Exclusive Tour of Hindu Temple

Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill

Join Valley Beit Midrash as we visit a local Hindu Temple and learn about their practices.

Please note the following details for the Hindu Temple:

• Men – casual trousers and shirts – no shorts, please.
• Women – full-length dresses, skirts or pants.
• Footwear must be left outside the Temple in cubbies provided for this. Socks can be worn inside the Temple.
• Temple prayer hall is concrete not carpeted.
• There should be enough parking inside the Temple gates but street parking is also available.

Dr. Alan Brill is the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University, where he teaches Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program. He specializes in interfaith theology, Jewish mysticism, modern Jewish thought and contemporary Jewish Orthodoxy and offers courses in medieval and modern Jewish thought, Jewish mysticism, interfaith encounter and Jewish theology. Dr. Brill is also the author of Judaism and World Religions: Christianity, Islam, and Eastern Religions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Thinking God: The Mysticism of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin (Yeshiva University Press, 2002).

Dr. Brill received his B.A., M.A. and Ordination from Yeshiva University and his Ph.D. from the Department of Theology at Fordham University. He was selected to deliver the 2008 Gannon Lecture at Fordham University and was the invited Jewish speaker representing Hebrew College at the Boston Theological Institute in 2011. He has also authored many articles on the interface of traditional Jewish thinkers with philosophy and the surrounding culture.

In 2014 Dr. Brill won a prestigious Fulbright Senior Scholar Award for research and teaching at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh in India. During his award, he taught two graduate-level courses in India. Dr. Brill was also awarded a Dorset Visiting Fellowship for two extended stays at Yarnton Manor at Oxford University, UK.

Currently Dr. Brill is working on a monograph comparing Judaism and Hinduism, tentatively entitled, “A Rabbi on the Ganges: A Jewish-Hindu Encounter.” One can read about his project here. Dr. Brill is also working on a full-length study of the history of the ideologies of Modern Orthodox Judaism from 1800-2000. This study explores the differences among Orthodox groups entering modernity and assesses the wide variety of possible interactions between modernity and traditional religion. Dr. Brill situates this investigation within the broader question of “What is ‘Modern’ about Modern Orthodoxy?” By comparing the trajectory of Jewish Orthodoxy over the last two hundred years with that of Catholicism and Protestantism, in its many varieties, Dr. Brill will attempt to identify multiple modernities and reflect upon their implications.