The School of Arts and Sciences invites you to the Annual Herzstein Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 10 in Cullen Hall. Dr. Alan J. Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies, College of the Holy Cross will be this year’s speaker. His lecture title is “Fate, Faith, and Free Will: Notions of Divine Providence in Early Judaism.”

Avery-Peck’s scholarship focuses on Jewish history and religion in the first six centuries C.E., with a particular interest in the literature of Talmudic Judaism. An author and editor of thirty books, he is co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Religious and Philosophical Writings in Late Antiquity: Pagan, Judaic, Christian and, most recently, is the author of a commentary to Second Corinthians in The Jewish Annotated New Testament and of the article “Resurrection of the Body in Early Rabbinic Judaism” (in Tobias Nicklas, et al., eds., The Human Body in Death and Resurrection).

Avery-Peck is also editor of the journal The Review of Rabbinic Judaism. At Holy Cross, in 1993-2012 Avery-Peck served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. Until 1993 he taught at Tulane University, where he was Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Tulane Jewish Studies Program.

The Herzstein Lecture is made possible through a gift from the Herzstein Foundation, which continues the work of Albert and Ethel Herzstein by providing grants to charitable efforts that offer individuals opportunities for advancement through education and enrichment of the human spirit.