With Shavuot behind us, no holidays on the horizon until September, and summer break in many other parts of the world, it’s high time for conference season here in the Holy Land. Here’s a list of what will be going over the next few weeks.

First off is The Fourteenth International Orion Symposium on “The Religious Worldviews Reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” to take place on May 28-30 at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From the conference website:

…This symposium will address aspects of the religious thought reflected in the texts of the Judean Desert in their wider religious context. Comparison with other ancient writings affords the opportunity to refine our understanding. Papers will carefully analyze specific texts and deal with broader themes and topics that shed new light on the worldviews, beliefs, and forms of religious experience reflected in the Scrolls…

The full program is available here. Those who won’t be able to make it can be comforted by the fact that Orion is usually pretty good about putting out conference volumes (see here for the most recent one).

At the same time, there will be a conference in memory of the scholar of aggada, Yona Frankel. The conference starts the evening of May 28th at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, and continues the following day at Ben Gurion university in Beer Sheva.

The following week, on June 2-4, Tel Aviv University’s Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies will be having a joint conference with The Cambridge University Project for Religion in the Humanities entitled “‘With God on Our Side’: Holy War and Sacred Struggle in Judaism, Christianity and Islam A Collaborative International Conference in Interreligious Studies” here’s the schedule. This is the first conference to come out of a new joint venture in interreligious studies of the two universities.

And on that same week there will be a conference in honor of the folklore-rabbinicist, Galit Hasan-Rokem in Jerusalem (June 5-6).

Later in June, on the 25-27, Hebrew University will be hosting a conference entitled “Patristic Studies in the Twenty-first Century: An International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of AIEP/IAPS.” From the preliminary schedule, this looks like it will be kind of mega-conference with big international scholars participating and also a fascinating mix of typical academic research and also more reflective theology. Our very own Ophir will be speaking on “The Ritualization of Narration in Jewish and Christian Liturgical Poetry” on the second day.

And most importantly, stay tuned for information about a special Talmud blog event, also in Jerusalem, on June 27th.