American Jews and Race: Past, Present, and (Charting a) Future
Jul 21, 2020 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Our country currently faces a reckoning with structural racism. As Jews, we have faith that our tradition represents a moral voice for justice and equality. Yet we also recognize that we have often failed to fully heed that voice and so must confront the enduring influence of racial discrimination and white privilege in our community. JTS’s Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice presents a discussion with two leading thinkers on the issue.
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Restorative Justice from Numbers to Now
Jul 17, 2020 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
What does restorative justice look like? The Torah pauses Israel’s journey toward the Land to consider this complex question. Forty years of desert wandering have come to their end, and only the thin ribbon of the River Jordan divides the Israelites from their promised land. As the distance remaining falls to footsteps, urgency mounts to establish values and norms for sovereignty and justice.
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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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Do Not Turn Away—Then and Now
Sep 9, 2019 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Ki Tetzei
In 1861, as a great conflagration spread across our nation, the Bostonian abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Samuel Joseph May published a slender tract entitled The Fugitive Slave Act and Its Victims, an impassioned polemic against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This federal law, born of the Missouri Compromise of the same year, required all federal, state and local authorities, including those in free states, to return fugitive slaves to their masters, while also criminalizing any attempt to aid and abet a slave seeking to escape bondage.
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On the Bus! The Moral Obligation to Do Social Justice
Mar 27, 2019 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A conversation with Sister Simone Campbell, longtime social activist and the executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.
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Open Your Eyes, Open Your Ears
Jan 4, 2019 By Jack Moline | Commentary | Va'era
Liberation being what it is, oppression is a necessary precursor. Would the world have been a better place if liberation were never necessary? That’s either a profound or a sophomoric question. Before I make my case, let me acknowledge that the question is purely hypothetical because liberation does exist as a response to the preexisting condition of oppression.
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