Between Moscow, Kyiv, and Jerusalem: How The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed Russian and Ukrainian Attitudes Toward Israel and Jews

Between Moscow, Kyiv, and Jerusalem: How The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed Russian and Ukrainian Attitudes Toward Israel and Jews

Jan 15, 2024 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Dr. David Fishman, expert on Ukrainian Jewry, discusses the complex connections between the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and how Russian and Ukrainian attitudes toward Israel and Jews have evolved as a result—both for better and for worse.

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Where Are We Now?  Rethinking Exile, Diaspora and Home in Israel and America

Where Are We Now?  Rethinking Exile, Diaspora and Home in Israel and America

Jan 29, 2024 By Arnold M. Eisen | Public Event video | Video Lecture

For many Jews in Israel and America, the war with Hamas has provoked a reconsideration of long-held assumptions about Israel, the Diaspora, and the relationship between the two. This lecture considers whether America can be a true home for Jews or whether is it another instance of exile, albeit different in some respects from all others—and it aska these same questions regarding Israel. We examine a variety of responses to these questions by Americans and Israelis, Zionists and non-Zionists, that sharpen debate and challenge convictions that we hold dear. 

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“Zion in the Diaspora”: How Jews Imagined They Lived in Zion Wherever They Actually Lived

“Zion in the Diaspora”: How Jews Imagined They Lived in Zion Wherever They Actually Lived

Jan 22, 2024 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Jews through the ages have hoped that one day the Messiah would come, leading them back to Zion. But in the meantime, they lived all over the world, making homes in one diaspora or another. And remarkably, they often spoke of their diaspora homes as “Zion,” a place of redemption long before actual redemption. In this session, we will examine multiple such teachings and traditions including teachings of the great Maharal of Prague (16th century), early Hasidic masters (18th century), and others. We will consider what it means for Jews to imagine themselves in their eternal homes while living abroad

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What Do Tefillin Do?

What Do Tefillin Do?

Jan 19, 2024 By Lara Rodin | Commentary | Bo

Our sages explained that the placement of our tefillin as a “sign upon our hands” and a “reminder on our foreheads” is meant to represent the intellect (tefillin shel rosh) and the physicality (tefillin shel yad) of a person. For Keli Yakar, Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron Luntschitz, both the tefillin that sits on our arm and the tefillin that sits above our eyes are meant to represent the dichotomy that is at play between thought and action.

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Between the Lines: Palestine 1936

Between the Lines: Palestine 1936

Nov 7, 2023 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Oren Kessler discusses his book Palestine 1936 which tells the epic story—for the first time in English—of the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt in British Mandate Palestine, the forgotten first “Intifada” that was a seminal event in the birth of Israel and the Middle East conflict, with lasting repercussions.

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Between the Lines: We Are Not One

Between the Lines: We Are Not One

Feb 7, 2023 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

In We Are Not One, historian Eric Alterman traces the debate about the fate of the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, from its 19th-century origins. Following Israel’s 1948/49 War of Independence (called the Nakba or “catastrophe” by Palestinians), few Americans, including few Jews, paid much attention to Israel or the challenges it faced. Following the 1967 Six Day War, however, almost overnight, support for Israel became the primary component of American Jews’ collective identity. Over time, Jewish organizations joined forces with conservative Christians and neoconservative pundits and politicos to wage a tenacious fight to define Israel’s image in the US media, popular culture, Congress, and on college campuses. We Are Not One reveals how our consensus on Israel and Palestine emerged and why, today, it is fracturing.

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The Protest Literature of Mizrahi Writers

The Protest Literature of Mizrahi Writers

Aug 8, 2022 By Beverly Bailis | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Download Sources With Dr. Beverly Bailis, Adjunct Associate Professor of Jewish Literature   Dr. Bailis discusses protest literature written by different generations of Mizrahi writers and examine how these literary works give voice to these writers’ experience in Israeli society, from the Great Immigration in the 1950s to today. In particular, considering how the stories these writers […]

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Beyond the Flag: The Religious Dimensions of Yom Ha’atzma’ut

Beyond the Flag: The Religious Dimensions of Yom Ha’atzma’ut

Apr 27, 2020 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Israel Independence Day, commemorates a historical event – the declaration of the new State of Israel. From the beginning, however, it was also framed as a religious holiday. We will look at how, drawing on the liturgy of Hannukah, Purim, Shabbat and Passover, a holiday ritual was created, one that provides the religious language with which to speak of a fundamentally political event. 

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