Women’s Initiative for Jewish Studies (WIJS) at Young Israel of New Rochelle is proud to present Dr. Shaina Trapedo on Wednesday, March 6 at 8:15 p.m. (ET) on Zoom. Trapedo will be the seventh speaker of the 2023-2024 season in the monthly scholarly programming offered by WIJS at YINR.

Dr. Trapedo’s lecture is entitled “The Bard and the Hebrew Bible.” Shakespeare’s deep familiarity with the Bible is apparent in over 1,000 references throughout the plays that made him one of the most popular writers of the Elizabethan stage. And while his impact on the development of the Western literary tradition is undoubted, scholars continue to ask why the bard saturated his dramatic scripts with scripture, particularly from the Old Testament. Dr. Trapedo will explore moments when Shakespeare specifically turns to verses and narratives from the Hebrew Bible to understand how his plays appealed to the collective consciousness of his day and to what extent his timeless texts are shaped by Jewish tradition.

Dr. Shaina Trapedo is an assistant professor of English at Stern College and a resident scholar at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. She received her undergraduate degree at Barnard College and her PhD in English from UC Irvine, where she specialized in early modern literature and religious studies. Her current book project, “From Scripture to Script: The Hebrew Bible on the Early English Stage,” considers Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ indebtedness to Judaism and its exegetical traditions.

All WIJS programming is open to women and men. Please visit www.yinr.org/wijs.html to view the complete WIJS 2023-24 schedule. For more information, to be added to the WIJS email list or for Zoom information, please call 914-636-2215 or email: [email protected]. Individuals on the WIJS mailing list will automatically receive the Zoom information.