Tagged Jewish Theological Seminary

The first female chancellor of JTS shares her plans for the seminary – and getting through the pandemic

Shuly Rubin Schwartz was named the eighth chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in its 134-year history. (Ellen Dubin Photography)
June 5, 2020 / Shira Hanau JTA

(JTA) – Shuly Rubin Schwartz’s appointment as the Jewish Theological Seminary’s eighth chancellor comes just in time for the historian to guide the institution through a period of unprecedented crisis management. The flagship university of Judaism’s Conservative movement recently completed a major renovation project of its Morningside Heights campus… Read more »

Philip Roth, enfant terrible turned peerless chronicler of American Jewish life, is dead at 85

Philip Roth at the National Humanities Medal ceremony at the White House, March 2, 2011. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
May 23, 2018 / JTA Staff

(JTA) — Philip Roth, whose notorious novels about the sex drives of American men gave way to some of the most probing examinations of the American Jewish condition in the 20th and 21st centuries, has died. He was 85. His death was confirmed to The New York Times by… Read more »

OP-ED When Jewish students in America raised alarms about the Holocaust

The cover of Yeshiva University's student newspaper, The Commentator, from March 4, 1943, shows that Jewish students were active in efforts to draw attention to the plight of Europe's Jews. (Courtesy of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies)
May 8, 2018 / David Golinkin and Noam Sachs Zion, JTA

  JERUSALEM (JTA) — Seventy-five years ago this month, a handful of rabbinical students in New York City helped mobilize hundreds of churches and synagogues nationwide to cry out against the Nazis’ mass murder of European Jewry. That remarkable interfaith protest is omitted from the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s new… Read more »

Labor protest says Conservative seminary violating its own ethical standards with building project

Marchers protesting labor arrangements at the Jewish Theological Seminary's construction site in New York City say the building contractor violates workers' rights, May 1, 2017. (Ben Sales)
May 1, 2017 / Ben Sales, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — The labor rights march, held on the unofficial workers’ holiday of May 1 and embarking from the steps of the Jewish Theological Seminary here, featured signs in Yiddish and Hebrew — and included some of the seminary’s own students. But the march wasn’t celebrating the long… Read more »

What Jews with disabilities can teach the rest of us

The inaugural Ruderman Inclusion Summit took place at Boston's Seaport World Trade Center on Nov. 1 and 2. (Noam Galai)
November 4, 2015 / Gabrielle Birkner, JTA

BOSTON (JTA) — Ruti Regan has been told she’s a pioneer, the first autistic rabbinic student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. But she doesn’t believe that for a second. She may be the first to admit it, said Regan, 30, “but I’m not the only one.” “What do you… Read more »

Female rabbis at forefront of pioneering prayer communities
December 15, 2014 / Anthony Weiss, JTA
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, Kavana (Andy Ahlstrom)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — A decade ago in Los Angeles, two organizations opened their doors with a call to prayer — or they would have if they had any doors to open. Ikar, led by Rabbi Sharon Brous, and Nashuva, led by Rabbi Naomi Levy, were conceived separately. But… Read more »

Sacred and profane: Philip Roth, onetime ‘enfant terrible,’ gets seminary honor
May 25, 2014 / Beth Kissileff, JTA
Philip Roth receives an honorary doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary's commencement in New York on May 22, 2014. (Ellen Dubin Photography)

(JTA) — “What is being done to silence this man?” an American rabbi asked in a 1963 letter to the Anti-Defamation League. He was talking about the novelist Philip Roth, whose early novels and short stories cast his fellow American Jews in what some considered a none-too-flattering light. Fast-forward… Read more »