High Holiday Webinars for Rabbis

Join JTS for these free webinars designed to inspire you as you prepare for this year’s High Holiday season. 

This program is offered in collaboration with the Rabbinical Assembly. 

Sufferings Large and Small: The Religious Meaning of Life’s Everyday Disappointments  

Thursday, August 10, 2023
1:00 – 2:15 p.m. ET 
Online 

With Dr. Sarah Wolf, Assistant Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS 

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? In other words, in a world in which we know that terrible losses happen, do our “first world problems” matter? In this webinar, we’ll explore the rabbis’ understanding of the relationship between suffering and teshuva. We’ll discover the Talmud’s surprising take both on what counts as “suffering” at all, and what it ultimately means for our relationship with God. Finally, we’ll consider how rabbinic interpretive creativity in a post-Temple world can inspire and empower practitioners today. 

Polarization, Mistrust, and Teshuva: Civic Friendship in Jewish Thought and the High Holiday Liturgy 

Wednesday, August 16
1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
Online

With Dr. Shira Billet, Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics, JTS

We are living in a time of hyper-partisanship, increased mistrust among fellow citizens, and the erosion of the social fabric of our society. What does the Jewish tradition have to say about the ancient philosophical notion of “civic friendship” – the idea that that we ought to cultivate a certain kind of friendship with fellow citizens and fellow human beings who are otherwise strangers? And what does this have to do with the High Holidays, a time often associated with personal introspection, and the deepening of relationships, through forgiveness and reconciliation, with our actual friends? In this webinar, we will explore the ways in which civic friendship is a surprisingly central aspect of teshuvah and of the High Holiday liturgy more broadly, with a special focus on the Book of Jonah, the biblical book that is the central reading on Yom Kippur. We will also consider Jewish and non-Jewish philosophical sources on the theme of civic friendship. We will present civic friendship as an important theme of the Jewish calendar in general, reappearing in different forms throughout the annual cycle, and make the case that the High Holiday season is an ideal time to reflect on this urgent topic.