JTS Torah Commentary

Grapes of Canaan

Jun 12, 2026 By Achia Anzi | Commentary | Shelah Lekha

The spies’ illustration epitomizes the power of images but also their hermeneutic limitations. Of the complex story that Parashat Shelach Lekha relates concisely, the grapes are a central motif in the visual tradition that illustrates it. For a biblical story to become an image, the artist must focus not only on the sayable but also the seeable. Hence, throughout history, images have often been presented alongside words. For example, the ancient mosaic from the Huqoq Synagogue depicts the two spies, along with the inscription “במוט בשניים”.[2

Jewish Storytelling and American Law in Post-WWII America 

Jun 8, 2026 By Shira Billet | Public Event video | Video Lecture

In the decades after World War II, Jewish American legal thinkers began drawing on biblical and rabbinic stories to help explore fundamental questions of constitutional interpretation. The work of Robert Cover in the 1980s, first developed in the context of the Vietnam war, is the most famous and influential example. But lesser-known figures such as Edmund Cahn and JTS professor Shalom Spiegel began developing this discourse in the context of the postwar moment in 1950s America, and the civil rights movement that emerged in its wake.

Independence Day

Jun 5, 2026 By Emmanuel Bloch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha

In Escape from Freedom (1941), Erich Fromm argued that freedom is not merely liberation from external constraints (“freedom from”) but also entails the capacity for self-realization and responsible action (“freedom to”). One of the most puzzling passages in Beha-alotekha reflects a similar insight.

Hard Cases: Facing Law’s Challenges in American Legal Theory and Rabbinic Literature

Jun 1, 2026 By Sarah Wolf | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Part of the series “America at 250: Jewish Ideas and the American Experiment”   Download Sources With Dr. Sarah Wolf, Assistant Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS How do judges settle cases when there is no clear right answer? How are precedents mined for new rulings? Should laws be the product of a legislator’s own creativity, or are […]

Barefoot and Backwards Levites

May 29, 2026 By Alan Cooper | Commentary | Naso

Towards the end of Parashat Bemidbar, God commands Aaron and Moses to undertake a census of the Levitical clans (Numbers 4:2). They begin the census with the Kohathites, which is odd for three reasons:

(1) Elsewhere the Levites are listed in birth order—Gershon, Kohath, Merari (Genesis 46:11, Numbers 3:17)—but here Kohath is given priority.

(2) The Kohathites are set apart from the other two clans by the division between Parashat Bemidbar and Parashat Naso, the latter of which begins with the enumeration of the other two clans.

(3) The labor assigned to the Kohathites is described, without elaboration, as “Most Holy” (Numbers 4:4). Rashi explicates this as responsibility for the “the ark, the table, the candelabrum, the altars, the curtain, and the accompanying vessels.”