Terumah—The Gift That Elevates
Feb 16, 2024 By Eitan Fishbane | Commentary | Terumah
Sometimes we all feel like we’re giving more than we get, that we do more than our share, or that our individual needs are being sacrificed for the sake of someone else’s happiness. It is an emotional struggle that we encounter in our families and friendships. Why should I give when the other person doesn’t reciprocate in the way that I would want? If I give, will I also get what I deserve?
Read MoreLove in Dark Times: Friendship and Eros in Jewish Theology, Literature, and Ethics
Oct 25, 2023 By JTS Team | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Explore themes of love and friendship in Jewish thought with a panel of preeminent scholars. We will examine the complex and central place of love and longing in modern Hebrew literature, Jewish theology, and ethics, and consider what this rich intellectual tradition can offer for contemporary political lif
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Between the Lines: Qohelet
Oct 18, 2023 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Sukkot
In Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, philosopher Menachem Fisch and artist Debra Band together probe the biblical thinker’s inquiry into the value of life “under the sun.”
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Persecuting Ideas: The Case of Maimonides
Nov 7, 2022 By Alan Mittleman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Maimonides, the greatest Jewish figure of the Middle Ages, incorporated philosophy into his work. Both during his lifetime and afterwards, especially in Europe, Maimonides’ embrace of philosophy aroused opposition. A great controversy, lasting more than a century after his death, broke out in four distinct waves. The most philosophical sections of his work were banned, as was the study of philosophy and teaching of it to youth.
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Jewish Theology in America, Today and Tomorrow
May 23, 2022 By Arnold M. Eisen | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Professor Eisen explores recent developments in Jewish thought about God and what God requires of us as Jews and human beings against the background of past Jewish thought, recent work by non-Jewish thinkers, and Professor Eisen’s own theological reflections in the age of COVID.
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Sufferings Large and Small
Dec 15, 2020 By Sarah Wolf | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The ancient Rabbis struggled with the classic problem of theodicy: why would God let terrible things happen to good people? But they also struggled with what may seem like a more contemporary problem: if suffering is supposed to be meaningful in some way, is there any significance to our more mundane, everyday disappointments? Explore the rabbis’ perhaps surprising take both on what counts as “suffering” and what it ultimately means.
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The Other in Jewish Text and Tradition
Jan 12, 2021 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture
We live in a time of such polarization—political, racial, economic, religious—that the gaps between us sometimes feel insurmountable. But this is not a new condition for Jews, either within or outside of the Jewish community. JTS scholars guide us on an intellectual journey through Jewish history and text to understand how these gaps have been understood and, at times, bridged.
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The World in God
Nov 27, 2020 By Gordon Tucker | Commentary | Vayetzei
Our patriarch Jacob reaches a night camp on his way to Haran, a fugitive from the anger of his brother Esau. And then the text of Genesis 28:11 tells us: Vayifga bamakom. The New Jewish Version translation [JPS 1962] renders that phrase according to its straightforward, contextual meaning [peshat]: “He came upon a certain place”—a place that we learn was first called Luz, and later Bet-El. But while the peshat is the primary way of reading a biblical text, it is almost never the only way to do so.
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