JTS Torah Commentary

Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement

Nov 10, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Author and historian Julian E. Zelizer when he talks about his book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement, which chronicles the life of Heschel as a symbol of the fight to make progressive Jewish values relevant in the secular world.

May We Be Known by the Work of Our Hands

Nov 5, 2021 By Ariella Rosen | Commentary | Toledot

How does deception begin? In the telling of Jacob’s acquisition of nearly all of the first-born advantages granted his brother Esau, the moment is perhaps not what it seems.

Kollot Rabbinic Literature, 2021-22

Nov 4, 2021 By Jan Uhrbach

November 4, 2021 December 2, 2021 January 13, 2022Download Sources February 3, 2022Download Sources (Page 3) March 24, 2022Download Sources April 28, 2022Download Sources May 12, 2022Download Sources

A Nice, Jewish Teacher: How American Elementary Education Became “Women’s Work”

Nov 1, 2021 By Shira D. Epstein | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Early 20th century elementary school teaching became synonymous with being female, and particularly in NYC, with being the right kind of Jewish young woman.

What Was Isaac Doing in the Field?

Oct 29, 2021 By | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah

The patriarch Isaac is one of the most passive biblical characters. He speaks infrequently and seems to stand still while other people feverishly act around him. His presence in Parashat Hayyei Sarah is no exception. After surviving the ordeal of the Akedah, and experiencing the death of his mother, Isaac is nowhere to be found. Abraham buys the burial plot and only Abraham is mentioned as present at Sarah’s burial. Abraham then sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac, but again we lack any information as to what Isaac is doing or how he is feeling after successive traumatic life events. Isaac only returns to the story when Eliezer returns with Rebekah and she first sees Isaac.

We Refuse to Be Enemies

Oct 26, 2021 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Authors Sabeeha Rehman and Walter Ruby talk about their book, We Refuse to Be Enemies, a manifesto that offers experience and guidance on the rise of intolerance, bigotry, and white nationalism in the United States.

The Jewish Middle Class in an Age of Social Justice

Oct 25, 2021 By Nancy Sinkoff | Public Event video | Video Lecture

his session will explore the historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s challenging essay, “The Business of American Jews: Notes on a Work in Progress” (1992), which called for a reassessment of Jewish economic social mobility as a positive value in Jewish life.

Lessons from Lot’s Daughters

Oct 22, 2021 By Abby Eisenberg | Commentary | Vayera

Parashat Vayera is the fourth Torah portion after Simhat Torah, the celebration of our annual Torah reading cycle and the culmination of the fall holidays. As we begin the new year, we also begin anew our exploration of ancestral family dynamics. Arguably one of the most famous parent-child scenes in all of literature can be found in Vayera: that of Abraham bringing Isaac to offer him as sacrifice. The parashah also contains another version of child sacrifice when Lot, Abraham’s nephew, subjects his unnamed daughters to assault and danger. From the tragedy of Jephthah’s daughter to the boldness of the daughters of Zelofehad, relationships between fathers and daughters in Tanakh are both deeply troubling and inspiring. The story of Lot and his daughters is certainly the former, and, perhaps surprisingly, potentially the latter.

Protected: Kollot Parashat Hashavua, 2021-2022

Oct 21, 2021 By Matthew Berkowitz

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Was Avram a Second Language Learner?

Oct 15, 2021 By Avi Garelick | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

At the conclusion of Chapter 11 of Sefer Bereishit, the peoples of the world are divided by Divine command into distinct groups with mutually incomprehensible languages. This tale of the Tower of Babel accounts for the fundamental question of why human beings can be so different from each other while coming from the same source. It also sets the stage for what follows: a freshly divided world, with the inability to communicate as a driving force of division.

Senior Sermons: Class of 2022

Oct 13, 2021

Presentations by senior Rabbinical School students in 5782 Gabe Cohen – Noah Alisa Zilbershtein – Lekh Lekha Maor Greene – Vayera Katja Vehlow – Hayyei Sarah Naomi Zaslow – Toledot David Chapman – Vayishlah Jessica Dell’Era – Vayeshev Jesse Nagelberg – Miketz Dave Yedid – Vayiggash Samuel Gelman – Mishpatim Elizabeth Breit – Terumah Deborah […]

Even God Makes Time for Leisure: Rabbinic Narratives About God’s Work, Play, and Rest Schedule

Oct 11, 2021 By Sarit Kattan Gribetz | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Genesis 2:2-3 announces that, after working hard to create the world and humanity over the course of six days, God took a day off to celebrate the Sabbath. Other passages in the Bible build upon God’s day of rest to mandate that all created beings rest, and that heads of households ensure that everyone under their control be allowed to rest on the seventh day. Divine time, we learn, alternates between periods of creative work and deliberate rest.  But what does God’s work entail, how does God manage divine time, does God make time for leisure, and does God have a schedule?

