It is with great pleasure that the Zohrab Information Center announces the continuation of its Winter/Spring 2020 Series on the Environment using the Video Conferencing platform Zoom. Due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19, the Zohrab Information Center is currently closed and all in-person activities have been suspended while we all do our part to slow the spread of the virus and save lives. With that in mind, we are thrilled that Dr. Roberta Ervine will give the Enrichment Evening presentation next Wednesday, April 8 at 7 PM EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) online via Zoom. Her talk is entitled “The Rest of Fasting,” and continues the thematic lecture series on the environment. To participate, you will need to download Zoom (zoom.us). Then, to join the event itself, you will need to enter the Meeting ID. To receive the Meeting ID, please email the Director at zohrabcenter@armeniandiocese.org.

In recent years, the idea of environmental theology or “eco-theology” has been developed by many of the major Christian denominations. Perhaps most notably, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, subtitled, “on care for our common home” presented a Christian vision of “stewardship” over God’s creation. The Armenian Apostolic Church, with its unique method of interpreting Scripture, highly developed ideas about the transformative effect of Christ’s Incarnation, and beautiful liturgical services including blessings of fields and water, surely has something to offer this ecumenical conversation about environmental theology. To that end, the Winter/Spring 2020 Series on the Environment hopes to propel the possibility of Armenian environmental theology forward. Dr. Roberta Ervine’s talk “The Rest of Fasting” is the next presentation in this series.

After informal lessons in Armenian language from the late Rev. Fr. Levon Arakelian at Holy Ascension parish in Trumbull, CT, Roberta Ervine enrolled in the newly-reopened Armenian Studies Program at Columbia University, where she studied with Profs. Nina Garsoïan, James Russell, and Very Rev. Fr. Krikor Maksoudian. She holds her PhD from Columbia University. Dissertation research led her to Jerusalem, where she lived in the Armenian Monastery of St. James as a disciple of His Grace Abp. Norayr Bogharian, curator of manuscripts. For sixteen of her twenty-one years in the Holy City, Prof. Ervine taught for the Holy Translators Academy; she also lectured for several other Jerusalem institutions, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2001 she returned to the United States to teach at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, where she lectures on topics related to the history of Armenian Christianity and Armenian Christian thought. Prof. Ervine pursues topics related to the history of Armenians in Jerusalem and the intellectual tradition of the Armenian middle ages (particularly the thinking of Vanakan Vardapet, Vardan the Great and Hovhannēs of Erznka). She is also interested in medieval Armenian grammatical texts.