Jean Rosensaft

Senior Advisor to the President; Director, Dr. Bernard Heller Museum

Contact Information

department: Museum, President’s Office
campus: National, New York

Jean Bloch Rosensaft is Senior Advisor to the President at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Director of the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at the HUC-JIR/New York campus. She joined HUC-JIR after serving as Assistant Director of Education at The Jewish Museum in New York, where she curated the exhibitions Chagall and the Bible and Justice in Jerusalem Revisited: The Eichmann Trial. Prior to The Jewish Museum, she coordinated educational publications and school programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Rosensaft is a Founder and Vice-President of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. She serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Education Committee and her exhibition Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945-1950 is  permanently installed at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Museum in Germany. She served as Vice President of Park Avenue Synagogue, currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Moment magazine, served on the Editorial Board of Reform Judaism magazine, and is the Chair of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Panel on Art and Photography.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College, Rosensaft pursued graduate studies in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. She has written and lectured widely on the Holocaust, Jewish cultural history, and modern art, and is the author of Chagall and the Bible (Universe Books, 1987), editor of The Eye of the Collector: The Jewish Vision of Sigmund R. Balka (HUC-JIR Museum, HUC/NY, 2006), editor and contributor of essays for numerous exhibition catalogs, and author of essays and articles published in God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2014), CCAR Journal – The Reform Jewish Quarterly, and other publications.

Books

Chagall and the Bible (Universe Books, 1987)

The Eye Of The Collector: The Jewish Vision Of Sigmund R. Balka (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2006)

Exhibition Catalogs

One Nation (Heller Museum, HUC/NY, 2023)

Tzedek Boxes: Justice Shall You Pursue (Heller Museum, HUC/NY 2023)

Magical Thinking: Superstitions and Other Persistent Notions (Heller Museum, HUC/NY, 2022)

Relative Relations (Heller Museum, HUC/NY, 2020)

Avner Moriah: Five Books of Moses (HUC-JIR Museum, HUC/NY, 2019)

Scattered Breath: The Red Thread (Heller Museum, HUC/NY, 2019)

Terra Infirma (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2018)

HOME(less) (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2017)

Paint by Numbers (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2016)

Evil: A Matter of Intent (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2015)

Hanan Harchol: Jewish Food for Thought (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2013)

The Seventh Day: Revisiting Shabbat (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2013)

The Sexuality Spectrum (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2012)

Janet Shafner: Dark Prophecies (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2011)

Nathan Hilu’s Journal: Word, Image, Memory (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2011)

Leonard Everett Fisher: 70 Years an Artist (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2011)

A Stitch in Jewish Time: Provocative Textiles (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2010)

Isaac Bashevis Singer and His Artists (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2009)

Mirta Kupferminc: Wanderings (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2009)

Envisioning Maps (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2009)

10-6-73 – The Yom Kippur War: Photographs by Thomas Heyman (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2008)

Rosalyn A. Engelman: “Dry Tears (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2008)

Elements of Alchemy: Prints by Paul Weissman (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2008)

L.A. Story (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2007)

Peachy Levy: Threads of Judaism (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2007)

Judy Chicago: Jewish Identity (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2007)

Carol Hamoy: PsalmSong (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2005)

Aliza Olmert: Tikkun (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2005)

Jan Aronson: A Reverence for Nature (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2005)

Leslie A. Golomb and Louise Silk: Deez Nites Be All Da Same To Me (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2005)

The Art of Aging (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2004)

Thirty Pieces/Thirty Years: Sculpture by Ann Sperry (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2003)

Lucie and Peter Porges: Style and Humor (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2002)

Yaacov Chefetz: There They Will Change My Name (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2002)

Ora Lerman: I Gave you My Song (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2001)

Living in the Moment (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 2000)

Rage/Resolution (HUC-JIR Museum, NY, 1997)

Selected Articles

“Holy Sparks: Celebrating 50 Years of Women in the Rabbinate” URJ.org blog, April 28, 2022

“What Today’s Refugees Can Learn from Holocaust Survivors About the Human Spirit, URJ.org blog, January 26, 2018

“Jewish Art and Artists in the Seminary Setting,” (CCAR Journal-The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Winter/2013)

“A Legacy of Memory,” God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2014)

View Publications

“Chagall and the Bible”

“Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945-1950”

“Holy Sparks: Portraying 50 Years of Women in the Rabbinate in Art”

“Holocaust Memory in Architecture”

Jewish History through Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (with Carole Balin)

Jewish History through Art and Music (with Carole Balin)