29 September, 2025
We are deeply honoured to welcome Debra Band, Senior Fellow at the Oxford Interfaith Forum, and Professor Menachem Fish, Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University, to present their magisterial book, Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living.
About the book:
Philosopher Menachem Fisch and visual artist Debra Band present the first illuminated manuscript of the entire biblical text of the Book of Ecclesiastes and the first philosophical analysis of the argument.
Or Scan the QR Code Below
Here are more details about this fascinating event.
Professor Fisch uncovers Qohelet’s twin concerns: life is short, and situated as we are, far below the heavens, we can never be assured of comprehending our world, or understanding divine will and intent. Since we can never fully predict or understand our fortunes or the heritage we leave behind us, the best we can do is to live our lives fully, relating to others attentively, always aware of the limits of human life.
In her glowing, immersive, and discursive illuminated paintings of the entire text, Debra Band imagines Qohelet’s teachings, employing the grandest of palaces, the Alhambra, as the central metaphor for the beauty and impermanence of human life and accomplishments. She fills its halls and gardens with often surprising imagery, symbolism, and related poetry, creating a visual midrash that reveals the relationship of Qohelet’s thought to other biblical texts and Jewish lore and its reverberations across the centuries and cultures of Western civilisation, from ancient Israel to today’s America. Each illuminated page is complemented by lucid commentary explaining its full meaning. Renowned scholars Ellen F. Davis and Moshe Halbertal crown the work with a penetrating foreword and preface.
Debra Band’s work in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts draws upon her love of the manuscript arts and biblical studies. Her work, celebrated for its intellectual and spiritual depth as well as visual beauty, includes illuminated and papercut books and ketubot, other manuscript pieces and papercuts, in exhibits, private collections, community institutions and galleries across the English-speaking world. She is the author and illuminator of The Song of Songs: The Honeybee in the Garden (JPS, 2005), I Will Wake the Dawn: Illuminated Psalms (with Arnold J. Band) (JPS, 2007), Arise! Arise! Deborah, Ruth and Hannah (with Arnold J. Band) (Honeybee in the Garden, 2012), and Kabbalat Shabbat: The Grand Unification (with Raymond P. Scheindlin) (Honeybee in the Garden, 2016), and her first illuminated book for children, All the World Praises You! an illuminated Aleph-Bet book,(Honeybee in the Garden, 2018), an adaptation of the classic medieval work.
Menachem Fisch is Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University, Co-director of the Frankfurt-Tel Aviv Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies, and senior fellow of the Goethe University Frankfurt’s Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. He is author of The View from Within: Normativity and the Limits of Self-Criticism (with Y. Benbaji) (Notre Dame, 2011), Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency (Chicago, 2017), and Covenant of Confrontation: A Study of Non-Submissive Religiosity in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew) (Bar-Ilan, 2019).
Moderator: TBA
Date: 29 September, 2025
Time: 18:00-19:00 BST | 19:00-20:00 CET | 10:00-11:00 PST | 13:00-14:00 EST
Venue: Online
