The End of Days: Eschatology and the Rabbinic Imagination
Date: Nov 30, 2026
Time: 1:00 pm - 2:10 pm
Category: Back to the Future: Jewish Perspectives on What Comes Next Online Learning
Anticipatory The End of Days: Eschatology and the Rabbinic Imagination : Remembering the Future
Part of Our Fall 2026 Learning Series, Back to the Future: Jewish Perspectives on What Comes Next
November 30, 2026
Online
1:00–2:10 p.m. ET
With Jenny Labendz, Writer and Scholar of Classical Rabbinic Literature
What did the ancient rabbis imagine when they thought about the end of days? In conversation about her new book, Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective, Dr. Jenny Labendz will introduce us to eschatology, the study of ideas about the end times or the world to come, and explore how the rabbis understood the best possible world.
Through close study of rabbinic texts and comparisons with Christian eschatology, we’ll encounter visions that are often less perfect, conclusive, or distant than we might expect, and consider what they reveal about rabbinic ideas of the future, hope, and the world in which we live.
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
Jenny R. Labendz is a scholar of classical rabbinic literature whose work focuses on texts, people, and time at the margins of community. She earned her PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from JTS in 2010, and then taught at Barnard College and Drew University before being hired at Saint Francis College, where she was associate professor of religious studies until 2025. She also spent several years teaching middle school social studies and Talmud. She is the author of Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2026) and Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture (Oxford University Press, 2013). Currently, she is a student and Sparer Public Interest Law Fellow at Brooklyn Law School pursuing a JD.
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.
