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The End of Days in Isaiah: Coming Soon (and Still Waiting)
Jul 20, 2020 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The prophet Isaiah is famous for his descriptions of the aftertimes, a period of world peace that will follow a cataclysmic crisis. Several of these passages are well-known, whether from haftarot, from Handel’s Messiah, or from the inscription across the street from the United Nations. The details and the fascinating synthesis of universalism and particularism in his vision of the future, however, are less widely understood. We explore a few of these sections to discover precisely what Isaiah had in mind, and why his vision, so long delayed, remains compelling and influential.
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The Promise and Perils of Revolution: Jewish Life in the Soviet Union After 1917
Jul 13, 2020 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The 1917 Russian revolution and its aftermath were a time of both promise and crisis for the Jews of Russia, who constituted the largest Jewish community in the world at the time. The Soviet Union was the first state to outlaw antisemitism, and more than half of the first Soviet cabinet consisted of Jews. Yet the new regime mercilessly persecuted organized religion and outlawed all non-Communist political movements, including Zionism. Focusing on the years between the revolution and the Second World War, this session explores the diversity of Jewish responses to sweeping political and social change.
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In the Wake of the Golden Calf: Is God Punishing Us?
Jul 6, 2020 By Yedida Eisenstat | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Israel’s fashioning of the Golden Calf–an immediate and direct violation of the first commandment they had just heard directly from God—led God to threaten to destroy all of Israel. Responding to this crisis, Moses protected Israel from God’s temper and renegotiated the terms of the people’s relationship with God. In this session, we revisit this episode and closely read a number of fascinating interpretations. In particular, we focus on the questions of divine justice and mercy raised in Rashi’s comment that in every generation God will exact a little bit of punishment from Israel for fashioning the Golden Calf.
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Remembering the Pandemic: Learning from Yehuda Amichai
Jun 29, 2020 By Barbara Mann | Public Event video | Video Lecture
What will we remember from this pandemic? And how will we preserve and pass down the memory of those we’ve lost to future generations? Through a close reading of Yehuda Amichai’s “And Who Will Remember the Rememberers?”, a poem sequence exploring Israel’s memorialization of 1948, we reflect on the elusiveness of memory, the limits of public forms of memorializing and mourning, and the paradoxical relationship between memory and forgetting.
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“A Time to Weep”: The Power of Lament in Times of Crisis
Jun 22, 2020 By Alan Cooper | Public Event video | Video Lecture
More than a century ago, William James asserted that prayer was “the very soul and essence of religion.” At the same time that James was writing, biblical scholars were identifying and analyzing the forms and genres of biblical prayer. One of the most prominent of them is the lament, in which worshippers (individual or communal) cry out to God in times of duress. The effusion of pain and grief is a way of reaching out for the knowledge and comfort of God’s Presence—for reassurance that the suffering has been noticed and that God may be moved to provide relief. In this class, we consider selected prayers of lament in order to discern the continuing power of the genre as form of prayerful expression.
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The Art of the Jewish Family: A History Of Women In Early New York In Five Objects
Jun 22, 2020 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
An online discussion with Dr. Laura Arnold Leibman about her recent book.
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Literature as Lifeline: What were Jews Reading and Writing in the Ghettos?
Jun 15, 2020 By Edna Friedberg | Public Event video | Video Lecture
During the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of Jews were imprisoned in urban prison zones known as ghettos. Reading and writing offered a form of spiritual sustenance to these communities under siege. This is an exploration of the literature that Jews passed around the ghettos–novels, poetry, religious commentary, and even dark humor.
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Reflections at a Time of Crisis and Change
Jun 15, 2020 By Arnold M. Eisen | Public Event video | Video Lecture
A conversation between Chancellor Arnold Eisen and Rabbi Micah Peltz of Temple Beth Sholom (Cherry Hill, NJ) about the challenges of COVID-19, racial injustice, and other issues confronting our world and the Jewish community today.
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Is There a Jewish Continuity Crisis?
Jun 8, 2020 By Michal Raucher | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Dr. Michal Raucher, JTS fellow and assistant professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, examines the phenomenon of Jewish leaders Invoking the threat of a demographic crisis to implore young Jews to procreate at higher rates. Using biblical, rabbinic, and contemporary texts, she’ll consider what it would mean to think about Jewish continuity not solely in terms of creating more Jews but also cultivating and supporting the values central to our tradition.
