Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The Jewish Theological Seminary, known in the Jewish community simply as JTS, is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism. Along with the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, it is one the movement's main rabbinical seminaries. It takes its name and basic ideology from the no longer extant Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau.

University

The Jewish Theological Seminary comprises five schools: Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies, which is affiliated with Columbia University and offers joint/double degree programs with both Columbia and Barnard College, The Graduate School, The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, H. L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music, and The Rabbinical School. The latter four schools are graduate schools.

The Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau

Rabbi Zecharias Frankel (1801-1875) at one time was in the traditional wing of the nascent Reform Judaism movement. After the second Reform rabbinic conference (1845, Frankfurt, Germany) he resigned after coming to believe that their positions were excessively radical. In 1854 he became the head of a new rabbinical school, the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau. In his magnum opus Darkhei HaMishnah (Ways of the Mishnah) Rabbi Frankel amassed scholarly support which showed that Jewish law was not static, but rather had always developed in response to changing conditions. He called his approach towards Judaism 'Positive-Historical', which meant that one should accept Jewish law and tradition as normative, yet one must be open to changing and developing the law in the same historical fashion that Judaism has always historically developed.