Journal articles on the topic 'Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Seminary School of Jewish Studies'

Abstract In 1897, Solomon Schechter brought a hoard of Hebrew manuscripts, now known collectively as the Cairo Genizah, to England from Cairo. Along with these manuscripts were several wooden Hebrew inscription fragments from Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue. When Schechter left Cambridge to assume the presidency of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, these fragments were brought to New York where they were transformed into a Torah Ark. This Torah ark was used at the Seminary for three decades and subsequently exhibited at the Jewish Museum, New York and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was featured on numerous postcards and in major works on Jewish art. In 1997, it was deconstructed by the Jewish Museum to extract the medieval inscriptions. This article explores the history, meaning and reception of the Schechter Torah Ark as a window into the complexities of Schechter’s legacy and the history of Jewish scholarship in the twentieth century.

For close to fifty years, Cyrus Adler was one of American Jewry's most influential communal leaders and public servants. Taking part in the founding of the Jewish Publication Society (1888), on whose various committees he would serve as chairman throughout his life, Adler was a founder of the American Jewish Historical Society (1892), and its president for more than twenty years. Together with Louis Marshall, Jacob Schiff, Oscar Straus, Felix Warburg, and his cousin, Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Adler played an instrumental role in organizing the American Jewish Committee (1906), and served as its president from 1929 until his death in 1940. During his thirtytwo years (1908–1940) as president and chief administrative officer of the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, Adler shaped the institution into one of the preeminent institutions of higher Jewish learning in America. When Solomon Schechter died in 1915, Adler succeeded him to the presidency of the Jewish Theological Seminary, with which he had been closely associated since its founding in 1886, while remaining president of Dropsie as well. Serving as president of the seminary for twenty-five years, Adler played a central role in the founding of the United Synagogue, whose presidency he also held.

In Sarajevo, since the formation of the Jewish religious community, the religious education of children has developed simultaneously. First, four-grade elementary schools, where mostly male children went, came forward. Later in the 17th century, Talmud-Torah secondary school was developed, while Yeshiva was only formed in the second half of the 18th century. Until the establishment of the Belgrade Yeshiva by Rav Yehuda Lerma in 5395 (1635) and the Sarajevo Yeshiva by Rav David Pardo in 5528 (1768), there were no rabbinical schools in the territories of the Western Balkans and neither rabbis. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, there was a need for qualified personnel for the religious education of Jewish children and youth according to general laws, in lower and secondary schools. On June 13, 1928, the Jewish Secondary Theological Seminary was opened, which began operating on November 25, 1928. The Seminary operated until 1941, when it was closed on April 6 by Nazzi Germans. The paper aims to present the development of Jewish religious education from the arrival of Sephardim to Sarajevo in the 16th century until 1941. To show the importance of the development of rabbinic and Talmudic studies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the reputation of Sarajevo's Jewish religious schools in Europe and the world.

ABSTRACTThis article traces negotiations over the epistemic, ethical, and political authority of Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and science in mid-twentieth-century America. Specifically, it examines how the president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Dr. Louis Finkelstein, led a diverse group of intellectual elites as they planned and convened the 1940 Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life (CSPR). Based on the conference's transcripts, proceedings, and papers, in addition to Finkelstein's writings from the period, this article shows how Finkelstein used his vision of the Jewish tradition as a model to form a pluralistic intellectual space that brought together the representatives of multiple religious traditions and modern science. To accredit the American way of life to Judaism, Finkelstein traced America's ethical values, democratic politics, and scientific genius back to the Hebrew Prophets through Rabbinic Judaism. In response to Finkelstein's historiography and the political and ideological challenges of World War II, scientific and religious experts negotiated their authority and debated how to mobilize their traditions in a quest for political stability. By analyzing the CSPR as a meeting of multiple discourses, this article reinstates science as a fundamental player in the story of American pluralism and demonstrates the way a non-Protestant tradition shaped the terms of an elite public's understanding of the “democratic way of life.”

The work of many emerging young rabbinics scholars today, particularly that which is focused on the Mishnah, is animated by a desire to synthesize two distinct approaches to rabbinic texts. One is the traditional philological-historical approach, which traces its roots back to the European Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In its current form, traditional Talmud criticism is perhaps most associated in Israel with the work of J. N. Epstein, the founder of the Hebrew University Talmud Department and the “father of exact scientific Talmudic inquiry.” While most of Epstein's students proceeded to shape the study of rabbinic literature in the Israeli academy, Saul Lieberman, perhaps his most distinguished disciple, moved to America, where his presence dominated the study of rabbinic literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the postwar decades. Traditional Talmud criticism is characterized by a scrupulous attention to manuscripts and textual variants, a systematic use of the findings of Semitic and comparative linguistics, and the use of form and source criticism to determine the history and development of larger textual units.

