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On Moses’ “Saying” and “Telling”

Feb 6, 2026 By Alan Cooper | Commentary | Yitro

The highlight of Parashat Yitro is undoubtedly the spectacular son et lumière at Sinai, accompanying the uniquely unmediated revelation of God’s “words” (the 10 Commandments) directly to the people. The gravity of the occasion demanded special preparation, and most of Exodus 19 is devoted to that preparation…

Between the Lines: The Last Dekrepitzer by Howard Langer

Feb 4, 2026 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture

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 […]

The Gifts of Tu Bishvat: A Springtime Conversation

Feb 2, 2026

Seasons of Responsibility begins with Tu Bishvat. The session explored how Tu Bishvat’s meaning has evolved over time. We discussed the gifts of Tu Bishvat for this unique moment. And we’ll see Tu Bishvat not just as a single day, but as the beginning of a springtime season that leads to Purim, Pesach and Shavuot.

When Prayer is Not Enough

Jan 30, 2026 By Cantor Rabbi Shoshi Levin Goldberg | Commentary | Beshallah

You may know this joke: a man is drowning in the ocean and several people with boats come to rescue him. He responds to each of them, “No, thank you. I’ve been praying, and God will save me.” When the man arrives in heaven, angry with God, God asks him, “Why didn’t you get on the boats I sent?”

Prayer is rarely enough. Jewish leaders are acutely aware of this reality today. Cantors, in particular, know that there is far more to our jobs than leading prayer.

Marc Hersch – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Jan 29, 2026 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Beshallah

Beshallah All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

Where We Stand is What We Learn

Jan 23, 2026 By Luciana Pajecki Lederman | Commentary | Bo

As a Talmud teacher, I am constantly aware of the dynamic web of relationships in which learning takes place—between me, the students, and the text we explore together—each quietly and continually shaping the relationship between the others. But as Director of the Beit Midrash, I am especially attuned to the role of the surrounding environment: how the space itself can either nurture or inhibit those relationships.

Words Fail Me

Jan 16, 2026 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Va'era

That is the way the Zohar (the foundational text of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism) understands our exile in Egypt: as the exile of speech, a failure of words. In this reading, the breakdown of speech is both cause and effect of our enslavement, while healing and redeeming speech—finding our voice—is both the process and hallmark of redemption.

Hearing the Cry: Miriam, Pharaoh’s Daughter, and Moral Courage

Jan 9, 2026 By Naomi Kalish | Commentary | Shemot

At times of difficulty, uncertainty, and strife, I often find comfort and courage in stories, especially stories about people who connect and transform or resolve conflict. This week’s parsha, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), gives me such a story of hope in its portrayal of the relationship between two people from groups in conflict.

Pictures at a Benediction: Envisioning Jacob’s Blessing of his Sons

Jan 2, 2026 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Vayehi

what did Jacob’s bedchamber look like when the brothers came to receive their final blessings—and curses? (Gen. 49) I have found numerous artistic renderings, but two in particular caught my attention because of how differently they paint the scene.

A Song of Hope

Dec 26, 2025 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Vayiggash

In a curious foreshadowing of the book of Exodus, in this week’s Torah reading (Gen. 46:8) we read, “Ve’eleh shemot—These are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt . . .” This is verbatim the same report as the opening verse of the book of Exodus. But there, the names are limited only to Jacob’s actual sons, and the full enumeration of their own offspring is absent.

A Light for One, a Light for a Hundred

Dec 19, 2025 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Miketz | Hanukkah

When I look at the Prato Haggadah in our exhibition at the Grolier Club, I think of the man who once protected it. His name was Ludwig Pollak. Born in Prague in 1868, Pollak became one of Rome’s leading Jewish scholars of classical art. He directed the Museo Barracco, advised the Vatican’s archaeological collections, and […]

Judah and Tamar: Writing the Story

Dec 12, 2025 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Vayeshev

One of the most gripping stories in the entire Bible appears in this week’s parashah. Chapter 38, a self-contained unit, interrupts the ongoing Joseph saga to tell the story of Judah and Tamar.

The chapter opens with the somewhat strange statement that Judah leaves his brothers, meets up with Hirah the Adulamite, and there, in Adulam, finds himself a wife of Canaanite stock. He thereby violates God’s warning to the patriarchs to avoid Canaanite women (Gen. 24:3, 28:1). Judah’s wife bears him three sons. He marries off his first son, Er, to Tamar. No information is provided about her lineage. Er dies because he was “displeasing to the Lord” (v. 7).

