The Bikur Cholim Shul in Slovakia: Preparing for the Future
Date: Dec 07, 2026
Time: 1:00 pm - 2:10 pm
Category: Back to the Future: Jewish Perspectives on What Comes Next Online Learning
The Bikur Cholim Shul in Slovakia: Preparing for the Future
Part of Our Fall 2026 Learning Series, Back to the Future: Jewish Perspectives on What Comes Next
December 7, 2026
Online
1:00–2:10 p.m. ET
With Dr. Marjorie Lehman, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS
What can a collection of old books tell us about a community that is no longer there to tell its own story? And what happens when those books remain exactly where that community left them? A few hundred volumes still rest on the shelves of the Bikur Cholim Synagogue in Bardejov, Slovakia, where they have remained since the destruction of the Jewish community in 1942.
The session will explore the ways that Jewish books can be used to recover the intellectual, religious, and everyday life of Jewish Bardejov before the Holocaust. But it also asks a larger question: What does it mean to preserve a past for a unknown future?
Video recording available by request only.
If you have previously registered for another session in this series, your registration admits you to all sessions in the series, and you may attend as many as you’d like.
About the Speaker
Dr. Marjorie Lehman is a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS. This talk connects to her work with the internationally renowned digital humanities project, Footprints:Jewish Books Through Time and Place. She teaches a wide range of courses in Rabbinics, including courses on gender in Talmudic literature, aggadah, halakhah, the history of the Jewish book, and pedagogy. Her scholarly journey reflects a commitment to balancing the historical and intellectual aspects of Jewish texts while also focusing on the ways they speak to and help us to understand our place in the contemporary moment.
About the Series
Preoccupation with what comes next, especially in periods of uncertainty, is hardly a new phenomenon. Looking ahead—to what might change, what might endure, and what might be possible—runs throughout Jewish text and tradition.
In this series, JTS scholars and alumni look backward and forward, exploring how Jews across centuries have imagined what comes next, prepared for the unknown, and established what they hoped would endure. From biblical visions and rabbinic ideas about the world to come to preservation, artificial intelligence, and the future of Jewish life, we’ll ask not only what the future might hold, but how we can help shape it.
