JTS Torah Commentary

Holidays

By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Collected Resources | Hanukkah | Pesah | Purim | Rosh Hashanah | Shavuot | Shemini Atzeret | Simhat Torah | Sukkot | Tishah Be'av | Yom Hashoah | Yom Hazikaron-Yom Ha'atzma'ut | Yom Kippur

Explore these sources from scholars and students at JTS to enrich your holiday experience.

Cultivating a Habit of Generosity

By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Public Event video

Part of the Global Day of Jewish Learning. With Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, PhD, Rabbi Judah Nadich Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS  What is the relationship between our level of generosity and our beliefs, our attitudes, and our actions? For Rav Eliyahu Dessler (1892–1953, Belarus/England/Israel), love, faith, empathy, and social bonding are consequences of generosity—not its causes. In […]

Nusah and Cantillation

Recordings by Cantor Arianne Brown and Rabbi & Hazzan Seth AdelsonProject coordinator: Rabbi David Freidenreich Nusah hatefillah—or simply nusah—is the prayer chant tradition that Jews have been using in synagogues, homes, and batei midrash (houses of study) for nearly two millennia. Virtually all liturgy is associated with a traditional nusah—a particular musical mode and set of motifs […]

The John Leopold and Martha Dellheim Senior Recital 2024

Graduating cantorial students, Gedalia Penner-Robinson, Ingrid Barnett, David Childs, Max Silverstone, and Neal Taibel, share their talents and their vision for the 21st-century cantorate. The recitals feature a wide range of Jewish music in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish, as well as hazzanut, and Israeli traditional and pop songs. Choral works, and compositions written and composed by our graduates, will also be performed. The soloists, along with guest artists, are accompanied by pianist Joyce Rosenzweig, JTS adjunct instructor, and the combined Choir of the H. L. Miller Cantorial School and the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, conducted by Hazzan Natasha Hirschhorn.

Capstone Project

Part of the JTS Certificate in Biblical Hebrew After completing the four-course sequence, participants are encouraged to apply their biblical grammar knowledge and skills to a section of Tanakh and develop an original translation.  There is no cost to complete this optional project.  Planning Your Capstone  Return to Biblical Hebrew at JTS

A Sacred Space: Synagogue Architecture and Identity

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

October 26, 2023–March 7, 2024 The JTS Library exhibit, “A Sacred Space: Synagogue Architecture and Identity,” offers an exciting opportunity to view a large selection of rare prints depicting historic synagogues. The exhibit, co-curated by Samuel D. Gruber and Sharon Liberman Mintz, will trace the history of European synagogue styles from the 17th to the 19th […]

Living Yiddish in New York

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

This exhibit introduced visitors to rare archival materials that provided a snapshot of New York City as an important center of modern Yiddish culture. Between 1880 and 1924, approximately two million Eastern European Jews immigrated to the United States. Many of them settled in New York City, which by 1914 was home to 1.4 million Jews, among them the world’s largest urban population of Yiddish speakers.

The Work of Her Hands: The Art of Lynne Avadenka and the Craft of Jewish Women Printers

This exhibit featured a selection of rare books printed by Jewish women from the earliest days of Hebrew publishing alongside new artwork created by American artist/printmaker Lynne Avadenka. 

The Jews of Corfu: Between the Adriatic and the Ionian

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

This unprecedented exhibition offered a window into the rich history and culture of the little-known Jewish communities of Corfu. Columbia University and JTS, two of the world’s largest repositories of rare materials from Corfu, displayed a selection of illustrated prayer books, historical documents, celebratory poems, and elaborately decorated ketubbot telling the story of the island’s vibrant, distinct, and sometimes contentious Jewish communities. Situated on a major trade route, these communities thrived under Venetian and then Greek rule from the Middle Ages until 1944, when the Jews of Corfu were almost entirely annihilated by the Nazis. 

To Build a New Home: Celebrating the Jewish Wedding

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

To Build a New Home: Celebrating the Jewish Wedding featured a collection of rare materials illustrating the creative, often surprising, evolution of Jewish marriage practices over centuries.  

Ya Notein Binah

YAH NOTEIN BINAH WORDS Israel Najara (ca. 1555 – 1625 | Spain)MUSICTraditional UzbekMelody Adapted byMargo Hughes-Robinson (’21 RS, KGS)Siddur Lev Shalem (p. 123) “HUMAN BEINGS . . . CAN PLANT SEEDS WITH SONGS . . . TAKE INSTRUCTION, SING TO GOD.”Born in Damascus, the Kabbalist and prolific paytan Israel Najara adapted the themes andrhythms of […]

Exploring Kabbalah: In the Beginning

By Eitan Fishbane | Podcast or Radio Program

This episode introduces the central themes of Jewish mysticism which will be developed throughout this series. The themes are spiritual awareness and consciousness, monism (God is the oneness of ALL being) or pantheism (God is the oneness in all reality), cultivation of contemplative experiences, the principle of Ineffability (what lies beyond the ability of ordinary […]

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Hasidism

The series ends in 18th Century Eastern Europe, with the rise of Hasidism. Dr. Fishbane contends that Hasidism is a form of modern Kabbalah focused on spiritual psychology and the devotional connection between humans and God. The kabbalah of Hasidism made mysticism more accessible to a broader audience with an explicit focus on the inner […]

Vulnerability and the Omer

By Rabbi Ayelet Cohen

This speech was delivered at Tekes Hasmakah, the Ordination of JTS Rabbinical and Cantorial Students, in May 2024 by Rabbi Ayelet Cohen. TRANSCRIPT In the time you have been at rabbinical and cantorial students at JTS, the world has been transformed, punctuated by COVID and bookended by war.    This Shabbat, Parshat Emor calls us to […]

JTS High Holiday Webinars 2024

Prepare for 5785 with three meaningful, enriching sessions.

Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay

By Arnold M. Eisen | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

To mark this period of spiritual atonement and reflection, Dr. Eisen discussed his rich, original, and moving work and invite us to ask, perhaps for the first time, what we actually believe about ultimate matters of faith and doubt. Those of us searching for ultimate meaning will find reassurance that the search itself can be a source of personal fulfillment, vibrant community, and great joy. The book’s three chapters include a Passover Seder with its theme of past and future redemption; the Yom Kippur liturgy that guides worshippers through the difficult work of atonement, forgiveness and return; and the day-to-day responsibilities, personal and communal, of covenant, mitzvah, and love. 

Seeing the Unseeable: Kabbalistic Imagery from The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

March 26 – August 15, 2024 The spread of classical philosophy among Jews in the medieval period posed a significant challenge to traditional conceptions of divinity. While the God of the bible and rabbinic literature was a personal, anthropomorphic, and specifically Jewish God, the God of the philosophers was abstract, impersonal, and universal. To bridge […]

The Toledo-Constantinople Bible

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Like all Masoretic texts, the Toledo-Constantinople Bible (MS New York L6) includes precise Hebrew and Aramaic text, vocalization, and accents of the 24 books of the Hebrew canon. The colophon[1] of this Bible reveals a statement of profound resilience.

The Esslingen Mahzor

By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

In the winter of 1290 in Esslingen, a small market town in southwest Germany, a talented Jewish scribe named Kalonimos ben Yehudah completed his one surviving credited work, The Esslingen Mahzor (MS New York 9344), the earliest-dated Hebrew book made in Germany. It is a large-format prayer book created for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.