Not in an Ivory Tower: Zev Garber and Biblical Studies

In late February 2010, Zev Garber made two presentations at Creighton University, my home institution. His first was a well-attended public lecture on a Monday evening, titled "Reading the Bible through the Holocaust (Shoah)"--I hasten to add that the inclusion of the term "Holocaust" and the subsequent demotion of "Shoah" between parentheses were at my insistence: despite Zev's decades of insistence on Shoah as the proper term, I was not sure that a general public consisting of students and faculty would be familiar with that wording. The next day, Zev spoke to students in my class, a Senior Perspectives offering on "The Bible and the Holocaust." After Zev left, I asked my students to write up their reactions to his presentations. In their comments, two ideas predominated to describe both Zev and his talks: passion (passionate) and commitment (committed). Representative of the students' sentiments are these assessments: "Dr. Garber's talk on Monday night was one of the (if not the) most exciting talks I've seen at Creighton! It was so cool to be in a room with such a passionate scholar!" and "Zev said he can't stand bystanders--he was OK with evil people, but the ones who say they're good but just sit there and don't do anything for humanity are the people who really bother him. You could tell that he is extremely passionate about his work." (Many of my students, rather naturally I suspect, fell into calling our visitor "Zev"; I don't doubt that he approves.)