Jacob’s Fear

Dec 5, 2025 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Vayishlah

The Torah wants us to identify with the ancestors we meet in the book of Genesis; indeed, Abraham and Sarah and their children become our ancestors when we agree not only to read their stories, but to take them forward. Abraham “begat” Isaac in one sense by supplying the seed for his conception. He “begat” him as well by shaping the life that Isaac would live, setting its direction, digging wells that his son would re-dig, making Isaac’s story infinitely more meaningful—and terrifying—by placing him in the line of partners with God in covenant. So it is with us. Nowhere is this impact of the ancestors more obvious than in the case of Jacob, who in this week’s parashah receives the name by which we heirs to the covenant call ourselves to this day: Israel. The ancestors are us, if we accept the Torah’s invitation to make them so. We are them: the latest chapter in the story that they lived and bequeathed to us, and which we have chosen to live and bequeath to others.

A Scholarly Revolution: Rewriting the Rules of Talmud Study

Dec 1, 2025 By Judith Hauptman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

In his many volumes of Talmud commentary, beginning with publication of the first in 1968, Professor David Weiss Halivni introduced a groundbreaking approach to Talmud study: distinguishing between the attributed teachings of the rabbis and the anonymous editorial layer that surrounds them. This interpretive revolution transformed the field, offering a powerful tool for understanding the development of rabbinic thought.

The Monumental Act of Listening

Nov 28, 2025 By Jessica Fisher | Commentary | Vayetzei

Parashat Vayetzei brings us to a climactic moment of a 20-year conflict between Jacob and Laban. When Jacob came to Laban’s house after tricking his own father and brother, Laban made him work for seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, only to be tricked into marrying Leah. So he worked seven more years and finally married Rachel. More hiding and trickery ensued, until finally Jacob decided it was time to leave this toxic dynamic and he snuck away with his family. But Laban caught up to them and, after years of deceit, they had it out with each other, putting everything on the table once and for all: Laban was hurt that Jacob had left without giving him a chance to say goodbye to his children and grandchildren; Jacob was resentful for the years of hard labor, lies, and harsh treatment. (Gen. 31:26-42)

Possibility and Peril: Jews and the Russian Revolution

Nov 24, 2025 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

The Russian Revolution promised liberation and equality, but for Jews its legacy was far more complex. Dr. David Fishman examined the Jewish socialist movement known as the Bund, the revolutionary role of figures like Leon Trotsky, and Lenin’s complex position on the “Jewish question.” Through images and historical context, we’ll consider how the Revolution promised liberation even as it imposed new constraints, and how radical politics reshaped Jewish identity and community in the Soviet era.

Finding Our Way (and God’s) in the World

Nov 21, 2025 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Toledot

What do you make of our matriarch Rebecca? Certainly she is the boldest and most independent of the mothers. When as a girl she sees a stranger at the well, she rushes to water his caravan of thirsty camels, and then invites him to stay at her house. When offered the chance to travel with this man back to a distant land and a mysterious husband, she volunteers without hesitation. When her pregnancy becomes difficult, she seeks out God and challenges God with the bold question, “Why do I need this?” When her husband seems ready to bless the wrong son, she quickly conspires to rearrange the action so that Jacob will receive the primary blessing. In all of these actions, Rebecca is seen as a woman of strength and decisiveness.

Progress, Regress, and Transformation: Hermann Cohen’s Ezekiel as a Revolutionary Prophet

Nov 17, 2025 By Shira Billet

The prophet-priest Ezekiel prophesied, after the Babylonian exile, about the restoration of the temple and the sacrificial rite. In the Nineteenth-century, both Christian Bible critics and liberal Jewish scholars held negative views of Ezekiel, especially compared to Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos, who famously prophesied against temple sacrifice, in favor of ethical obligations to the vulnerable.

Death and Dignity

Nov 14, 2025 By Gordon Tucker | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah

Parashat Hayyei Sarah begins with the death of the matriarch Sarah. Interestingly, it is the first time that a death enters into the Torah’s narrative. In all of the genealogies from Adam and Eve through the lives of Abraham and Sarah, deaths were matter-of-factly recorded with the simple word וימת. And of course, there was the global death and destruction during the Flood. But the death of Sarah is the first one that generates a story, and a template, as it were, for how to deal with death—burial, eulogizing, mourning, and the subsequent continuation of life.