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Four Rabbis at Lunch: Candid Conversations Among American Clergy
May 28, 2019 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Four rabbis from a local community—one Orthodox, two Conservative, and one Reform—meet each week at a local kosher deli to discuss Jewish law, theology, and synagogue business. This new work of fiction from Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins is an opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall and find out what rabbis talk about when no one else is listening.
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The Paris Photo
Mar 14, 2019 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
A discussion with author Dr. Jane S. Gabin about her historical novel.
Movies and Midrash
Dec 4, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Dr. Wendy Zierler’s Movies and Midrash pioneers the use of cinema as a springboard to discuss central Jewish texts and matters of belief.
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The Poet’s Hand
Jun 29, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary
Beginning with Siddur Sim Shalom, Conservative prayer books began including a slightly different version of the much-loved Sabbath evening hymn Yedid Nefesh. The changes, though mostly slight, caused—and sometimes still cause—confusion, disrupting those who learned the traditionally printed version of this hymn with different grammatical forms and a few different words. What caused the change and why was it deemed sufficiently important that it should supersede the better-known version?
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The Beauty of the Word
Jun 1, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary
Take a look at these pages from a volume in our collection that includes the Pentateuch and Psalms, along with Masoretic notes and a grammatical introduction. It will not surprise you to learn that it was written in Yemen in 1325. Locating the manuscript in this time and place doesn’t surprise, because, stylistically speaking, it is so similar to Islamic art of the same period. As you may know, Muslims overwhelmingly avoided representation of living creatures in their art (the same cannot be said of Jews, who habitually ignored the second commandment), preferring to create their “images” with the words of scripture (in their case, the Quran).
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Waking Lions
Apr 24, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Important next-generation Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s gripping novel narrates the aftermath of an Israeli neurosurgeon’s accidental killing of an Eritrean migrant. Newly translated from Hebrew, this tightly crafted story is as timely as it is riveting.
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If All the Seas Were Ink
Mar 13, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
At the age of 27, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce, Ilana Kurshan decided to begin learning daf yomi, the “daily page” of the Talmud. By the time she completed the Talmud after seven and a half years, Kurshan was remarried with three young children.
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A Precious Hebrew Manuscript
Feb 23, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary
Knowing almost nothing about this beautiful manuscript, what would you guess it is? Finely decorated with gold leaf, Hebrew, small for easy carrying (these qualities are all obvious from the photo)—all of these characteristics suggest that it is a dear personal item, one that a wealthy Jew commissioned because of the importance of what it records. Knowing that it is a fifteenth-century manuscript, produced in Spain—before the age of printed books—would only highlight for us how rare it was.
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The Ruined House: A Novel
Jan 31, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Ruby Namdar’s The Ruined House received the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary award. Now newly translated into English, Namdar’s tale of a man whose comfortable secular life begins to unravel in the face of haunting religious visions cuts to the core of contemporary Jewish-American identity.
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Forest Dark: A Novel
Jan 17, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A discussion with New York Times best-selling author Nicole Krauss on Forest Dark: A Novel.
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The Life of a Book
Dec 15, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary
Every book has a life of its own, sometimes mundane and sometimes astonishing. The life of the book in which this page is found has been quite extraordinary. The book is a Hebrew Bible. It was born of fine parchment and ink, shaped by craftsmen and scribes who spared no effort to make it the best of its kind. It was written for a wealthy family in Toledo, Spain, in the 15th century, in order that they “and their children and their children’s children” might study it forever. Remarkably, it has survived to this day.
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Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World
Dec 4, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Mark R. Cohen’s new book Maimonides and the Merchants suggests that, like the Geonim before him, Maimonides wished to provide Jewish merchants an alternative and comparable forum to the Islamic legal system and thereby shore up an important cornerstone of communal autonomy.
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What Makes a Book “Torah”?
Nov 24, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary
In the manuscript age, what distinguished “Torah” from other writing? One of the key answers to this question is that manuscripts were fluid and each copy therefore different from any other, while Torah—as the word of God and the source of Jewish tradition—had to be precise and unchanging.
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Distance Learning from the Back of Shul
Oct 27, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary
When we think of “the book” (as in “the people of the book”), we picture a bound volume with pages sitting open before a reader on a table or a lap. It we are speaking of the Torah, that book is typically a humash, which will often be found in the seat back of the seat in front of you in the synagogue. The same is true of a prayer book.
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Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
Oct 26, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Francine Klagsbrun’s definitive new biography of Golda Meir brings to life a world figure unlike any other. An iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative, and tea-and-cake-serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel, Meir was one of the most notable women of our time.
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Dinner at the Center of the Earth
Oct 18, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
Dinner at the Center of the Earth, a new political thriller from Pulitzer finalist and best-selling author Nathan Englander, unfolds in the highly charged territory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The Other Peace Process
Oct 17, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
A discussion with Rabbi Ron Kronish on his new book, The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, A View from Jerusalem.
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Licensed to Kill (Kosher Animals)
Aug 18, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary | Re'eh
In Deut. 12:20–25, explicit permission is given for the slaughter and consumption of meat outside of the sacrificial system. The passage includes the phrase “as I have instructed you” (v. 21), and the Talmud identifies these words as the source of the various prescriptions for kosher slaughter (shehitah) (BT Hullin 28a).
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The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ‘Eli on the Book of Proverbs
May 9, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio
Ilana Sasson, instructor at Sacred Heart University and JTS alumna, will discuss her new critical edition of a key Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Proverbs.
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A Scroll of The Song of Songs
Apr 14, 2017 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary | Pesah
This decorated scroll of Shir Hashirim (which is read on the Shabbat of Pesah) is a product of the circle of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, dated to circa 1930, though the scribe and artist are unidentified. The artistic movement associated with this school was informed by the Zionist ideals of the society in which it was immersed.
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