Israel: Between Tears and Songs
Jan 26, 2018 By Hillel Gruenberg | Commentary | Beshallah
Beshallah holds special importance for me and my family—it was the parashah of the week of my son Zeke’s bris three years ago, and that of the week of my wedding to Yael two years before that. Under the huppah, my rabbi (and brother-in-law) Aaron Brusso referenced the Zohar’s likening of the parting of the Red Sea to a wedding for having weeping on one side of the event and singing on the other (Zohar 2:170b).
Read More
Forest Dark: A Novel
Jan 17, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A discussion with New York Times best-selling author Nicole Krauss on Forest Dark: A Novel.
Read More
Can the Tribes of Modern Israel Dwell Together?
Nov 29, 2017 By Arnold M. Eisen | Public Event video
On the 70th anniversary of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, a major step in the creation of Israel, the partitions within Israeli society threaten the very future of the State. Can the divisions be bridged between Israel’s secular, national religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Arab citizens? Can they talk to each other and work together to forge a new partnership? And what is the role of caring Diaspora Jews in achieving this goal?
Read More
The Life of a Hebrew Poet
Dec 29, 2017 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary
Born in 1873 in Zhitomir, Ukraine, Hayim Nahman Bialik went on to become the greatest Hebrew poet “since the time of Yehudah Halevi.” Holtzman identifies what made Bialik a national poet of the Jewish people: “a biography of epic, symbolic dimensions; a profound sense of involvement and identification with the national drama; and incontestable literary genius” (62). From humble beginnings in a family involved in the lumber trade, Bialik left at age 17 for the Volozhin yeshiva in Lithuania. There he immersed himself in yeshiva learning while simultaneously expanding his secular knowledge in preparation for academic studies in Berlin.
Read More
Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
Oct 26, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Francine Klagsbrun’s definitive new biography of Golda Meir brings to life a world figure unlike any other. An iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative, and tea-and-cake-serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel, Meir was one of the most notable women of our time.
Read More
The Other Peace Process
Oct 17, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
A discussion with Rabbi Ron Kronish on his new book, The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, A View from Jerusalem.
Read More
Land and People—When Things Get Real
Oct 27, 2017 By Hillel Gruenberg | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
Lekh Lekha is one of my favorite parashiyot because it marks the entrance of the biblical narrative “into history.” Putting aside the historicity of the Bible—the subject of no small scholarly debate—Lekh Lekha departs from the preceding biblical text as it introduces us to the lands, people, and civilizations that will serve as a backdrop for the millennia of triumph and tribulation that await Abraham, his descendants, and their contemporaries. Until now, the story has been fundamentally supernatural and ahistorical—the creation of the world and all that is in it, heavenly gifts and divine punishment, a cataclysmic flood, and extensive genealogies of the forebears of future nations, whose lifespans number in the hundreds of years.
Read More
Dinner at the Center of the Earth
Oct 18, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Dinner at the Center of the Earth, a new political thriller from Pulitzer finalist and best-selling author Nathan Englander, unfolds in the highly charged territory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Read More
