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These are the Developments of the Human
May 26, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Ethan Daniel Davidson discussed his book, These are the Developments of the Human, a compilation of wisdom and insights that he captured over years of various study partnerships of Jewish text with rabbis and other learners from across the world.
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Crushing the Red Flowers
May 13, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author Jennifer Voigt Kaplan discussed her book, Crushing the Red Flowers, which tells the story of how two ordinary boys cope under the extraordinary circumstances of Kristallnacht.
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“It is the music that makes us the Abayudaya:” The Cantors Assembly in Uganda
Apr 29, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
In winter 2019, members and affiliates of the Cantors Assembly traveled to Uganda on a mission of solidarity, learning, and peoplehood with the Abayudaya Jewish community. Trip participants Dr. Amanda Ruppenthal Stein and Hazzan Jeremy Stein discuss the experiences by the CA mission’s participants. Part of Musical Journeys with The Library of JTS.
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The Jewish Music of Leonard Bernstein
Apr 22, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Hazzan David F. Tilman examines the works of Leonard Bernstein using a rich variety of musical recordings and archival photographs.
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Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Apr 20, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
In Dangerous Religious Ideas, Rabbi Mikva argues all religious ideas are dangerous—not only those we might consider extremist, but even those that stand at the heart of faith. Because most religious traditions have always understood this peril, they have transmitted tools of self-critique as essential to their teachings.
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Cantors, Controversy, & Compassion: Searching for God in Musical Complexity
Apr 15, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
What are the spiritual possibilities of music? Five-hundred years ago, rabbis, cantors and Jewish musicians began to explore this question in dramatic new ways. Extended niggunim, orchestras to welcome the Sabbath bride, meshorerim (musical assistants to the cantor), new Hebrew treatises on music, and the borrowing of European musical technique and style contributed to this experimental climate in the synagogues of early modern Europe. But these changes also incited concern and anger from traditionalists, who worried that musical complexity would compromise the halachic and spiritual integrity of authentic prayer.
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All the Horrors of War
Apr 6, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
All the Horrors of War follows Hugh Llewelyn Glyn Hughes, a high-ranking British officer, and Rachel Genuth, a Jewish teenager from the Hungarian provinces, as they navigate the final, brutal year of World War II. Their stories converge before the war’s end, in Bergen-Belsen, where Hughes finds himself responsible for an unprecedented situation: thousands of war-ravaged inmates are in need of immediate hospitalization, including Genuth.
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Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe
Mar 17, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Author and professor Paola Tartakoff of Rutgers University discusses her new book, Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe, which explores the “Norwich Circumcision Case” from multiple perspectives.
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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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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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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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Communings of the Spirit, Vol. III
Dec 7, 2020 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A discussion with Dr. Mel Scult: Mordecai M. Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, and the rabbi who initiated the first Bat Mitzvah, also produced the longest Jewish diary on record. In 27 volumes, running from 1913 to 1978, Kaplan shares with us not only his reaction to the great events of his time, but also his very personal thoughts on every aspect of religion and Jewish life. In this volume, editor and Kaplan biographer Mel Scult presents Kaplan contemplating the momentous events of the 1940s.
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Bound in the Bond of Life
Dec 1, 2020 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A discussion with author Dr. Beth Kissileff: On October 27, 2018, three congregations were holding their morning Shabbat services at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood when a lone gunman entered the building and opened fire. He killed 11 people and injured six more in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. The story made international headlines for weeks following the shooting, but Pittsburgh and the local Jewish community could not simply move on when the news cycle did.
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Tales of the Holy Mysticat
Nov 12, 2020 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
In Tales of the Holy Mysticat, Rabbi Adler, a professor of Modern Jewish Thought and one of our generation’s most profoundly creative scholars, uses a collection of whimsical stories, interspersed with cleverly drawn black-and-white illustrations, to provide unique insights into Jewish mysticism. And it’s all portrayed through the life of her cat. In this online conversation, Rabbi Adler discusses how, just as the Holy Mysticat became Adler’s teacher, so too can the Holy Mysticat teach us all.
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Remix Judaism
Nov 9, 2020 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Relying on modern Jewish sociology, in addition to narratives running the gamut from the Talmud to timely interviews and personal stories, Remix Judaism shows how a Jewish tradition open to personal meaning can substantially deepen one’s connection to Jewish tradition.
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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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Abraham Joshua Heschel: Mind, Heart, Soul
Dec 10, 2019 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
A discussion with author Edward K. Kaplan about his biography of one of the most outstanding Jewish thinkers of the 20th century.
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Translating the Book of Job
Nov 14, 2019 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
A discussion with renowned scholar Dr. Edward Greenstein about his revelatory new translation of the Book of Job.
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Confronting Hate
Oct 24, 2019 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
A discussion about the social justice work of the late Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, with his widow Dr. Georgette Bennett, a humanitarian and philanthropist.
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