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Back to JTS Torah Online's Main pageBetween the Lines: Choosing Hope
Nov 14, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Throughout our history, Jews have traditionally responded to our trials with hope, psychologist David Arnow says, because we have had ready access to Judaism’s abundant reservoir of hope. The first book to explore the depths of this reservoir, Choosing Hope journeys from biblical times to our day to explore nine fundamental sources of hope in Judaism.
Read MoreBetween the Lines: Inside Jewish Day Schools
Oct 27, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS Dr. Jack Wertheimer, professor of American Jewish history at JTS, co-authored with Alex Pomson the new book Inside Jewish Day Schools: Leadership, Learning, and Community, which seeks to demystify Jewish day schools. His book talk addresses a number of questions: What revolutionary changes characterize current […]
Read MoreBetween the Lines: The Book of Revolutions
Sep 20, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
This is a conversation about The Book of Revolutions: The Battles of Priests, Prophets and Kings with author Rabbi Edward Feld and JTS’s Rabbi Jan Uhrbach. In dramatic historical accounts grounded in recent Bible scholarship, Feld unveils the epic saga of ancient Israel as the visionary legacy of inspired authors in different times and places.
Read MoreBetween the Lines: Hélène Jawhara Piñer on the History of Sephardi Cuisine
Apr 27, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Scholar and author Hélène Jawhara Piñer discusses her unique books about Sephardi cuisine and demonstrates how to make a delicious muleta
Read MoreWriting Jewish: A Discussion with Nicole Krauss and Joshua Cohen
Apr 25, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Part of JTS’s Opening Season Jews have always been writers of books—from books for Jews with self-consciously Jewish content to books with no obvious Jewish consciousness directed toward the general reading public. But there are also authors who create worlds filled with Jews (and others) who embody human experiences with a Jewish twist for readers […]
Read MoreBetween the Lines: When I Grow Up
Jan 26, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author Ken Krimstein discussed his book, When I Grow Up, a graphic narrative based on newly discovered, never-before-published autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish teens on the brink of WWII—found in 2017 hidden in a Lithuanian church cellar.
Read MoreBetween the Lines: Sanctified Sex
Jan 24, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author Noam Zion discusses his book, Sanctified Sex, which draws on 2,000 years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union, and sanctity in marriage.
Read MoreBetween the Lines: Embers of Pilgrimage
Jan 11, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Dr. Eitan Fishbane talks about his book, Embers of Pilgrimage (Panui Publications), a collection of original poems incorporating imagery from the Zohar and other Jewish mystical works.
Read MoreBetween the Lines: Remember KHURBM: The Forgotten Genocide
Jan 10, 2022 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author Alexander Gendler shared his book, KHURBM 1914-1922: Prelude to the Holocaust. The Beginning, a collection of eyewitness testimonies and other sources that reveal the destruction of Jewish life by the Russian army during World War I.
Read MoreAbraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement
Nov 10, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author and historian Julian E. Zelizer when he talks about his book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement, which chronicles the life of Heschel as a symbol of the fight to make progressive Jewish values relevant in the secular world.
Read MoreWe Refuse to Be Enemies
Oct 26, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Authors Sabeeha Rehman and Walter Ruby talk about their book, We Refuse to Be Enemies, a manifesto that offers experience and guidance on the rise of intolerance, bigotry, and white nationalism in the United States.
Read MoreJewish Bible Translations: Personalities, Passions, Politics, Progress
Jun 9, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author Leonard J. Greenspoon discussed his book, Jewish Bible Translations: Personalities, Passions, Politics, Progress, in which he highlights distinctive features of Jewish Bible translations and offers new insights regarding their shared characteristics and their limitations.
Read MoreThese are the Developments of the Human
May 26, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Ethan Daniel Davidson discussed his book, These are the Developments of the Human, a compilation of wisdom and insights that he captured over years of various study partnerships of Jewish text with rabbis and other learners from across the world.
Read MoreCrushing the Red Flowers
May 13, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author Jennifer Voigt Kaplan discussed her book, Crushing the Red Flowers, which tells the story of how two ordinary boys cope under the extraordinary circumstances of Kristallnacht.
Read More“It is the music that makes us the Abayudaya:” The Cantors Assembly in Uganda
Apr 29, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
In winter 2019, members and affiliates of the Cantors Assembly traveled to Uganda on a mission of solidarity, learning, and peoplehood with the Abayudaya Jewish community. Trip participants Dr. Amanda Ruppenthal Stein and Hazzan Jeremy Stein discuss the experiences by the CA mission’s participants. Part of Musical Journeys with The Library of JTS.
Read MoreThe Jewish Music of Leonard Bernstein
Apr 22, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Hazzan David F. Tilman examines the works of Leonard Bernstein using a rich variety of musical recordings and archival photographs.
Read MoreDangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Apr 20, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
In Dangerous Religious Ideas, Rabbi Mikva argues all religious ideas are dangerous—not only those we might consider extremist, but even those that stand at the heart of faith. Because most religious traditions have always understood this peril, they have transmitted tools of self-critique as essential to their teachings.
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Cantors, Controversy, & Compassion: Searching for God in Musical Complexity
Apr 15, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
What are the spiritual possibilities of music? Five-hundred years ago, rabbis, cantors and Jewish musicians began to explore this question in dramatic new ways. Extended niggunim, orchestras to welcome the Sabbath bride, meshorerim (musical assistants to the cantor), new Hebrew treatises on music, and the borrowing of European musical technique and style contributed to this experimental climate in the synagogues of early modern Europe. But these changes also incited concern and anger from traditionalists, who worried that musical complexity would compromise the halachic and spiritual integrity of authentic prayer.
Read MoreAll the Horrors of War
Apr 6, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
All the Horrors of War follows Hugh Llewelyn Glyn Hughes, a high-ranking British officer, and Rachel Genuth, a Jewish teenager from the Hungarian provinces, as they navigate the final, brutal year of World War II. Their stories converge before the war’s end, in Bergen-Belsen, where Hughes finds himself responsible for an unprecedented situation: thousands of war-ravaged inmates are in need of immediate hospitalization, including Genuth.
Read MoreConversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe
Mar 17, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author and professor Paola Tartakoff of Rutgers University discusses her new book, Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe, which explores the “Norwich Circumcision Case” from multiple perspectives.
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