JTS Torah Commentary

Where Is God to Be Found in Exile?

Jan 3, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayiggash

Jacob receives the news from his sons that Joseph lives with silent incredulity. Numbed by his mourning, he dares not expose himself to more pain and disappointment. The report was counter-intuitive: not only had Joseph survived, he had risen to become the second-most powerful man in Egypt. But the abundance of provisions and possessions that his sons had brought back from Egypt confirmed their words. As Jacob’s resistance gives way, he resolves to accept Pharaoh’s invitation to settle in Egypt. He must be reunited with Joseph before death separates them irremediably.

Complete Repentance

Dec 27, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Miketz

Early on in his laws of repentance, Maimonides gives us a definition of the highest form of repentance:

What is complete repentance? When we are confronted with a situation in which we previously sinned and could do so again, but this time we desist not out of fear or weakness but because we have repented. An example: a man has sexual relations with a woman in violation of the Torah. Sometime later he finds himself alone with her again in the same place with ardor and virility undiminished. However, this time he departs without the slightest impropriety. Such a person has attained the level of complete repentance.

Lighting a Candle Before God

Dec 27, 2003 By Lauren Eichler Berkun | Commentary | Hanukkah

As the menorah shines with all eight candles on this Shabbat Hanukkah, I am inspired to reflect on the powerful spiritual metaphor of light in the Jewish tradition. Light is one of the enduring symbols for God in our sacred texts

The Symbolism of Light

Dec 27, 2003 By Lauren Eichler Berkun | Commentary | Hanukkah

As the menorah shines with all eight candles on this Shabbat Hanukkah, I am inspired to reflect on the powerful spiritual metaphor of light in the Jewish tradition.

A Search for Peace

Dec 20, 2003 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayeshev

Jacob’s life is a search for blessing and more importantly, a blessing that will culminate in peace. Knowing full well that his blessing was acquired through deception, Jacob seeks uncategorical recognition – a legitimacy that Esau grants him in last week’s parashah. Indeed, Jacob desires the fulfillment of blessing in his own life. Sadly though, his life proves to be just the opposite.

Longing for Our Homeland

Dec 20, 2003 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Vayeshev | Hanukkah

Mrs. Matsunaga looked at me with a puzzled face. She was the local English teacher in a village in Northern Japan. Moments before, she had bustled into the house where I was staying. It had come up in conversation that I was Jewish and she was trying to figure out what that meant. Suddenly, her face cleared. “You are from Israel,” she exclaimed. I laughed and said: “Yes, but that was a long time ago.”

True Power

Dec 13, 2003 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Vayishlah

Power – who has it, how it’s used, and what it results in, is a major theme in the Bible. In an early example of the use of power, Cain overpowers Abel and kills him. The first murder is immediately preceded, though, by a non-use of power. God warns Cain:

Surely, if you do right, there is uplift. But if you do not do right, sin couches at the door; Its urge is toward you, yet you can be its master. (Genesis 4:7)

Facing Our Struggles

Dec 12, 2003 By Joshua Heller | Commentary | Vayishlah

The story of Jacob wrestling with the angel is surely among the most puzzling in the Bible. Ancient and modern commentators debate the identity and motivation of Jacob’s mysterious attacker. Is it a divine representative? Esau’s guardian angel? Esau himself? Or, perhaps, the struggle is internal, played out in the realm of dreams. I am struck by a more basic question. The text records that the attacker sets upon Jacob only after he has sent the rest of his camp over the Jabbok river, and Jacob is left alone. Given the number of people in his camp, how did Jacob end up alone in the first place? The answer reveals something essential about human nature.

Rachel the Victim, Rachel the Hero

Dec 6, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei

In this week’s parashah Jacob gets his just desserts. He meets his master in the art of deception. As Jacob had denied his brother Esau the blessing to which his birthright entitled him, so, too, he is now denied the hand of Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban his uncle, with whom he is madly in love and for whom he has worked seven hard years. The counterpoint is exquisite. By substituting Leah for Rachel on Rachel’s wedding night, Laban exacts divine retribution at a moment of peak anticipation in a way that is no less intense than what Jacob did to Esau Along the way, Laban demonstratively reaffirms the sanctity of primogeniture.

Cry Along with Me

Dec 6, 2003 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Vayetzei

A parashah of deep passion, Va-Yetze often tears me apart while reading it. In it, Jacob falls in love, is deceived by his uncle/ father-in-law, marries two sisters, takes two concubines, and becomes father to eleven sons and one daughter! Though destined to become our third Patriarch, Jacob in these 20 years of his life lives with pain and deception, and causes deep pain, at the very least, to his two wives—Rachel and Leah. 

