Explore JTS’s Online Torah

We invite you to search our vast collection of today’s most compelling Jewish conversations, teaching, and resources, including weekly Torah commentaries, online lectures, curricula for community use, and more.

Use the search bar and filters to find what inspires you.

Reflections on the Torah reading cycle

Learn more

Commentaries and more on the themes, texts, and liturgy of the holidays.

Learn more

Live series with JTS teachers

Learn more

Learn on the go

Learn more

Videos of public events

Learn more

The tunes for Shabbat, festival, and high holiday services and Torah readings

Learn more

Featured

What’s Next? New Ways of Engaging with Jewish Sources

Feb 3, 2025

JTS is well-known as a hub of innovative scholarship and a center of academic Jewish Studies. Recently JTS has launched programs in Biblical Hebrew, Pastoral Care, and Teen Learning to name a few that offer accessible entryways into the Jewish textual tradition. Explore how JTS is bringing together new modes of learning with classical sources to meet the needs of today’s world. Sessions will give participants a taste of the ideas and teaching that are central to these programs.

Angel or Avatar?

Jan 10, 2025 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Vayehi

The second of these verses is often sung aloud in a beautiful melody by Abie Rotenberg when children have their aliyah on Simhat Torah and by some parents at bedtime each night. That melody has made these words familiar to many, but their meaning is not clear. Who, exactly, does Jacob call upon to bless the lads?

A Tale of Two Dreamers

Jan 3, 2025 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Commentary | Vayiggash

Yet while the incongruity of Jacob’s response to Pharaoh’s question is in some sense humorous, Jacob’s words are heart-rending. They grow out of the existential and ideological divide that separates Jacob from his son. One can speak of three differences between their perspectives.

The World that Isn’t There

Dec 27, 2024 By Joel Seltzer | Commentary | Miketz

Years ago, I read a book by the author Chuck Klosterman titled But What if We’re Wrong? The premise of the book is to attempt to “think about the present as if it were the past,” or in other words, to consider whether despite our current devotion to rationality and the scientific method, there are aspects of our modern world about which we might be profoundly wrong?

What Makes Groups Reject Their Own?

Dec 20, 2024 By Rabbi Yael Shmilovitz | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Vayeshev

The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy. The Wizard of Oz in Wicked (2024) Joseph’s brothers resent him so much they can’t even stand the sight of him: וַיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ וְלֹא יָכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹם (Gen 37:4)—they hated him so much they could not dabro leshalom. The commentators […]

Pages:

JTS Torah Commentary

Explore JTS’s Online Torah

Read weekly Torah commentaries

Holiday Learning and Resources

Join online classes

Listen to JTS podcasts

Watch lecture recordings

Nusah & Cantillation

Featured