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From the University of Minnesota Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Ally Programs Office.

10th Annual McNaron Lecture:
Rabbi Stacy Offner

“How Spiritual Outcasts Nurture the Soul”
Wednesday, October 14, 7:30 PM
Humphrey Institute, Cowles Auditorium
301 19th Ave S, Mpls

The Steven J. Schochet Endowment for GLBT Studies & Campus Life is pleased to present the 10th Toni McNaron Lecture in Arts & Culture featuring Rabbi Stacy Offner, Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism. This event is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow in the Humphrey Atrium.

Rabbi Offner’s lecture, How Spiritual Outcasts Nourish the Soul, will explore the parallels between outcast communities: Jews, women, and the LGBT community. Religious communities have always made heros out of outcasts while rejecting the outcast in their midst. Ever since Abraham was marginalized and shunned for being different from his polytheistic family, it has been the outcast who has given birth to new spiritual practice.

Rabbi Offner will examine the ways in which Jews, women, and LGBT peoples have enriched the dominant culture, even as each community has the potential to exclude others in their own efforts to become normative.

Rabbi Stacy Offner is the Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism and the Founding Rabbi Emerita of Shir Tikvah Congregation, a Reform congregation serving the Twin Cities. She is the highest-ranking female Jewish clergy in North America. Rabbi Offner became the North Star State’s first woman rabbi in 1984. In 1987, she became the nation’s first out lesbian to serve in a “mainstream” congregation.

Please join us, and help spread the word! For more information, please contact Beng Chang at schochet@umn.edu or 612-626-2562.