JTS Torah Commentary

Between Moscow, Kyiv, and Jerusalem: How The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed Russian and Ukrainian Attitudes Toward Israel and Jews

Jan 15, 2024 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Dr. David Fishman, expert on Ukrainian Jewry, discusses the complex connections between the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and how Russian and Ukrainian attitudes toward Israel and Jews have evolved as a result—both for better and for worse.

A Friendship in the Ghetto, the Forest and Beyond: The Story of Two Yiddish Poets During the Holocaust

Oct 23, 2023 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Imagine two friends surrounded by German soldiers in the forest, with a single pistol in their possession, and one of them hands the pistol to the other, saying: “Abrasha, you should live, you are the greater poet”. This was the depth of friendship between Yiddish poets Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski.  They inspired each other to creativity and acts of heroism. We explore their lives together, as fellow inmates of the Vilna ghetto, living in the same room and working in the same slave labor site, and ultimately how their friendship ended in separation after the war. 

Jewish Community Voices from Ukraine

Apr 7, 2022 By David Fishman

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, millions of people have been forced to make impossible decisions. Jewish community organizations responded to the needs of these communities. Dr. David Fishman will moderate a discussion between Tania Batanova, Sasha Nazar, and Reuven Stamov, three leaders from the Ukrainian Jewish Community. They will share their reflections on life before the […]

The Jewish Community of Ukraine and the Current Crisis

Mar 2, 2022 By David Fishman | Public Event video

There are between 50,000 to 100,000 Jews in Ukraine today. This talk, featuring Dr. David Fishman and senior JTS rabbinical student Alisa Tzipi Zilbershtein, analyzed the state of the community, and its reactions to the unfolding events.

When Matzoh Bakers and Tallis Weavers Went on Strike: The Jewish Workers’ Movement in Eastern Europe

Dec 6, 2021 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

The grandparents or great grandparents of most American Jews were poor wage-earning workers from Eastern Europe. This session will explore the world of Jewish workers in Tsarist Russia, in particular the Jewish labor movement that arose at the end of the 19th century. The movement organized strikes, underground trade unions, classes, and cultural activity for workers in Yiddish, and a Jewish socialist party known as the “Bund.” Its ideas and practices migrated to the United States and left a powerful imprint on American Jewish life.

Flight, Return, and Emigration:
The Wanderings of a Yiddish Writer During and After the Holocaust

Jul 12, 2021 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

The Yiddish poet Chaim Grade fled his native city of Vilna,  known to Jews as “the Jerusalem of Lithuania”, in late June 1941, as the Germans invaded the city. He spent the next four years as a refugee in the Soviet Union, homeless and malnourished. When Grade returned to Vilna in 1945, he  found the city in ruins – and learned from survivors of the Vilna ghetto that his wife, mother, friends and colleagues had been murdered by the Nazis. We will follow his journey of exile and redemption through selections from his works. 

When Jews Made Fellow Jews ‘Other’: Hasidism and its Opponents

Mar 15, 2021 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

The Hasidim, followers of the Ba’al Shem Tov and his spiritual heirs, emerged in the 18th century with controversial ideas related to Jewish practice and belief. While Hasidim coexisted peacefully with non-Hasidim in many communities, the Mitnagdim (“opponents”) in many larger Jewish centers in Eastern Europe reacted to the Hasidim not only with condemnation, but with writs of excommunication and measures to persecute the members of the new movement. This internal Jewish religious strife led to the division of the community into rival “denominations” for the first time in nearly a thousand years. We will study the conflict between the Hasidim and Mitnagdim and reflect on how the core principles of the dispute continue to shape our Jewish lives and guide our homes and institutions.   

The Book Smugglers of the Vilna Ghetto: Choosing a Life of Meaning Under the Specter of Death

Dec 21, 2020 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

In Vilna, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” a group of Jewish writers and intellectuals risked their lives to rescue Jewish books, manuscripts, and art from the Nazis. While working as slave laborers for a Nazi looting agency, they “stole” Jewish cultural treasures from their masters, smuggled them into the ghetto, and hid them in underground cellars and bunkers. The few members of this group who survived the war returned to Vilna after its liberation, and led an operation to retrieve the treasures.

The Promise and Perils of Revolution: Jewish Life in the Soviet Union After 1917

Jul 13, 2020 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

The 1917 Russian revolution and its aftermath were a time of both promise and crisis for the Jews of Russia, who constituted the largest Jewish community in the world at the time. The Soviet Union was the first state to outlaw antisemitism, and more than half of the first Soviet cabinet consisted of Jews. Yet the new regime mercilessly persecuted organized religion and outlawed all non-Communist political movements, including Zionism. Focusing on the years between the revolution and the Second World War, this session explores the diversity of Jewish responses to sweeping political and social change.

Heroes of Jewish Heritage

Mar 23, 2018 By David Fishman | Commentary

Several months ago, I gave a lecture in Lviv, Ukraine, on my new book to a young non-Jewish audience. There are very few Jews left in Lviv (formerly Lemberg), even fewer than in Vilnius (formerly Vilna), where my book’s events take place. The audience listened attentively as I described the rescue of cultural treasures from the Nazis by a group of ghetto inmates nicknamed the Paper Brigade: a diary by Theodore Herzl, rabbinic manuscripts, Sholem Aleichem’s letters, paintings and sculptures.

The Righteous Convert Of Vilna

May 21, 2014 By David Fishman | Short Video | Shavuot

Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow

Jun 6, 2012 By David Fishman | Public Event audio

Dr. David Fishman, professor of Jewish History at JTS and director of its Project Judaica and the Jewish Archival Survey, gives this Library Book Talk at JTS on a book of which he is a coeditor, Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow: A Guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive.