JTS Torah Commentary

Recasting Lot’s Wife

Nov 7, 2025 By Rabbi Ayelet Cohen | Commentary | Vayera

In difficult times it’s natural to want to look back. Our memories can have a way of blurring the edges, so we remember things the way we have categorized them in our minds, without the details that don’t fit our story. If we’re remembering warmly, we may blur out the parts of the story that don’t hold up; if it’s a bitter memory we may leave out the parts that included kindness or helpfulness. 

Before the Print Revolution: Manuscripts and the World They Made

Nov 3, 2025 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Before the print revolution transformed how Jews accessed and spread knowledge, handwritten manuscripts shaped Jewish intellectual and spiritual life. In this session, Dr. Mordecai Schwartz explores the quiet revolutions embedded in manuscript culture—from scribal innovation to marginal commentary—and what they reveal about continuity, creativity, and change before Gutenberg. This session will highlight pieces on display at the Grolier Club of NYC in the exhibit, “Jewish Worlds Illuminated: A Treasury of Hebrew Manuscripts from The JTS Library,” which features over 100 manuscript and book offerings from The Library.

Zachary Bernstein-Rothberg – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Nov 3, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Vayera

Reflecting on Ibn Ezra’s reading of the Akedah, Zachary Bernstein-Rothberg reimagines Abraham and Isaac’s journey as a model for healing and solidarity, urging us to walk together through pain and renewal.

Claiming Our Ancestors: The Case of Terah

Oct 31, 2025 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

For all of us, there is no going without leaving; and so it was for Abraham: “Go forth from your land, your birthplace, and the house of your father to the land that I shall show you” (Gen. 12:1) [emphasis added]. And when we leave places, we leave people as well. When Abraham departed for Canaan he left behind, among others, his father Terah. And it was always thus: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother” (2:24).

Sara Birnbaum – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Oct 31, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Lekh Lekha

Lekh Lekha All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

Species Purity and the Great Flood

Oct 24, 2025 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Noah

Omnicide is a dramatic move, on that we can all agree. But what causes the Creator to grow violently disgusted with the creatures that had just recently been praised as “good” and blessed with fertility? JTS Bible Professor Emeritus Alan Cooper has suggested that it was interspecies breeding of human women with divine creatures that angered God, and that it was Noah’s pure genealogy (“perfect in his generations”) that set him apart for salvation. The ancient Rabbis had a similar idea—it was crossbreeding between species that angered God and caused God to reboot with specimens that were still arranged “according to their families” (Gen. 8:19; see Midrash Tanhuma, Buber ed., Noah 11).

Noa Rubin – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Oct 23, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Noah

Noah All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

Monotheism: Evolution or Revolution

Oct 20, 2025 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Professor Benjamin Sommer discussed the debate among modern scholars about the origin of biblical monotheism: did this religious idea develop gradually among the ancient Israelites during the biblical period, or did it appear suddenly early in Israelite history? To what extent were the theological beliefs of the biblical authors radically innovative, and to what extent did they display continuity with the religions of the Israelites neighbors in Canaan, Babylonia, Assuria, and Egypt?

Making Meaning From Chaos

Oct 17, 2025 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Bereishit

The opening words of B’reishit are exhilarating. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Each day, as God creates the world and everything in it, we are told that it is good. On the sixth day, when God creates people, we are told that it is very good. From the chaos comes order, goodness, and endless possibilities. But the parashah ends with the world on the verge of destruction: “The Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on earth, and His heart was saddened” 

Sarah Rockford – Senior Sermon (RS ’26)

Oct 16, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Bereishit

Bereshit All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

Impermanence, Empathy, and the Shadow of Faith

Oct 10, 2025 By Yitz Landes | Commentary | Sukkot

It can feel odd that just as it begins to get chilly, and just after the long High Holiday prayers may have left us wanting to simply stay home, we must go outside to sit in the sukkah—an impermanent dwelling that brings us closer to the elements. And it may seem odd that precisely at this moment of impermanence, the Jewish tradition places extra significance on the welcoming in of guests—hakhnasat orhim. Why is it that that we must now enter a place of discomfort? And why is it that we must be extra careful to welcome in guests at this time? In order to answer these questions, we can turn to the representation of Sukkot and its rituals in the Jewish mystical tradition, beginning with the Zohar.

Our Very Life

Oct 3, 2025 By Lilly Kaufman | Commentary | Ha'azinu

At the end of his life, with Joshua by his side, Moses begins his great, thunderous poem, Ha’azinu, summoning the heavens and the earth as witnesses to his powerful, angry message, as God commanded him to do in the preceding parashah, Vayelekh. And yet, in a one-verse reshut, a prayerful, wishful intention, preceding the central portion of his sermonic poem, he says that he wants his words to land lightly: “May my discourse come down as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like showers on young growth, like droplets on the grass” (Deut. 32:2). Then suddenly, the central angry theme emerges, and he calls the people “unworthy of [God], crooked, perverse” (32:5), “dull and witless” (32:6). 