Who Do You Think You Are?

Oct 8, 2021 By Kendell Pinkney | Commentary | Noah

When I received the results, I can’t say I was all that surprised:

67% Sub-Saharan African, 30% Northwest European, 2% Indigenous American, 1% unaccounted for.

I already knew that my ethnic heritage was decently mixed up. I had spent enough years peppering my grandmothers with the kinds of questions only a child feels comfortable pursuing: “Where was your mother from? Where was your father from? Belize?! Which city? Dangriga? Sounds weird. Never heard of it. Wait, grandma, your grandmother was a white woman from Louisiana?!”

“Six Days Shall You Labor:” Perspectives on Work in Jewish Text and Tradition

Oct 4, 2021 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Video Lecture

Many of us spend more time at work than anywhere else over the course of our lives—but are we defined by what we do? In this text-based series, JTS scholars will explore ideas about the meaning of work and rest in Jewish tradition, Jewish social movements around work, as well as the roles that gender, geography, and shifting economic and social circumstances have played in Jews’ professional paths and our understandings of the meaning and value of work.

Six Days Shall You Labor: Shabbat and the Meaning of Work

Oct 4, 2021 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Shabbat, a day on which “work” is forbidden, also offers a commentary on work—on its place in our lives, its importance, and its limitations. Notably, the rabbinic Sabbath—that is, the “traditional” Sabbath—offers a perspective that differs from that of the Torah, both original and unique. Join Dr. David Kraemer to explore biblical and rabbinic views of the Sabbath as commentaries on the significance of work.

Is the World a Mirror?

Oct 1, 2021 By Dianne Cohler-Esses | Commentary | Bereishit

The God of the Torah is driven by loneliness, by a desire to be in relationship with humanity and to God’s chosen people, Israel. As Abraham Joshua Heschel says (quoted by Michael Lerner in his book Jewish Renewal), “God’s dream is not to be alone, but to have humankind as a partner in the drama of continuous creation” (vi). Out of a great loneliness God emerges from royal solitude to create a world and within it humanity as a partner for God.

What Exactly Is a Sukkah?

Sep 24, 2021 By David Zev Moster | Commentary | Sukkot

Have you ever asked yourself what defines a sukkah? Not how to build one or what makes it kosher, but why have one in the first place? What is its purpose? Was the sukkah part of daily life in ancient Israel? Did it have a role outside the holiday that bears its name?

In God’s Image

Sep 17, 2021 By Alisa Braun | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Sukkot

What does it mean to be created in God’s image? Or to act in a God-like way? As I reread Parashat Ha’azinu, I was struck by the ways Moses’s song poetically develops God’s care for the Israelites, and I discovered in the vivid and diverse metaphors the beginnings of an answer. From the opening lines, where God’s words are likened to varieties of rain, sustaining and giving life to all, to God as an eagle “who rouses his nestlings” and “bears them along his pinions” (Deut. 32:11), this God builds up, guides, teaches, and protects. God provides for the Israelites’ physical needs with gifts of abundance, nurturing the people with “honey from the crag” as a mother nurses her child (Deut. 32:13). The Israelites’ lack of gratitude inflames God’s anger, but God bestows mercy and forgiveness, despite there being no mention of teshuva (repentance). God gives.

Atonement: An Interplay Between the Individual and the Community

Sep 13, 2021 By Gordon Tucker | Video Lecture | Yom Kippur

A central feature of Yom Kippur is the act of atonement, or “at-one-ment.” But with whom should we seek to be “at one”? With God, with Israel, or with ourselves? In this session, we explored both the individual and collective aspects of this holy day, with special attention to Unetaneh Tokef, the Yom Kippur confession, and other liturgical features of the season.

Moses’s Journey, and Ours

Sep 9, 2021 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Commentary | Shabbat Shuvah | Vayeilekh

Whenever I read the opening verse of this week’s parashah, I recall the other parashah that opens with the same verb: לך־לך (“Go forth”). Told to go, Abram heeded God’s call, uprooting his life and journeying—both physically and emotionally—first to Haran and then to the land of Israel. And now, as we near the end of the Torah reading cycle, Parashat Vayeilekh begins by attributing that very same action of journeying to Moses, as he nears the end of his life. What can we learn from the parallel acts of journeying that these two great leaders of our people undertook?