JTS Torah Commentary

A Covenant of Salt

Mar 20, 2026 By Tim Daniel Bernard | Commentary | Vayikra

Covenant is a central concept in Judaism. The Torah and later tradition make clear that the people Israel have a special relationship with God, and Jews have acquired the epithet “the chosen people” (though Jewish particularism need not preclude other peoples having their own unique relationships with God). Rabbi David Hartman, z”l, titled his exposition of Jewish theology A Living Covenant. Rabbi David Wolpe, in a speech at JTS, proposed highlighting the mainstream ideological approach of Conservative Judaism by rebranding it as “Covenantal Judaism.”

The Give and Take of Strength

Mar 13, 2026 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Pekudei | Shabbat Hahodesh | Vayak-hel

Rituals of closure are common in both the secular and religious realms. An example of the first is the sounding of retreat and the lowering of the flag marking the end of the official duty day on military installations. An instance of the second is the siyyum, a liturgical ritual and festive meal that is occasioned by the completion of the study of a Talmudic tractate. Closure rituals relate not only to the past but to the future as well. On the one hand, the temporal demarcation of a past event facilitates the emergence of its distinct identity, internal coherence, and significance, thereby providing insight, understanding, and, at times, a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, by declaring an end, a closure ritual creates space in which one can—and must—begin anew; the past is to be neither prison nor refuge.

Kept By Shabbat

Mar 6, 2026 By Amy Kalmanofsky | Commentary | Ki Tissa

Ahad Ha’am famously said: “More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” Pretty remarkable coming from the founder of cultural Zionism!

Parashat Ki Tissa either supports or challenges Ha’am’s words. This week’s parashah relates one of the lowest moments in Israel’s story—the sin of the golden calf—in which Israel dances before a god of their own making. Coming down Mount Sinai with the stone tablets inscribed by God’s finger (Exod. 31:18), Moses sees Israel’s frenzy and smashes the tablets. Moses spends the rest of the parashah picking up the pieces and working to restore Israel’s relationship with God. The parashah ends with God giving a new set of tablets to Moses. The holy covenant between God and Israel is restored.

Zakhor in a Fractured Age

Feb 27, 2026 By Sandra Fox | Commentary | Shabbat Zakhor | Tetzavveh

“Could you have chosen a more loaded week?” said my husband with a face that can only be described as both bemused and pitying when I told him that I had agreed to write my first JTS Torah Commentary on Shabbat Zakhor. As the heaviness of the reading sank in, with its commandment to recall Amalek’s unprovoked attack on the Israelites and to “blot out” Amalek’s memory, I became apprehensive.

A Symbol of Peace

Feb 20, 2026 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Terumah

The Arch of Titus in Rome is simultaneously one of the saddest and most exciting places for a Jew to stand. It is but a short distance from the Colosseum, the stadium made famous by its cruel sports, built with money plundered from the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Titus’s Arch celebrates the destruction of our Temple, a building designated by Isaiah to be a house of prayer for all nations. A bas-relief sculpture on the arch’s inner walls depicts a sickening scene: the triumphant display of the Temple’s sacred objects, the Menorah most prominent among them, along with a pathetic procession of enslaved Jews.

Wade Melnick – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Feb 19, 2026 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Terumah

Wade Melnick-Terumah

Before Them, Before Us: Law as Master, Law as Servant

Feb 13, 2026 By Gordon Tucker | Commentary | Mishpatim | Shabbat Shekalim

וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶם These are the rules that you shall place before them. (Exodus 21:1)  So begins this week’s parashah, Mishpatim.  It is here that the Jewish legal tradition begins, where Torah (i.e. “Instruction”) becomes Nomos or Law.   Immediately after that opening sentence, the text continues with rules concerning masters and servants.  […]

Eitan Bloostein – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Feb 11, 2026 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Mishpatim

Mishpatim All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

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…

Noam Blauer – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Feb 6, 2026 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Yitro

Yitro All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

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.