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The Immigration Crises Then and Now: What Are the 21st Century Possibilities?
Jun 1, 2020 By Ruth Messinger | Public Event video | Video Lecture
We look at our Jewish history as immigrants in ancient and modern times and then consider the status and treatment of immigrants today in the U.S. and elsewhere. We will briefly review U.S. law and practice on immigration and discuss what the options are for making change and consider what the Jewish position should be on these issues.
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The Ten Commandments in 20/20
May 26, 2020 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Shavuot
The Ten Commandments, read on the first day of Shavuot, are a foundational text of Judaism. But their prominence is also a puzzle. Why were these statements singled out from all other mitzvot to be publicly proclaimed to all Israel? What gives these brief pronouncements their distinctive significance?
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Fake News and the Resurgence of Antisemitism
May 18, 2020 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Public Event video | Video Lecture
How can we make sense of the resurgence of antisemitism from both right and left a mere 70 years after the Holocaust? Together we’ll examine foundational texts that gave rise to hatred of Jews and Judaism and reflect on what we can learn from them about how best to respond to today’s manifestations.
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What Should an Educated Jew Know? When and Why This Question Emerged in the 18th Century—and Continues to Confound Us
May 11, 2020 By Jack Wertheimer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
What should a literate Jew know about Jewish civilization and its foundational texts? And what obligation do Jews have to acquire knowledge so they can function well in society at large? For reasons we will explore, these questions surfaced intensely during the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. How they were answered then and how these questions continue to reverberate in our time will be addressed in this online class.
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Life Under Siege: The Talmud’s Take on Trying Times
May 4, 2020 By Sarah Wolf | Public Event video | Video Lecture
How do we understand the relationship between the multiple complicating factors that arise in moments of communal hardship, such as questions of political leadership, unreliable news sources, physical privation, and economic disparity? The interplay of these challenges is at the core of a Talmudic story about the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans. Through an exploration of the values and priorities portrayed in this story, this class will help shed new light on the tensions of our present moment.
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Beyond the Flag: The Religious Dimensions of Yom Ha’atzma’ut
Apr 27, 2020 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Israel Independence Day, commemorates a historical event – the declaration of the new State of Israel. From the beginning, however, it was also framed as a religious holiday. We will look at how, drawing on the liturgy of Hannukah, Purim, Shabbat and Passover, a holiday ritual was created, one that provides the religious language with which to speak of a fundamentally political event.
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Imagining a New World When Your Old One Collapses: The Rabbinic Response to the Destruction of the Temple
Apr 20, 2020 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
In 70 CE, the Jewish world changed catastrophically. The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the Judaism prescribed by the Torah became impossible. Into this gap, the rabbis emerged to create a new, vibrant Judaism that required no particular center in any place. What is the system they created and how does it fill the gap left by the destruction?
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A History of the Talmud
Feb 25, 2020 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video
A discussion with JTS’s Dr. David Kraemer about his new book, which offers a sophisticated but accessible introduction to the Talmud, its origins, and its status through history.
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From Scroll to Screen: Revolutions in Jewish Book History
Feb 9, 2020 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Leading scholars explore the remarkable story of Jews and books: their historic role in advancing new reading formats; their creative use of technology; their critical work demonstrating the enduring relevance of the printed word; and their love of the Jewish book as a material object as well as an object of study.
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The 2020 John Leopold and Martha Dellheim Senior Recital
Jan 30, 2020 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
H. L. Miller Cantorial School graduating seniors Jacob Agar, Arielle Green, and Jacob Greenberg present an evening of song in Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish, and English.
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Gene Editing and the Transformation of Human Life: Perspectives from Jewish Ethics
Nov 21, 2019 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Revolutionary technology known as CRISPR has enabled scientists to change human genes, holding great medical promise. But it also raises significant ethical questions. Should there be restrictions on the development of this technology? How can we avoid abuse? Should we be able to design human beings and control evolution? Join us to explore these vital issues from the perspective of Jewish ethics.
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