Library Exhibits

Current Exhibit

Seeing the Unseeable: Kabbalistic Imagery from The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

March 26, 2024–August 15 2024

The spread of classical philosophy among Jews in the medieval period posed a significant challenge to traditional conceptions of divinity. While the God of the bible and rabbinic literature was a personal, anthropomorphic, and specifically Jewish God, the God of the philosophers was abstract, impersonal, and universal. To bridge the increasingly abstract and transcendent God of the philosophers with the personal and anthropomorphic God of Jewish tradition, the Kabbalists elaborated the doctrine of the sefirot, the ten divine attributes that emanated from within God and through which God interacts with creation.

According to the Zohar, the classic work of the theosophical Kabbalah, despite God’s transcendence, God can be apprehended via the “gates of the imagination.” We invite you to enter these gates and explore the visual worlds of the Kabbalah included in our exhibition. Whether in their theoretical treatises, diagrammatic scrolls, devotional plaques, or magical amulets, images were central to how Kabbalists presented their complex metaphysical ideas, depicted invisible realities, cultivated religious experience, and manifested divine power.

The exhibit is open to the public during Library Hours.

Opening Event: Seeing the Unseeable: Kabbalistic Imagery from The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

Tuesday, March 26from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
In Person at JTS 
3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street) 
New York City 

Previous Exhibits

A Sacred Space

A Sacred Space

Synagogue Architecture and Identity

Learn More
Living Yiddish in New York

Living Yiddish in New York

NYC as a center of Yiddish culture

Learn More
The Work of Her Hands

The Work of Her Hands

The Art of Lynne Avadenka and the Craft of Jewish Women Printers

Learn More
The Jews of Corfu

The Jews of Corfu

Between the Adriatic and the Ionian

Learn More
To Build a New Home

To Build a New Home

Celebrating the Jewish Wedding

Learn More