Between the Lines: Author Conversations from the Library of JTS

A DISCUSSION WITH AUTHOR DR. LAURA ARNOLD LEIBMANIn "The Art of the Jewish Family" Dr. Laura Arnold Leibman examines five objects owned by a diverse group of Jewish women who lived in New York between the years 1750 and 1850. Each chapter creates a biography of a single woman through an object, offering a new methodology that looks past texts alone to material culture in order to f

A discussion with JTS's Dr. David G. Roskies about his powerful new collection of writings from the Warsaw Ghetto, recording the Holocaust from the perspective of its first interpreters, the victims themselves.Hidden in metal containers and buried underground during World War II, these works from the Warsaw Ghetto record the Holocaust from the perspective of its first interpreters,

In his magisterial new biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dr. Edward K. Kaplan tells the engrossing, behind-the-scenes story of the life, philosophy, struggles, yearnings, writings, and activism of one of the 20th century’s most outstanding Jewish thinkers. Following this extraordinary figure through his Hasidic childhood in Warsaw to his pursuit of a doctorate in Berlin to his

Episode 1: Who Were the Rabbis?What led to the emergence of the group of scholars and teachers we call the Rabbis? What motivated them and what did they value? The Rabbis looked to their forebear, Hillel, as an exemplar of religious leadership, and in this episode, we’ll look at three stories they told about Hillel to see what we can learn about the Rabbis’ self-conception.Subs

A Discussion with Translator Edward L. GreensteinThe Book of Job has often been called the greatest poem ever written. The book, in Edward Greenstein’s characterization, is “a Wunderkind, a genius emerging out of the confluence of two literary streams,” which “dazzles like Shakespeare with unrivaled vocabulary and a penchant for linguistic innovation.” Despite the text’

As hate crimes and domestic terrorism dominate the headlines, the legacy of the late Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum as a leader in interfaith and race relations in the United States and around the world becomes more and more relevant with each atrocity that is perpetrated in the name of racial purity, religion and rectitude. His widow, humanitarian and philanthropist Dr. Georgette Bennett, d

In this opening episode of JTS’s new podcast, What Now?, host Sara Beth Berman tells her story and speaks with Professor Alan Mittleman. Dr. Mittleman shares his own experiences with loss, framing tragedies as taking place in a world that is nevertheless good and that gives us reason for hope. We also learn why giving Professor Mittleman advice is never a good idea. Subscribe now

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. Dov Peretz Elkins is a nati

Dr. Jane S. Gabin's historical novel looks at the complicated life and aftermath of the occupation of Paris during WWII and spotlights Jewish experiences during the Nazi occupation of the city. Her debut novel intertwines the two timelines of postwar Paris and the current day as a young woman seeks answers when she finds an old picture of her father, a U.S. Army private, with two w

Dr. Wendy Zierler's Movies and Midrash pioneers the use of cinema as a springboard to discuss central Jewish texts and matters of belief. Exploring what Jewish tradition, text, and theology have to say about the lessons and themes arising from influential and compelling films, Zierler uses the method of “inverted midrash”: while classical rabbinical midrash begins with exegesis