Reconciliation of Faiths

Nov 29, 2003 By Rachel Ain | Commentary | Toledot

Sibling conflict is not a new story in the Torah. Isaac knows well his own history of sibling rivalry with Ishmael. They spent years apart, yet reconciled over the burial of their father Abraham. So too in this week’s parashah we see a rift between two siblings. Jacob stands before his father Isaac in disguise and takes a blessing that rightfully belongs to Esau. Upon hearing this, Esau cries out to Isaac, “Have you only one blessing, father?” (Genesis 27:37) How could Isaac, the father of both sons, in fact choose only one son to bless? How could there in fact, be only one blessing?

A Dialogue Across the Ages

Nov 29, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Toledot

Like his father Abraham, Isaac is driven by famine to take refuge in the city of Gerar, in the western Negev northwest of Be’er Sheva. The abundance of water for their large herds is what spurs them to relocate, and it is over water that both of the patriarchs contend with the locals. In the first instance, Abraham accuses the ruler of Gerar, Abimelech, that servants of the latter stripped him of a well that he had dug. Abimelech professes to be ignorant of the theft and willing to make amends; whereupon he and Abraham strike a pact. A gift of seven ewes by Abraham will serve to legally establish his claim of ownership of the well. Indeed, according to the biblical account, the pact gives rise to the name of Be’er Sheva, “the well of seven.” At the time, the dominion of Gerar must have stretched eastward to Be’er Sheva, which appears to have had no ruler of its own (21:22-32).

The Meaning of the Shalshelet

Nov 22, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah

In 1981, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) published The Torah: A Modern Commentary, admirably edited by Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut. The first of the denominational commentaries, it combined an unflinchingly scholarly perspective with a reverence for traditional readings. Conspicuously absent, from the Hebrew text, however, was the trope, the musical notations by which the Torah is chanted in the synagogue. The omission reflected Reform practice: in most Reform synagogues where the Torah is read, it is literally read and not chanted. But the omission triggered a storm of criticism and the UAHC quickly put out a second edition that included the trope.

Confronting God

Nov 15, 2003 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayera

The tension and ultimate destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah stand at the core of Parashat Vayera. God’s quality of justice is ironically put on trial. One midrash places the following words in the mouth of Abraham as he encourages God to think twice about the immanent destruction of these towns: “If You seek to have a world, strict justice cannot be exercised; and if You seek strict justice, there will be no world . . . You can have only one of the two. If you do not relent a little, the world will not endure” (Genesis Rabbah 39:6).

Visiting the Sick

Nov 15, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera

During World War II and the Korean War, my father served as the civilian Jewish chaplain at the sprawling army hospital at Valley Forge, not far from his pulpit in Pottstown. Every Wednesday he would walk its endless halls visiting wounded Jewish servicemen. On Thursday evenings he returned to conduct a prayer service for them accompanied by a few women from the synagogue sisterhood who had prepared a collation of kosher deli. No part of my father’s rabbinate gave him more satisfaction because no Jews ever needed him more than this pitiful refuse of military carnage. Their numbers were large and their condition often shattering. My father assuaged their pain with warmth, wisdom and faith. In 1918, as a teenager in the German army on the Western Front, he had witnessed the devastating brutality of mechanized warfare and the chaos of defeat. That experience brought him to choose the rabbinate while his empathy for victims of misfortune made him an ideal pastor. He turned the mitzvah of bikkur holim (visiting the sick) into a fine art.

Between Humility and Grandeur

Nov 9, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

Judaism is a religion of polarities. An in-depth view of reality requires a stereoscope. No single lens can do justice to any aspect of the complexity of our experience of the world.

Patriarchs and Matriarchs

Nov 8, 2003 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

The central prayer of Jewish prayers, the Amidah, begins by identifying to whom one is praying: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. This identification serves not only to say who God is, but also to specify who the Jews are: the descendants of those patriarchs. At the same time, the Jews are also descendants of the matriarchs, and here’s the rub: though God’s promises are recorded in the Torah as given to the men, they would not have been achieved without the women.

Chaos and Creation

Nov 1, 2003 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Noah

Striking me, on this year’s reading of Parashat Noah, were the two following verses: “God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided” (Genesis 8:1), and “But the dove could not find a resting place for its foot (v’lo matz’ah ha-yonah manoah), and returned to him to the ark, for there was water over all the earth” (Genesis 8:9).

Genesis and Infertility

Nov 1, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah

My aunt and uncle never had children. In a very real sense, my sister and I were their surrogate family. We visited them often, stayed with them in the summers and loved them dearly. In Germany, my uncle had been a textile salesman. When they came to America in 1937, he decided to work with dogs, his lifelong passion, rather than fabrics. Eventually, they acquired a kennel for dogs out in Yaphank, Long Island, and quickly endowed it with renown by dint of hard work. They boarded, bred and even showed dogs. 

In God’s Image

Oct 25, 2003 By Rachel Ain | Commentary | Bereishit

In Parashat Bereishit , we are told that “God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27).