​Rabbi Michael Lotker

Read the story of the Garden of Eden through Jewish eyes with the insights that Hebrew and modern scholarship bring! We will read the text carefully and examine
  1. Why there are two stories of creation;
  2. Which of the characters speaks the whole truth;
  3. What exactly was the bone from which the woman was made;
  4. The clear and surprising reason that Adam and Eve were expelled; and,
  5. Whether eating the fruit (not clear that it was an apple) was really a sin or whether God set them up for an important, divine purpose.
Rabbi Lotker comes to us with a wealth of experience. A Phi Beta Kappa/Magna Cum Laude physicist, he spent the bulk of his first career in the alternative energy business, working in wind power, solar and geothermal energy. About 500 of the windmills that are spinning in Palm Springs, California, were financed and installed by a company that Mike was President of. In 2003, he was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, where he also received his Master of Hebrew Letters degree. He is presently the Community Rabbi for the Jewish Federation of Ventura County and the Scholar In Residence at Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks, CA. In addition to his studies, Mike has published a book for the Paulist Press entitled "A Christian's Guide to Judaism."