How to Make Work Meaningful for Us: Exploring the Value of Work in Biblical and Rabbinic Sources
Nov 22, 2021 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Work can be uplifting; it can also be draining and demoralizing. This depends not only on what we do but on how we do it. We’ll look at Jewish sources that offer us different ways of thinking about work and some wisdom about how to make the work we do work for us.
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If There Is No Bread, There Is No Torah: The Other Careers of the Talmudic Rabbis
Nov 15, 2021 By Rachel Rosenthal | Public Event video | Video Lecture
We often think of the rabbis in the Talmud as having careers as full-time rabbis. However, numerous narrative traditions tell us about their other jobs and their financial struggles. If one cannot make a living learning Torah, how should we balance Torah with more mundane concerns? We’ll study some of these stories together and look at some models for lives that are enriched both by Torah and by work.
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A Nice, Jewish Teacher: How American Elementary Education Became “Women’s Work”
Nov 1, 2021 By Shira D. Epstein | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Early 20th century elementary school teaching became synonymous with being female, and particularly in NYC, with being the right kind of Jewish young woman.
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The Jewish Middle Class in an Age of Social Justice
Oct 25, 2021 By Nancy Sinkoff | Public Event video | Video Lecture
his session will explore the historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s challenging essay, “The Business of American Jews: Notes on a Work in Progress” (1992), which called for a reassessment of Jewish economic social mobility as a positive value in Jewish life.
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Even God Makes Time for Leisure: Rabbinic Narratives About God’s Work, Play, and Rest Schedule
Oct 11, 2021 By Sarit Kattan Gribetz | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Genesis 2:2-3 announces that, after working hard to create the world and humanity over the course of six days, God took a day off to celebrate the Sabbath. Other passages in the Bible build upon God’s day of rest to mandate that all created beings rest, and that heads of households ensure that everyone under their control be allowed to rest on the seventh day. Divine time, we learn, alternates between periods of creative work and deliberate rest. But what does God’s work entail, how does God manage divine time, does God make time for leisure, and does God have a schedule?
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Six Days Shall You Labor: Shabbat and the Meaning of Work
Oct 4, 2021 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Shabbat, a day on which “work” is forbidden, also offers a commentary on work—on its place in our lives, its importance, and its limitations. Notably, the rabbinic Sabbath—that is, the “traditional” Sabbath—offers a perspective that differs from that of the Torah, both original and unique. Join Dr. David Kraemer to explore biblical and rabbinic views of the Sabbath as commentaries on the significance of work.
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The Power of Emotion: Judaism and the Inner Life
By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Joy. Grief. Anger. Shame. Love. Emotional experience is often at the center of our lives. JTS scholars explore perceptions of emotions in Jewish texts and offer surprising and useful insights for understanding the feelings that make up our inner worlds.
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“Six Days Shall You Labor:” Perspectives on Work in Jewish Text and Tradition
Oct 4, 2021 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Video Lecture
Many of us spend more time at work than anywhere else over the course of our lives—but are we defined by what we do? In this text-based series, JTS scholars will explore ideas about the meaning of work and rest in Jewish tradition, Jewish social movements around work, as well as the roles that gender, geography, and shifting economic and social circumstances have played in Jews’ professional paths and our understandings of the meaning and value of work.
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