Public Keynote Lecture and Academic Conference on Forgiveness at JTS
May 14, 2025
Professor George Yaakov Kohler of Bar-Ilan University recently delivered a public evening lecture at JTS on “Leo Baeck on Repentance and Forgiveness Before and After the Holocaust” in front of a diverse audience of community members, students, JTS faculty, colleagues from Bar-Ilan University, and scholars from other academic institutions. The lecture can be viewed here.
Professor Kohler provided a robust introduction to the life and thought of Leo Baeck in general, not shying away from difficult questions about the complex challenges and choices German Jewish community leaders faced during the Holocaust. Professor Kohler commended two recent scholarly books on Baeck, adding that Baeck’s theology is an understudied topic. Kohler introduced the audience to Baeck’s theology of divine forgiveness, and the related concept of human forgiveness. He showed how Baeck’s ideas about forgiveness shifted in several ways and in several stages after the Holocaust. At the beginning of his historically and conceptually edifying lecture, Professor Kohler reflected personally, as a scholar visiting JTS from Israel, on how important it was especially in this present moment to have the opportunity to delve deeply into the topic of forgiveness.
The lecture on Leo Baeck was the public keynote lecture for an academic conference at JTS, “Concepts and Theories of Forgiveness in Jewish Thought” that took place over the course of two days, bringing together an impressive array of scholars. Panelists examined the question of forgiveness from many angles, by way of Jewish sources of diverse eras and genres, philosophical sources, and some comparative sources from other religious traditions.
The conference was sponsored by JTS’s Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice, with generous co-sponsorship from JTS’s Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue; Columbia’s Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; and Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
