March to be featured speaker

Staff report

youngstown

Dr. Gene March will be the featured speaker at the Rabbi Samuel Meyer Memorial Lectures on June 2 at First Presbyterian Church, 201 Wick Ave.

“Being Faithful in a Religiously Plural World” is his topic for the lecture geared to clergy and religious leaders at 4 p.m.

A dinner for that group will be at 5:30 with a dairy meal being catered by Kravitz Delicatessen. The cost is $10. Checks should be made payable to First Presbyterian Church and sent to the Rev. Nick Mager, 201 Wick Ave., Youngstown, 44503. Registration is due by May 26.

A public lecture at 7 p.m. will feature the topic “Handling Our Differences Openly and Candidly.”

Dr. March is A.B. Rhodes professor emeritus of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he taught for 24 years. From 1993-99, he also served as dean of Louisville Seminary.

Before that, he taught for 16 years at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, where he received a bachelor of divinity degree. He did his doctoral work at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City.

Dr. March, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church USA, has a long-time interest in Jewish-Christian dialogue and studied with Abraham Heschel.

Dr. March has written extensively for scholarly journals and denominational publications. He is a frequent contributor to Presbyterian Outlook, the adult Bible lessons. His most recent books are “God’s Tapestry,” “God’s Land on Loan: Israel, Palestine and the World,” “Great Themes of the Bible” and “The Wide, Wide Circle of Divine Love.”

He is a native of Dallas and is married to the Rev. Lynn Gant March. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

The Meyer Memorial Lecture Series is made possible by the Rabbi Samuel Meyer Memorial Trust. The trust was established in 1994 to honor the memory of the late Samuel Meyer, rabbi emeritus of Temple El Emeth in Liberty, who died in 1982.

Rabbi Meyer served as rabbi of Temple El Emeth and its predecessor congregations in Youngstown from 1971 until his retirement in 1990.

He had an interest in Jewish-Christian dialogues, and the lecture series takes place annually to foster continuing interfaith discussion in the Mahoning Valley.

Rabbi Meyer and the Rev. George Balasko, pastor of St. Ann Church in East Palestine, co-founded the local Jewish- Christian Dialogue group some 36 years ago, and it continues to this day.