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF AMERICAN HUMANISM by Stephen P. Weldon. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. 285 pages. Hardcover; $49.95. ISBN: 9781421438580. *The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism by Stephen Weldon recounts with approval the rise of non-theistic, and even antitheistic, thought in modern science. At the outset, I will confess to being a biased reviewer (perhaps, even, an antireviewer). If I were to tell this story, I would lament, rather than celebrate, the seemingly antireligious stance lauded in this history. I must also confess to being an active participant in this history, both as an amateur student in the fundamentalist/modernist controversy in the Presbyterian churches and in my own active involvement in faith-science discussions among evangelicals in the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). No historical account is objective--it will always reflect its author's perspective. This is true of this book and of this review. *Weldon tells the history episodically highlighting key people who contributed to this story. He begins in chapter 1, "Liberal Christianity and the Frontiers of American Belief," with Unitarians (theists/deists who reject the deity of Christ), liberal Protestants, and atheistic freethinkers. After a few chapters, he turns to a largely secular story dominated by philosophers rather than ministers. Chapter 12 presents charts that show how the 1933 Humanist Manifesto had 50% signatories who were liberal and Unitarian ministers, while the 1973 Humanist Manifesto II had only 21%. By the end of book, humanism becomes secular/atheistic humanism. Weldon describes humanism as "a view of the world that emphasizes human dignity, democracy as the ideal form of government, universal education, and scientific rationality" (p. 5). While not explicitly mentioned, but likely included in the phrase "scientific rationality," is atheism. The 1973 Humanist Manifest II begins with this theme in its opening article about religion: "We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural; it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of survival and fulfillment of the human race. As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity." *Chapter 2, "The Birth of Religious Humanism," tells the early 1900s story of ministers John Dietrich, Curtis Reese, and philosopher Roy Wood Sellers, all who were or became Unitarians. "'God-talk' was no longer useful." Unitarianism ends up being a haven for religious humanists, even for those who have eliminated traditional religious language. These are the roots of today's secular humanism. *In many ways, this era is the other side of the religious history of America that this journal's readers may know. The ASA has roots in the more conservative and traditional end of American Protestantism. The old Princeton Presbyterians, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield, represent a strictly orthodox Christianity, but one open to the advances of modern science. One did not have to be theologically liberal to be proscience. The phenomenon of young-earth creationism is a relatively recent development. Conservative Protestants were not as opposed to conventional science as Weldon's treatment suggests. *The Humanist Manifesto (1933) is the subject of chapter 3, "Manifesto for an Age of Science." It was written by Unitarian Roy Wood Sellers and spearheaded by people associated with Meadville Theological School, a small Unitarian seminary, originally in Pennsylvania; after relocating, it had a close association with the University of Chicago. The Manifesto begins with the words, "The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes." The first affirmation is "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." *"Philosophers in the Pulpit" (chap. 4) highlights the University of Columbia philosophy department and John Dewey, in particular. Dewey was one of the more prominent signers of the Humanist Manifesto and a leading advocate of philosophical pragmatism. This chapter also tells the story of Felix Adler, also associated with Columbia, and the founder of Ethical Culture, an organization with nontheistic, Jewish roots. *"Humanists at War" (chap. 5) and "Scientists on the World Stage" (chap. 6) recount the increased secularization of humanism. Humanists in the 1940s increasingly struggled with the religious character of humanism. Should the category of religion be used at all? During this era, natural scientists, such as evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley and Drosophila geneticist Hermann Muller, rather than philosophers, led the most prominent forms of humanism. This humanism was increasingly secular, scientific, and even atheistic. *Weldon is not hesitant to expose the foibles of this movement. Chapter 7, "Eugenics and the Question of Race," traces how selective population control became part of the conversation. In addition to Huxley and Muller, Margaret Sanger is also part of this story. Philosopher Paul Kurtz makes his first appearance in this chapter and continues to be a significant player in the rest of the book. He was the editor of the Humanist Manifesto and used its pages to explore the question of race and IQ. *Chapter 8, entitled "Inside the Humanist Counter'culture," describes a period dominated by questions of human sexuality and psychology. Weldon's use of the word "counterculture" is apt. In the 1960s, the feminist Patricia Robertson and lawyer/activist Tolbert McCarroll expressed the zeitgeist of the sexual revolution. The psychology of Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, and Abraham Maslow moved humanism from a more objective/scientific focus to a more experiential one. They are representatives of the third force (or humanistic) school of psychology, in contrast to Freudian psychoanalysis or Skinnerian behaviorism. Although agreement was rare, by the end of the decade, under Paul Kurtz (influenced by B. F. Skinner), the public face of humanism returned to a more scientific leaning. *Chapter 9, "Skeptics in the Age of Aquarius," is one chapter where I found myself, as a traditional evangelical, to be in nearly complete agreement. This chapter describes how New Age beliefs, along with an ascending occultism, came under fire from the scientific humanists under the leadership of Paul Kurtz. Weldon even cites a Christianity Today article that makes common cause with the secular humanists in their resistance to the growing occultism of western culture. I found this chapter to be a useful critique of New Age thinking. *"The Fundamentalist Challenge" (chap. 10) and "Battling Creationism and Christian Pseudoscience" (chap. 11) recount the clash between secular evolutionists and fundamentalist creationists, especially regarding the public-school science curriculum and the teaching of evolution. Here the author clearly demonstrates his prosecularist/anti-fundamentalist inclinations. On a more personal note, the mention of Francis Schaeffer, R. J. Rushdoony, and Cornelius Van Til, strikes at my own history. While some elements of this conservative Presbyterianism were clearly anti-evolutionist, others in the conservative Reformed camp were open to the proscience (including evolutionary biology) views of Warfield and Hodge, even in the early days of anti-evolutionism among fundamentalists. While some in the ASA would count themselves among young-earth creationists or flood geologists, the majority are open to old-earth geology and even to evolutionary biology. The reaction of Weldon himself, and other critics of this era, seems more akin to a religious fundamentalism of its own--albeit a fundamentalism of naturalism. Fundamentalists are not the only ones engaging in a culture war. My own view is that old-earth geology, old universe (big bang) cosmology, and evolutionary biology should be taught as the mainstream scientific consensus even in private religious schools. But dissent and disagreement should be allowed among teachers and students alike. Sometimes it seems to me that these fundamentalist creationists and atheistic evolutionists are all more interested in indoctrination than education. *Embedded in chapter 10 is the history of the Humanist Manifesto II (coauthored by Paul Kurtz). It clearly espouses positions antithetical to traditional Christian orthodoxy, especially in the explicit anti-theistic and prosexual revolution statements. But it is striking to me how much agreement I can find with people who so strongly disagree with traditional Christian faith. This tells me two things: while fundamental religious differences may exist between people, there is something about being human in this world that brings Christians and non-Christians together on many very fundamental questions such as liberty, human dignity, friendship, and peaceful co-existence. Such values are not the unique provenance of humanists or Christians or other religious groups. The second thing is that we are much better at emphasizing differences and seeking to force others to conform to our way than we are at tolerating differences and persuading those who disagree. *The opening of chapter 12, "The Humanist Ethos of Science and Modern America," brought me once again to a personal reflection that is relevant in reviewing this book. My own love of the natural sciences can be traced to Sagan, Asimov, Clarke, Gould, Dawkins, and others who brought the wonder of science to the broader public. Without denying their a-religious, and even antireligious posture, it is noteworthy that the truths about the natural world are independent of who discovered them or communicates them. And they are wondrous whether or not you acknowledge the hand of God in creating them. The process of science works whether the world was created by God or is the result of properties of the universe that just are. It is interesting to me that a brief discussion of post-modernism appears in this chapter. Postmodernism's undermining of the objectivity of natural science leads one to wonder whether this undermines the whole book by hinting that a postmodernist perspective is the consistent non'religious/atheist view. In contrast, the ASA's faith statement states: "We believe that in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific investigation." According to Christians, natural science is possible because creation is orderly and intelligible. Atheists and skeptics simply assert the world's orderliness and intelligibility. *Like myself, readers of this journal are likely to have a different perspective on the events traced in Weldon's book. Nevertheless, the history recounted here helps us to see why there is such a divide between science and those who continue to be influenced by more conservative religious views. As such, it is a worthwhile read and of interest to those who follow the science-faith literature. *Reviewed by Terry Gray, Instructor in Chemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.