Wednesday, May 21, 2025
6:30 – 7:30 pm EDT
Scheuer Auditorium

Join a conversation with Abigail Rapoport, Curator of Judaica, and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik focusing on the Jewish communities in the Netherlands in the 1600s. A safe haven for many, Amsterdam drew Jewish and Christian immigrants from around the world. Against this backdrop, hear about how the Book of Esther, especially Queen Esther, was a source of inspiration for Rembrandt and his contemporaries, whose works can be seen in the exhibition The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt (March 7 – August 10, 2025).

This Program is co-presented with the Congregation Shearith Israel.

The Lines of Distinction Lecture has been endowed by Barbara and Benjamin Zucker in memory of Lotty and Charles Zucker and by William W. Hallo, the late Susanne Hallo Kalem, and the late Ruth Hallo Landman, in memory of Dr. Gertrude Hallo.

About the speakers:

Dr. Abigail Rapoport is the Curator of Judaica at the Jewish Museum. She previously worked on Judaica within the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rapoport holds a PhD in medieval art history from the University of Pennsylvania where she also received her MA in seventeenth-century Dutch art. Her prior exhibition, Beauty and Ritual: Judaica from the Jewish Museum, was on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2022 and will be traveling to the Frist Art Museum, Nashville in 2026. She was listed on New York Jewish Week’s “36 to Watch” in 2022 and recognized by the Borough President of Manhattan for her work in Jewish culture and art. Rapoport currently serves as a board member on the Council of American Jewish Museums.

Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik is the senior rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. He is also director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. Rabbi Soloveichik has lectured internationally to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences on topics relating to faith in America, the Hebraic roots of the American founding, Jewish theology, bioethics, wartime ethics, Jewish-Christian relations, and more. He writes a monthly column in Commentary magazine, and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Mosaic, First Things, Azure, Tradition, the Jewish Review of Books, and many other outlets. 

Tickets: $18 General; $15 Students and Seniors; $12 Jewish Museum and Congregation Shearith Israel members; Includes Museum Admission

Museum doors open at 5:30pm; Auditorium opens at 6pm