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“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.” ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale. The Handmaid’s Tale is an explosive dystopian novel written in 1985. Its premise seems to be based on the story of our forefather and mother, Yaacov and Rachel, quoted straight from Bereishit – the story of surrogate mothers. However, the work and now the TV series have surged into contemporary culture by painting the Bible and religion as dangerous, primitive, exploitative and autocratic, something to be feared and rejected in the 21st century worship of the individual. How do we face our own biblical texts and how they are used in this book? How do we face the current, binary, simplistic narrative, pitting the untethered worship of the individual versus a black vision of Biblical enslavement? In an interdisciplinary approach, join Ilana Stein and The Academy in a Literary Beit Midrash - live and in person - in unpacking these  difficult concepts; explore the texts, the questions they raise and the vision they create.