When It’s Easier to Hide: Jonah, Antisemitism, and Moral Courage

Sep 29, 2025 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Yom Kippur

As we prepare for the Days of Awe, the Book of Jonah calls us not only to repentance, but to responsibility—especially in a fractured and fearful world. In this session, Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz explored Jonah’s reluctance to engage, his desire to retreat, and God’s challenge to him—and to us. The Book of Jonah summons us to engage and build bridges—even with those who may seem distant or hostile. This session engaged what it means to be brave and morally grounded when it would be easier to turn away—and how, like Jonah, each of us has the power to make a difference. 

The Meaning of Kol Nidre: Human Frailty, Inclusive Community, and the Gravity of Words

Sep 26, 2025 By Shira Billet | Commentary | Yom Kippur

The Kol Nidre service, with its solemn choreography and somber traditional melody,[1] ushers in Yom Kippur with a sobering reminder of the gravity of speech and the importance of honoring our words, setting the tone for a long day of fasting, repentance, and communal prayer.

When Teshuvah Feels Impossible

Sep 19, 2025 By Noam Blauer | Nitzavim | Rosh Hashanah

Are we really being set up for success for this whole teshuvah business? We might commit to doing all the preparation—journaling, going to shul, talking to therapists, chatting with rabbis, calling up hurt family and friends, New Year’s resolutions, etc.—and it still feels inadequate. Am I actually morally transformed? I am some infinitesimally small fraction of a hypermodern, global, complex network. My actions bear consequences for people on the other side of the globe I will never meet and whose names I will never even know. I still need to bring teshuvah to bear on my most intimate relationships,  but is this millennia-old process suitable to the messiness and uncertainty of modern moral life?

Jews, Non-Jews, and the Purpose of the High Holidays

Sep 16, 2025 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

The Amidah for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur presents a striking, even radical, vision: a world where God alone reigns, where all people—Jewish and not—live in peace, and oppressive regimes vanish. In this vision, the Jewish people are neither erased nor centered. Instead, they are part of a broader human hope. 

The Blessing of Curses: A Rosh Hashanah Puzzle

Sep 12, 2025 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Ki Tavo | Rosh Hashanah

Here’s a puzzle for us to think about as we consider the spiritual work that we need to engage in over the remaining days until Yom Kippur: The Talmud tells us—in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar—that Ezra the Scribe decreed that, for all time, the Jewish people would read the blessings and curses in Leviticus (Parashat Behukkotai) prior to the holiday of Shavuot and those of Deuteronomy (Parashat Ki Tavo) before Rosh Hashanah (BT Megillah 31b). This decree is strange. Reading these graphic and threatening chapters, which detail the good that will come if we are faithful to God and the suffering that will be wrought if we forsake our relationship with God, is difficult at any time. Why insist that we read them publicly as we ready ourselves to celebrate these joyous holidays?

Beyond the Sermon: What the High Holiday Prayers Offer and Demand

Sep 8, 2025 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

We begin our High Holiday webinar series with guidance for how to engage more meaningfully in the prayer part of High Holiday services. Famously long and repetitive, services on these days may sometimes feel overwhelming, boring, or even alienating. In this session, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts at JTS, offered practical strategies for participating more fully, and insight into what these services really ask of us and what they offer—especially in tumultuous uncertain times. Along the way, Rabbi Uhrbach will share some of her favorite passages in the Conservative Movement’s Machzor Lev Shalem, for which she was a member of the Editorial Committee. Whether you’re a seasoned prayergoer or showing up with hesitation, this session will help you begin the High Holiday season with openness, intention, and agency.

Family Matters

Sep 5, 2025 By Jonathan Milgram | Commentary | Ki Tetzei

Academic talmudists are often asked, “Of what use are the findings of academic Jewish Studies to lay people? Can historical research inform our contemporary dialogue on the pressing issues of our day?” I propose that developments in family law from biblical to Rabbinic times have much to teach us in our evaluating the rapidly changing values and their accompanying changing laws in our own times.

I begin in an unlikely place: the curious set of verses in this week’s parashah, Ki Tetzei, about filial favoritism:

Appoint Judges and Officials

Aug 29, 2025 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Shofetim

The year was 1752, the place Copenhagen, and Rabbi Yehonatan Eybeshutz, Chief Rabbi of Hamburg, Altona, and Wandsbeck, was on trial before the royal court of Denmark. King Frederick V himself was acting as the presiding judge. Altona was legally a province of Denmark, and the Altona City Council had turned to the king to resolve a controversy among the Jews that was breaking into violence in the streets. They had already tried placing Eybeshutz’s opponent in the matter, Rabbi Yaakov Emden, under house arrest. Emden’s escape to Amsterdam under cover of darkness made matters worse. The intensified presence of the city watch among the Jews only increased tensions. In desperation the burghers of Altona had turned to the king of Denmark.