About The Last Dekrepitzer

The fiddler busking in the Columbus Circle subway station in 1965 is the Dekrepitzer Rebbe, the sole survivor of the obscure Dekrepitzer Hasidic sect known before the war for its rebbes’ fiddling. The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among the Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, legal by Jewish law though forbidden under Mississippi law, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Shmuel Meir’s devout wife, though she knows herself to be the Dekrepitzer Rebbitzen, is spurned by the Jewish community. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. But God gives the Dekrepitzer Rebbe no peace.

About Howard Langer

Howard Langer’s novel, The Last Dekrepitzer, won a 2025 National Jewish Book Award. It is his first novel. He began writing The Last Dekreptizer in 2021 when he was 70 after attending a zoom workshop by George Saunders at the height of the Covid pandemic. Inspired by Saunder’s presentation, Howard began writing the next morning.

Howard graduated the City College of New York in 1977. He obtained a teacher’s degree from the Greenberg Institute in Jerusalem where he had the opportunity to study under Yehuda Amichai and Aharon Appelfeld. He holds an M.A.in English from the University of Toronto. While Howard won awards for his fiction as an undergraduate, he ultimately attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania where he has taught for the last twenty years. His law practice has specialized in protecting the vulnerable. His pro bono work has been recognized by the Philadelphia Bar Association and Community Legal Services among others. His text, The Competition Law of the United States, is in its fourth edition. He has published a number of short non-fiction pieces in recent years in Tablet and the Algemeiner.

In Children of the Book: A Memoir of Reading Together (St. Martin’s Press / On Sale: August 26, 2025), Ilana Kurshan reveals how literature weaves an invisible thread through the tapestry of family life. Kurshan, a mother of five living in Jerusalem, struggles to balance her passion for books with her responsibilities as a parent. Gradually she learns how to relate to reading not as a solitary pursuit and an escape from the messiness of life, but rather as a way of forging connection and teaching independence. Introducing her children to sacred and secular literature—including the beloved classics of her childhood—she becomes both a better mother and a more compassionate reader. 

Chief among the books Kurshan reads with her children is the Torah, whose ancient wisdom illuminates her family’s path. Children of the Book, structured in five parts corresponding to the first five books of the Bible, traces the profound parallels between the biblical narrative and the daily rhythms of parenthood – from the first picture books that create the world through language for little babies, to the bittersweet moment our children begin reading on their own, leaving us behind, atop the mountain, as they enter new lands without us. 

A luminous meditation on how shared stories become the foundation for family bonds, Children of the Book celebrates a life richly lived through literature.

About the Author

Ilana Kurshan��is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. She has worked in literary publishing both in New York and in Jerusalem, serving as a translator, a foreign rights agent, and as the book reviews editor of��Lilith��magazine. Kurshan is the author of��If All the Seas Were Ink, winner of the Sami Rohr Prize��for Jewish literature.

September 17–December 27, 2025

Grolier Club 
47 E 60th St.
New York, NY 10022

Jewish Worlds Illuminated features over 100 manuscripts and books offering a world tour of Jewish literary creativity across many centuries and thousands of miles. The exhibition explores the diversity of cultures in the lands in which Jews resided, including Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany. Curated by Professor David Kraemer, Sharon Liberman-Mintz, and Dr. Marcus Mordecai Schwartz, and drawn from the important rare book collection of The Library of 91�첥, exhibition highlights include a fund-raising letter signed by the great rabbi and philosopher, Moses Maimonides; a monumental decorated prayer book for the Jewish High Holidays, created in Germany in 1290, which opens with an elaborate Gothic portal inviting the reader to enter and engage in the prayers; a richly illustrated Passover Haggadah from Renaissance Italy by the master scribe-artist Joel Ben Simeon; and a 1875 Haggadah from Baghdad, written in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. Made possible by support from the David Berg Foundation and the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation.

Read more about the exhibition and see many of the items on display at The Grolier Club.

Watch a Virtual Tour

Press

March 19–July 24

After 1,300 years of untold travels along the Silk Road, the oldest Hebrew book reveals its remarkable story. In Sacred Words, guests will behold the oldest-known Hebrew book, containing Sabbath-morning prayers, liturgical poems, and the world’s oldest Haggadah, which was mysteriously written upside down. Learn about the book’s content, its origins on the Silk Road, and the multicultural cooperation that brought it first to the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.

