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When Jews Made Fellow Jews ‘Other’: Hasidism and its Opponents
Mar 15, 2021 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The Hasidim, followers of the Ba’al Shem Tov and his spiritual heirs, emerged in the 18th century with controversial ideas related to Jewish practice and belief. While Hasidim coexisted peacefully with non-Hasidim in many communities, the Mitnagdim (“opponents”) in many larger Jewish centers in Eastern Europe reacted to the Hasidim not only with condemnation, but with writs of excommunication and measures to persecute the members of the new movement. This internal Jewish religious strife led to the division of the community into rival “denominations” for the first time in nearly a thousand years. We will study the conflict between the Hasidim and Mitnagdim and reflect on how the core principles of the dispute continue to shape our Jewish lives and guide our homes and institutions.
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The Self, the Other, and God in 20th Century Jewish Philosophy:
Cohen, Buber, and Levinas
Mar 8, 2021 By Yonatan Y. Brafman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
her, and where does our relationship to the other Other—God—fit in? Modern Jewish philosophers, including Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas placed the intersubjective relationship—the relationship between persons–at the center of their thinking. Dr. Yonatan Brafman explores their reflections—their similarities and differences—in order to grapple with its implications for Jewish ethics.
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Facing the Other: Moral Dilemmas in Israeli Literature
Mar 1, 2021 By Barbara Mann | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Lyric poetry, with its unique voice and vivid imagery, offers a brief but intense opportunity to enter into the intimate space of another. Through texts by canonical Israeli authors (Dan Pagis, Yehuda Amichai, and Dalia Ravikovitch), we will trace a series of poetic encounters between Self and Other: survivor and perpetrator; mother and child; victim and hero; Jew and Palestinian.
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A Journey Across the Jewish Past
Feb 24, 2021 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video
Hidden in the nooks and crannies of libraries and museums across the world are clues to an often-surprising Jewish past: a 15th-century Italian woman’s siddur that includes a special prayer thanking God for “creating her as a woman”; a Haggadah from a Nazi concentration camp; manuscripts from the Court Jews enmeshed in the intrigues of European kings.
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Reading the Resisting Woman as “Other”
Feb 22, 2021 By Shira D. Epstein | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Who has the right to anger? When is defiance cast as positive in our texts and when is it silenced? We will explore the Vashti narrative through the lens of power dynamics, status shifts, performing of gendered emotions, and as an example of reading the resisting woman as “Other.”
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A Single Life
Feb 18, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A discussion with author, rabbi, and scholar Daniel Ross Goodman about his novel, A Single Life, which blends a literary style and a Talmudic sensibility with the romance tradition.
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A Tour of Medieval Cairo
Feb 9, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Medieval Fustat-Cairo was a burgeoning metropolis that sat strategically astride the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and trans-Saharan trade routes, its fabulous wealth due in part to the Fatimid caliphs having founded their capital there in 969. But what was daily life like for its middling inhabitants? Marina Rustow discusses this question using fragments of the Cairo Genizah found in our collection at The JTS Library.
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Different But Equal?
The Paradox of Chosenness
Feb 8, 2021 By Alan Cooper | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Jewish conceptions of chosenness or election—rooted especially in the language of Exodus 19:5-6—traditionally were hierarchical, often asserting Jewish superiority over others. Such notions run afoul of modern ideas about social justice, typically anchored in egalitarian values that would have been alien to pre-modern authors. Is it possible to uphold a version of Jewish “difference” that is simultaneously non-hierarchical yet answerable to traditional sources?
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Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Land of the Soviets
Feb 1, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A discussion with author and historian Elissa Bemporad about her book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets.
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Other Gods: What the Bible Thinks about Other Nations’ Deities
Feb 1, 2021 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The Bible frequently instructs the nation Israel not to worship “other gods” (אלהים אחרים). But the Bible never actually states that these other gods do not exist. Praying to other gods would be an act of disloyalty for an Israelite, but not an absurdity—there are apparently other gods who would hear the prayers in question. In fact, the Bible regards it as perfectly appropriate for other nations to worship them, because the “other gods” are simply the gods of other nations. In this session, we will examine the biblical attitude toward these other gods and what their existence implies about other religions. We will see, paradoxically, that the Bible remains monotheistic, even though it acknowledges the existence of many deities.
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Some Unexpected Stories About Women in the Talmud
Jan 25, 2021 By Judith Hauptman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Although most Talmudic anecdotes feature men, some feature wives, mothers, and daughters of rabbis. These women learned Jewish law, and even, on occasion, helped formulate it. Join Dr. Judith Hauptman to study several of these short episodes and explore their significance, both historically and through the present day.
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Speaking Out Against Hate
Jan 19, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Acclaimed Polish poet and musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski speaks to the Library’s Dr. David Kraemer about his public condemnation of Holocaust denial, genocide, and the rise of populism, xenophobia, and nationalism in Poland and beyond.
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The Relentless Pursuit of Racial Justice
Jan 15, 2021 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
For Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, the Rev. John Vaughn of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta joins us to discuss renewing the Black-Jewish coalition for social Justice.
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The Other in Jewish Text and Tradition
Jan 12, 2021 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture
We live in a time of such polarization—political, racial, economic, religious—that the gaps between us sometimes feel insurmountable. But this is not a new condition for Jews, either within or outside of the Jewish community. JTS scholars guide us on an intellectual journey through Jewish history and text to understand how these gaps have been understood and, at times, bridged.
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Demanding or Disengaging: How to Respond When We Feel Abandoned by God
Jan 12, 2021 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Public Event video
Part of the series, “Hope in the Time of Covid” at B’nai Torah Congregation, Boca Raton, FL.
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Judaism for the World: A Neo-Hasidic Perspective
Jan 11, 2021 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Who are we? Why do we exist? Where are we going? How should we live? In his masterful new book, Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love, Rabbi Arthur Green offers a deeply resonant response to these eternal human questions.
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The Challenge of Accepting the ‘Other’: Jewish Attitudes Toward Converts
Jan 4, 2021 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
One of the best ways to understand the identity of a community or people is to consider what happens when someone who is originally an “other”—a “foreigner”—approaches to become a member of the community. How does the community respond? Does the community permit the “foreigner” to become one of its own? What residual attitudes are expressed toward one who began as “other” and part of the community? In the case of Jews and Judaism, all of these questions pertain to the case of the convert. In this session, we will examine how the convert has been viewed and treated in Judaism, from antiquity and through the ages. By doing so, we will gain a more nuanced understanding of who “we” are.
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Living a Life of Meaning
Dec 21, 2020 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The disruption to normal life, and, for many, close encounters with mortality, provides an opportunity to evaluate what is truly important in our lives. Guided by JTS faculty and fellows, we will discuss the role of values, ethics, and Torah in the quest for a well-lived life.
The Book Smugglers of the Vilna Ghetto: Choosing a Life of Meaning Under the Specter of Death
Dec 21, 2020 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
In Vilna, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” a group of Jewish writers and intellectuals risked their lives to rescue Jewish books, manuscripts, and art from the Nazis. While working as slave laborers for a Nazi looting agency, they “stole” Jewish cultural treasures from their masters, smuggled them into the ghetto, and hid them in underground cellars and bunkers. The few members of this group who survived the war returned to Vilna after its liberation, and led an operation to retrieve the treasures.
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Sufferings Large and Small
Dec 15, 2020 By Sarah Wolf | Public Event video | Video Lecture
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? Explore the rabbis’ perhaps surprising take both on what counts as “suffering” and what it ultimately means.
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