Thursday, January 07, 2016

More on Schechter's centennial yahrzeit

CONFERENCE REPORT: Schechter kin observe scholar’s yahrtzeit. At Cambridge seminar, local rabbi is reminded of ancestor’s impact (Robert Wiener, NJJN Staff Writer).
A century after the death of Solomon Schechter, the Judaics scholar who revitalized Conservative Judaism, his descendants paid homage to his memory at Cambridge University in England.

Among them was his great-grandson, Rabbi John Schechter of Congregation B’nai Israel in Basking Ridge, who earned his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where Solomon Schechter served as president from 1902 to 1915.

Along with his wife, Cantor Erica Lippitz of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, John Schechter attended the second of two conferences observing his forebear’s 100th yahrtzeit.

The day-long gathering in England, held Nov. 22 at the Divinity School at St. John’s College, featured presentations on Solomon Schechter’s impact on the study of Jewish antiquity and on contemporary scholarship and religious thought. Arriving in the United States in 1902, Schechter transformed JTS into a locus for Jewish scholarship and rabbinic training.

For John Schechter and Lippitz, the highlight of the visit was examining some of the 193,000 sacred and secular texts and documents that the elder Schechter shipped to Cambridge from among the 300,000 items he famously explored in 1896-97 after their discovery in the Cairo Geniza.

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Background here and links.