The Seminary At 100: Reflections on the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Consrvative Movement

The Seminary at 100 is a book published on the occasion of the Jewish Theological Seminary reaching its 100th anniversary. Since its founding as a rabbinical school, JTS has greatly expanded its mission, created a beautiful Manhattan campus and evolved into the prestigious center of Jewish learning it is today. A Jewish university with a world-class faculty and a diverse student body, JTS grants undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees through its five schools and offers enriching programs for the Jewish community in the US, Israel and around the world.This book is a compilation of essays on topics from the sociological changes in Conservative rabbis in the 1980s compared to a century prior to the Conservative Jewish Ramah camps. The essay authors each bring their knowledge of Conservative Judaism and the Seminary. This is a wonderful reference book on Conservative Judaism as well. It covers all areas of discourse (history, literature, philosophy, Talmud, Bible, and Education) studied at JTS.The Seminary at 100 is also one of the few published works that attempts to define Conservative Jewish theology, exploring the struggle toward self definition in a movement that often sees itself in terms of the negative (neither X nor Y). Published only a few years after the monumental decision to allow women to be accepted into academic programs leading to rabbinic and cantorial degrees, this book is also a valuable source of information on the Seminary's response to feminism. Over fifteen years since its publishing, it is also quite interesting to read about the Seminary's outlook for the future determining the accuracy of these prophecies. I have no reservations in recommending this book to anyone with even a cursory interest in Conservative Judaism, the Jewish Theological Seminary, liberal rabbinic training, or modern Judaism and American Jewish history in general.