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The Still, Small Voice: A Journalist and Her Rabbi on Regaining Intimate, Authentic Conversation
Apr 6, 2022 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Two years ago, when the pandemic first hit, good friends Dahlia Lithwick and Rabbi Jan Uhrbach decided it was time to begin the weekly Jewish study session they’d been talking about for a while.
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Mandatory Fun: The Commandment of Joy
Apr 4, 2022 By Sarah Wolf | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Usually we think of the mitzvot, the commandments of Jewish law, as involving specific actions. Yet the Torah also commands us to feel certain emotions, including love for God and joy on the festivals. Dr. Sarah Wolf to explores rabbinic texts that grapple with questions about what fulfillment of such a commandment should look like.
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Hate on Trial: The Charlottesville Case
Mar 30, 2022
In August 2017, white nationalists orchestrated a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—with torch-carrying marchers chanting, “Jews will not replace us.“ The result was intimidation, violence, and death. In November 2021, at a landmark trial in Charlottesville, a jury found the rally organizers liable and awarded more than $25 million in damages.
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Divine Rage
Mar 28, 2022 By Amy Kalmanofsky | Public Event video | Video Lecture
God’s anger has been a problem for generations of theologians. Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky explores the power and purpose of divine rage and the different ways the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel use God’s anger.
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Loneliness as a Spiritual Crisis
Mar 21, 2022 By Mychal Springer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Rabbi Mychal Springer explores the existential issues related to belonging and abandonment, drawing on Jewish spiritual resources that help foster a loving embrace, divine and human, even when we must carefully balance distance and proximity in the face of contagion.
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Purim Eve On (and Off) Broadway!
Mar 16, 2022 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Purim
Watch the parody songs: View the whole service: For Ma’ariv (Evening Service) and Megillat Esther (Book of Esther), we will be using the Rabbinical Assembly’s newly published volume featuring a new translation of Esther by Dr. Pamela Barmash, an alumna of JTS’s Rabbinical School, and the translation of the evening service from Siddur Lev Shalem. […]
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Compassion and Love in Jewish Mystical Sources
Mar 14, 2022 By Eitan Fishbane | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Through study of Kabbalistic texts ranging from 13th-century Spain to 16th-century Tzfat, Dr. Eitan Fishbane, associate professor of Jewish Thought, JTS, explored how the related themes of love and compassion were central to the spiritual and ethical thinking of key Kabbalists. For these mystics, compassion and love were simultaneously ideals in relation to other people and in relation to God; what is more, many understood interpersonal compassion and love as actual manifestations of Divinity in the earthly realm. Our createdness in the image of God brings the ideals of emotion and virtue to life in the physical world.
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Space, Place, and Communities of Faith
Mar 13, 2022
Renowned architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien say that the foundation of architecture “lies in believing that it is possible to make places on earth that can give a sense of grace to life.” Join Williams, Tsien, and their partner Paul Schulhof when they speak with Professor Barbara Mann about their philosophy and how it is reflected in their design for the JTS campus.
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The “Burning Heart”:
From the Book of Jeremiah to the Metropolitan Opera
Mar 7, 2022 By Alan Cooper | Public Event video | Video Lecture
In Jeremiah 20:9, the prophet compares the divine word to “a burning fire in my heart, shut up in my bones.” This powerful image of irresistible passion constrained has long been interpreted in both positive and negative ways. Dr. Alan Cooper examined how the image has been used by Jewish authors and also glance at the way it has come to prominence as the title of both Charles M. Blow’s memoir and Terence Blanchard’s pioneering opera based on the memoir. Dr. Alan Cooper examined how the image has been used by Jewish authors and also glance at the way it has come to prominence as the title of both Charles M. Blow’s memoir and Terence Blanchard’s pioneering opera based on the memoir.
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Can American Judaism Change Jewish Identity in Israel?
Mar 3, 2022
THE HENRY N. AND SELMA S. RAPAPORT MEMORIAL LECTURE “The New Jew”—a recent Israeli TV documentary series exploring the diverse and creative ways in which American Jews express their Jewishness—was immensely popular in Israel. What accounts for Israelis’ positive response to several distinctively American models of Jewish identity and practice? How can religious expression in […]
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The Jewish Community of Ukraine and the Current Crisis
Mar 2, 2022 By David Fishman | Public Event video
There are between 50,000 to 100,000 Jews in Ukraine today. This talk, featuring Dr. David Fishman and senior JTS rabbinical student Alisa Tzipi Zilbershtein, analyzed the state of the community, and its reactions to the unfolding events.
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Jealousy and Gender in Rabbinic Literature
Feb 28, 2022 By Sarah Wolf | Public Event video | Video Lecture
“Men are more likely to have anger issues.” “Women are more sensitive than men are.” We are all familiar with gendered beliefs and stereotypes about emotion in today’s world. Presumptions about gender and emotion also existed in the time of the rabbis, though not necessarily the ones we’d expect. Join Dr. Sarah Wolf to look at rabbinic texts about jealousy and other emotions that are portrayed as negative or dangerous, noticing how gender roles function in these texts, and to reflect on how rabbinic ideas about gender and emotions can help us shed light on our own.
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Love During the Holocaust
Feb 14, 2022 By Edna Friedberg | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The Holocaust was one of the most profound ruptures in Jewish history. And yet, the foundational human emotion of love persisted—and even blossomed—in the most devastating circumstances. Dr. Edna Friedberg explores the varied manifestations of love—romantic, parental, platonic—at a time of terror and loss. Each of these forms of deep affection and connection offered psychological sustenance and sometimes spurred life-saving acts of courage and altruism. The session will draw from primary sources including diaries, oral testimonies, artifacts, and historical photographs.
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Unlocking the Gates of Heaven: The Transformative Power of Grief
Feb 7, 2022 By Rachel Rosenthal | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Grief is a primal emotion, often associated with paralysis, but sometimes it has the power to generate great change in the face of loss. In this session, we will study some rabbinic sources that focus on grief and the ways that the rabbis use it to transform their circumstances and their communities.
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Emotions and Reason, Experience and Intellect: Two Views of the Book of Psalms
Jan 31, 2022 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
What sort of religious experience does the Book of Psalms reflect and encourage? Does the book primarily appeal to our emotions, or is it first and foremost a work to be studied on an intellectual level? Join Dr. Benjamin Sommer to see how the Book of Psalms provides its own answers to these questions. By addressing these questions, we will have an opportunity to think about the relative places in Judaism of emotion and reason, heart and mind, and to explore the relationship between prayer and text-study in the Bible and rabbinic Judaism.
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Between 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.
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Between 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.
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The Importance of Shame in Rabbinic Tradition
Jan 24, 2022 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
We often think of shame or embarrassment as an experience to be avoided, and, to be sure, rabbinic tradition considers shaming someone else in public to be a grievous sin. But the Talmud also teaches that the capacity to feel shame is important, for the fear of shame will keep one from sin. Join Dr. David Kraemer to discuss this complicated emotion and how Jewish tradition “feels” about it.
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Between 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.
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Between 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.
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