The exhibit is open to the public during Library Hours, Monday through Thursday from 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Read about the Exhibit:

(JTA)

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Opening Event—March 18, 2025

September 9–February 23

Sacred Jewish texts have long been crafted with exquisite beauty, reflecting their spiritual significance. Throughout history, artisans have adorned these books with masterful calligraphy, intricate decorations, and brilliant illuminations. Figurative illustrations have also found their way into these sacred volumes, adding yet a further layer of commentary onto the text. While the mass production of the printed book resulted in the decline of this rich tradition of decorated Hebrew manuscripts, the Jewish book arts have experienced a remarkable revival in recent years. Contemporary Jewish artists have embraced the challenge of “illuminating” sacred writings, both artistically and conceptually, bringing new life into an ancient practice.

This exhibition showcases the work of five outstanding contemporary Jewish book artists: , ,, and. On display are 24 contemporary works, ranging from haggadot to biblical texts, beautifully illustrated and decorated by these artists. Their creations demonstrate how the ancient tradition of beautifying sacred texts endures, as these artists not only embellish but also interpret the timeless stories, teachings, and wisdom of the Jewish inheritance through their art.

Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of 91�첥

What does Judaism teach about killer robots? Cultured meat? Genetically engineered people? What does it mean to rest on Shabbat when electronics are embedded all around? In a pandemic, whose life should be saved first? Can a person be declared dead after the brain has ceased to function, even if the heart continues to beat on life support? How can ancient religious norms address the radically transformed reality of a technocentric society? In this volume, Torah and Technology: Circuits, Cells, and the Sacred Path, Rabbi Daniel Nevins draws on 3,000 years of biblical and rabbinic texts to respond to pressing questions of contemporary life. These essays are presented in the form of responsa, or rabbinic guidance for Jews committed to practicing halakhah, but they are also of interest to any person who confronts ethical quandaries in our technocentric times.

Rabbi Nevins spoke with��Dr. David Kraemer,��Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, to discuss the book and how the responsa are a window into Jewish history—material and scientific history, culture, politics, society, and more. They explore such topics as the impact of religious responses to technological change in the broader society; what most worries them about emerging technologies; and how the Torah itself will change as a result of this encounter.

About the Author

Rabbi Daniel Nevins is Head of School at Golda Och Academy, a PK–12 school in West Orange, New Jersey. Previously, he served as Pearl Resnick Dean of the 91�첥 Rabbinical School, and as senior rabbi of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Rabbi Nevins has been a member of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards for 25 years, and is known for landmark halakhic opinions related to sexuality, disability, bioethics, and technology.

March 26 – August 15, 2024

The spread of classical philosophy among Jews in the medieval period posed a significant challenge to traditional conceptions of divinity. While the God of the bible and rabbinic literature was a personal, anthropomorphic, and specifically Jewish God, the God of the philosophers was abstract, impersonal, and universal. To bridge the increasingly abstract and transcendent God of the philosophers with the personal and anthropomorphic God of Jewish tradition, the Kabbalists elaborated the doctrine of the sefirot, the ten divine attributes that emanated from within God and through which God interacts with creation.

According to the Zohar, the classic work of the theosophical Kabbalah, despite God’s transcendence, God can be apprehended via the “gates of the imagination.” We invite you to enter these gates and explore the visual worlds of the Kabbalah included in our exhibition. Whether in their theoretical treatises, diagrammatic scrolls, devotional plaques, or magical amulets, images were central to how Kabbalists presented their complex metaphysical ideas, depicted invisible realities, cultivated religious experience, and manifested divine power.

Multimedia

Delve deeper into the development of Jewish mysticism in “Exploring Kabbalah,“ a 91�첥 podcast with Dr. Eitan Fishbane, professor of Jewish Thought at 91�첥.

Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of 91�첥

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry. Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robin E. Judd is a specialist in Jewish, transnational, and gender history, with particular interests in Holocaust studies, the history of antisemitism, the history of religion, the history of leadership, and the history of migration. She is the author of Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and German-Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843–1933.