Faculty Happenings this Summer

From Israel to summer camps to professional development workshops, JTS’s faculty have had one busy summer! Here are a few highlights:

Professor Eitan Fishbane, Professor of Jewish Thought, was selected for the Posen Library Digital Curriculum Development Fellowship. The fellows will be working to create teaching modules on Jews and citizenship; Middle Eastern and North African (MENA), Sephardic, Maghrebi, and Mizrahi Jewish experiences; rabbis and the emergence of Judaism in antiquity; and life-cycle, ritual, and observance around the world.

Professor Yitz Landes, Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures, welcomed a group of teenagers to experience JTS’s Rare Book Room as part of his responsibilities teaching young people in the Bronfman Fellowship. The fellows looked at items that touched upon various topics they had studied over the course of the summer—including ancient Torah scroll fragments from the Cairo Genizah, important Kabbalistic manuscripts from Safed and Italy, Hebrew Bibles from Spain, the decisions of the Napoleonic Sanhedrin, and the poetry of Emma Lazarus.

Professor Shira Billet, Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics, delivered several lectures throughout the world, sharing her scholarship with new audiences. Lecture titles included “Maimonides on Love and Humility in Hermann Cohen’s Anti-Eudaimonian Ethics,” “Hermann Cohen’s Hermeneutics of Holiness,” and “Shared Traditions of Parental Grief and Comfort Across Islamic and Jewish Sources.”

Read about the Paleography Workshop that Professor Marjorie Lehman, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, attended at the University of Toronto’s Fisher Library.

Professor Robbie Harris, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages, spent a meaningful and memorable summer at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. As the professor in residence, he taught campers and staff a variety of topics, including the story of Cain and Abel. He also had the opportunity to publish three articles: “From פשטי דקרא to פשוטו של מקרא: The Origins of Peshat Commentary in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Rabbinic Exegesis,” “Speaking to and About the Other: Terms for Christians and Christianity Among twelfth century Rabbinic Exegetes,” and “Rhetoric and Polemic in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Literary and Religious Interpretation in R. Yosef Kara’s Commentary on Isaiah.”

Professor Benjamin Sommer, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages, had a busy August of international travel. At the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, he presented a paper on “Psalms of Crisis.” The following week, he attended the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament meeting in Berlin, where he presented on modern Jewish commentary on the Psalter.

Professor Jonathan Milgram, Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, attended the World Congress as well. He presented a paper entitled, “The ‘Mitzvah’ of Procreation for Non-Jews” (in Hebrew) and chaired the “Studies in Talmud Yerushalmi” panel. Chancellor Emeritus Arnie Eisen was part of a session organized by Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein about his new book, In God’s Presence: A Theological Reintroduction to Judaism. Professor Eisen’s talk placed that work in dialogue with his own recently published book, Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay.