a dream come true for me. I went to Columbia College, majored in Religion, and have been studying Religion ever since. My first religion class was Intro to Japanese Religious Traditions. I'd never learned about Buddhism before and I found the Four Noble Truths to be so profound. I turned back to the tradition I grew up in, Judaism, when I started graduate school at the University of Chicago. I specialized in Talmud in my PhD studies in Columbia's Religion Department. It has been an amazing privilege for me at Barnard to be colleagues with some of the faculty who taught me in college and grad school.
Could you speak about current/recent research that you’re excited about?
I’m working on a project on what I call “the animal family” laws of the Bible. There are four of them: don’t cook a kid in his mother’s milk (that’s the most famous one); don’t separate a baby animal from their mother in the first week of life; don’t slaughter an animal and their child on the same day; don’t take the chicks from a nest before shooing away the mother bird. I’m fascinated by these laws because people talk about the laws as compassionate, but to me they seem quite cruel because they’re about separating animal families and killing animals. In my research I want to unravel that paradox. I call them “animal family” laws as a provocation because I think it’s important for us to think about animals as having families and intimate bonds with each other. It might make us think twice about how we treat animals.
What's your favorite part of teaching at Barnard?
Teaching has so many different parts to it, and what’s great about it is the additive quality: one-on-one meetings, interactions during seminars and lectures, responding to student work, chatting with students at events. I’ll say that one of my favorite parts is working with students on their senior theses. I advise senior theses in both Religion and Jewish Studies. Students follow their own paths. They choose a research question, they find the sources, they organize their thoughts, they outline the writing, they write numerous drafts, they edit. They manage the struggles that go along with undertaking a major research project. I try to give whatever support I can but it’s ultimately up to them to make it work, and somehow they always come through with flying colors! I love seeing that kind of closure to the college experience.
Why did you decide to teach at a historically women's college?
Because the academic job market is so tight, I don’t think any of us could say that when we were getting a PhD it was teach-at-a-women’s-college-or-bust. But now that I’ve landed at a women’s college, I’m so glad I did. There’s an undeniable empowerment for women at a women’s college. You see women students having an extraordinary comfort level in the classroom, and you see a faculty, administration, and staff with far more women than is typical. There’s a feminism in the air. But it’s not just about women. It’s an intersectional feminism that is about critiquing all different forms of injustice, inequality, and disrespect, and about promoting empathy and open-mindedness. This spirit pervades the atmosphere and makes Barnard a vibrant and humane community. My sister went to Barnard 30 years ago and many of her best friends are still from Barnard.
What's your favorite text to teach?
My favorite text to teach is actually a video that I show in my seminar called Divine Human Animal. The video features chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, rhythmically swaying and climbing vines next to a beautiful waterfall. The narration is provided by Jane Goodall, who calls what the chimpanzees are doing a waterfall dance. “I think chimpanzees are as spiritual as we are,” Goodall says. You can find the video here, with anthropologist Barbara King’s commentary. I agree with King that the waterfall, the chimpanzees, and Goodall’s voice are all incredibly calming. I love Goodall’s proposal that animals might have religion too. It’s a completely ground-breaking idea, and the fact that Goodall says it so quietly and calmly makes it that much more powerful.
What's your favorite spot on campus?
Right now it’s my classroom. It feels so good to be back in the classroom. I always go in early to make sure the AV is working and that I’ll be able to show my PowerPoint without any glitches. Whenever I have a problem, I call IMATS, and usually it’s Ken Kim who comes to help me. He is the best! He comes so fast and is so nice, and he always quickly fixes the problem without ever making me feel like an AV idiot. Along with the many other behind-the-scenes staff at Barnard, he makes the spaces feel supportive and happy. Shout-out to Ken!
What are some of your hobbies?
One of my favorite activities is walking my dog near my house in Prospect Park (Brooklyn). My dog weighs 120 lbs and is not very well-trained, so walking him is really challenging, but it’s also really fun. He’s big and fuzzy, and everybody thinks he looks like a bear. We attract a lot of attention on our walks. I also love watching television and movies. I just watched Station Eleven, which offers an intriguing perspective on the experience of a pandemic and is totally visually arresting. I rewatched The Good Place and Jane the Virgin in the last year and adore both those shows – they’re smart, deep, funny, and moving. I’m totally addicted to the New York Times Spelling Bee. I always push myself to get “Genius” but then I stop and don’t try to get to “Queen Bee” because I worry about spending my whole day on it! I get really mad when there’s a word that I think should have been included that wasn’t or a word that was included that I think shouldn’t have been. I know Wordle is really popular these days but Spelling Bee is enough to keep me busy!