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The Confusion of Revelation
Feb 14, 2025 By Barry Holtz | Commentary | Yitro
We have now come to Parashat Yitro in our annual Torah reading cycle, arguably the most significant sedra in the Humash. While Parashat Bereishit has the mythic power of the creation stories and Parashat Beshallah includes the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt and the miraculous crossing of the Sea, it is in Yitro that […]
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Ariel Dunat – Senior Sermon (’25)
Feb 12, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Yitro
Yitro
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Aggressor and Aggrieved
Feb 7, 2025 By Dr. Phil Keisman | Commentary | Beshallah | Pesah
The Israelites find themselves in a new position in Parashat Beshallah. After generations of suffering as slaves to the pharaohs, and after decades of uncertainty about how and when their suffering might end, the Israelites are now staring backwards as their oppressors die violently.
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Expanding the Conversation
Feb 4, 2025
The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) presents Expanding the Conversation, a podcast that brings the thought-provoking discussions and dynamic scholarship of JTS directly to you. Drawing from live events, lectures, and panel discussions, this podcast goes beyond the moment—offering not only recordings of these programs but also exclusive interviews with speakers, scholars, and thought leaders.
Each episode explores the critical issues shaping the Jewish world today, from contemporary cultural moments to enduring questions of Jewish thought, practice, and identity. Whether you’re looking for intellectual engagement, spiritual insight, or a deeper connection to Jewish learning, Expanding the Conversation invites you to join the dialogue.
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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.
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Digital Revelations: Jewish Text in the 21st Century
Feb 3, 2025 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
At key moments in our history, revolutions in information technologies have affected the way we study Torah and even the way we define it. Today we are going through such a revolution with very profound consequences. What are the effects of the current revolution and how is affecting our Torah—in the classroom, in The JTS Library, and beyond?
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The Worst Possible Plague
Jan 31, 2025 By Rebecca Galin | Commentary | Bo | Pesah
Terror. Annoyance. Foreboding. Among the Egyptians, each plague feels so much worse than anticipated. A shared sense of eeriness seeps in as the world becomes apocalyptic. Yet, each time a plague ends, the depth of the horror dissipates, forgotten until the next one arrives—more all-consuming and destructive than before. Locusts, darkness, death, grief. The world is overturned by a foreign God. Egyptian safety depends on the emotional whims of their leadership, plagues ending only when God softens Pharaoh’s heart.
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Alicia Rothamel – Senior Sermon (’25)
Jan 29, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Bo
Bo All Class of 2025 Senior Sermons
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The John Leopold and Martha Dellheim Senior Recital 2025
Jan 27, 2025
Graduating Cantorial School seniors Roseanne Benjamin, Rachel Black, and Justin Zvi Pellis, performed at an exciting evening of music and spirit, sharing their talents and their vision for the 21st-century cantorate. The recital featured a wide range of Jewish music in Hebrew and Yiddish, as well as hazzanut, musical theatre, and Israeli folk and art songs. Choral works and compositions written and composed by our graduates were also be performed. The soloists, along with guest artists, were be accompanied by pianist Joyce Rosenzweig, JTS adjunct instructor, and the combined choir of the H. L. Miller Cantorial School and Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, conducted by Hazzan Natasha Hirschhorn.
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Moses’s Lessons in Interfaith Dialogue
Jan 24, 2025 By Claire Davidson Bruder & Sherouk Ahmed | Commentary | Va'era
In the first week of 2025, the Washington Theological Consortium hosted a weeklong interfaith dialogue program at the United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. Third-year JTS rabbinical student and Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue program manager Claire Davidson Bruder participated in this program, alongside other Jewish, Christian, and Muslim seminary students. The following d’var Torah is […]
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A Turn for the Better
Jan 17, 2025 By Ariella Rosen | Commentary | Shemot
In Parashat Shemot, it appears that Moses took conscious steps to operate as a lone bystander, taking action that seems unlikely had a larger crowd been present. Raised in Pharaoh’s household, now an adult, Moses went out to walk among the Hebrew slaves as they labored. After witnessing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, “He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. 2:12).
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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 […]
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Hanukkah, Jewish Power, and the Future of Israel Education
Dec 16, 2024 By Arnold M. Eisen | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Hanukkah
Every year at Hanukkah, Jews everywhere celebrate the Maccabees’ military uprising against oppression. But in our day, many younger American Jews are experiencing discomfort with some of the ways that Israel uses power to fight its enemies and defend its interests, which has led to decreased support and weakened connection to the State.
How should education about Israel— and advocacy on behalf of Israel—change in coming years? What lessons should Jews take away from events on and off campus in the wake of October 7, 2023?
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When Jacob Met Esau: Facing Our Fears
Dec 13, 2024 By Gordon Tucker | Commentary | Vayishlah
The story told in Parashat Vayishlah of the meeting between Jacob and Esau is well known. But a closer consideration of the details of the tale speaks to very contemporary concerns. The overall backdrop to the scene is the pervasive feeling of fear. Esau, Jacob learns, is approaching, and there are 400 men with him. Is it a lavish welcoming party? (This is not unheard of in the Middle East—I myself experienced just such a welcoming party in Egypt when I was traveling there with some American Cabinet officials in 1980.) Or is it a prelude to belligerency? Are the loud sounds they are making just the sounds of 400 excited people from a demonstrative culture, or are those cries of war? Jacob assumed the worst. He didn’t bother asking the messengers who reported Esau’s approach whether the 400 men were armed or not. Jacob reflexively got ready for battle
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Communicating Across Divides
Dec 9, 2024 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Argument is essential to Jewish life—it forms the basis of the Talmud and the classic Jewish joke about two Jews, three opinions. Yet today the challenge of talking across differences often seems insurmountable.
Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, director of the Block Kolker Center for Spiritual Life, shares insight into how to communicate with those whose opinion differs from yours. She will include tactics for creating structures that enable civility and explore the traps to avoid in your community.
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Going Out to Meet God and History
Dec 6, 2024 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Vayetzei
In what ways do the Jewish people, the descendants of Jacob, still reside in his “house”? How can we, who bear the name by which Jacob will be called in next week’s Torah portion, become the Israel whom Jacob henceforth struggles to become? I’d like to suggest, using the indispensable categories for Jewish self-understanding contributed by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, that Jacob is party to the “covenant of fate,” while Israel signifies the “covenant of destiny.” The “covenant of fate” is imposed on Jews by history and circumstance, while the “covenant of destiny” is one that Jews are called on to embrace in partnership with God.
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Gleanings from “Zionism: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond”
Dec 2, 2024 By Gordon Tucker | Public Event video | Video Lecture
How is Zionism finding expression in our communities? What are the challenges and opportunities in educating younger generations around these ideas? Rabbi Gordon Tucker, Vice Chancellor of Religious Life and Engagement, shares his thoughts from the convening and the new models of engagement with Israel that emerged from our conversations.
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