Who Shall Cross: A Talmudic Reimagining of the Passover Narrative
Mar 24, 2025 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Pesah
In preparation for your seder, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts, led a thought-provoking session, exploring a Talmudic story that reflects key themes of Passover, raising profound questions about free will, obligation, and inclusion. How do we determine our purpose? Who are our fellow travelers, and what do we owe them? This discussion offers new insights to bring to your Passover table.
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Sacred Gifts and the Holiness of Diversity
Mar 21, 2025 By Rabbi Ayelet Cohen | Commentary | Shabbat Parah | Vayak-hel
Parashat Vayak-hel demands that we notice the details, recounting with exquisite specificity the ornamentation and beautification of the Miskhan and the sacred vestments. Among all of the parshiyot detailing the construction of the Mishkan, Vayak-hel is particularly notable in lifting up the sacred contributions of women and of the artists and artisans. It also expands […]
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From Online Auction to JTS Special Collections: How Two Historic Bibles Were Reunited in the JTS Library
Mar 17, 2025 By David Zev Moster | Public Event video | Video Lecture
This summer, for his 40th birthday, David Moster purchased a rare set of books from the 1800s. The chain of events that followed led to the JTS Library temporarily welcoming a rare and valuable 13th Century Tanakh manuscript into its collection. In this session, you learn about the fascinating backstory of this manuscript and the thrilling story of its reunification. We explore how the study of manuscripts and the scribes who created them can help you think about your own translation and interpretation of the Tanakh.
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The Day Is Short, but Our Story Is Long
Mar 14, 2025 By Yael Landman | Commentary | Ki Tissa | Purim
Within the book of Exodus, certain details link the golden calf story with the account of revelation at Sinai. Mount Sinai is the site of the Israelites forming a covenant with God, but it is also the site of them violating that covenant. It’s where God tells Moses to go up and receive the stone tablets, and where Moses carries down those tablets before he witnesses the Israelites partying and hurls the tablets to the ground. The word kol (which we might translate “sound,” “noise,” or “thunder”) recurs in the context of God’s revelation, only to recur in the account of the golden calf with respect to the Israelites’ ill-advised festivities. In these ways, the golden calf story is inextricably connected to the initial moment of revelation and lawgiving at Sinai, even as it threatens to destroy that covenantal foundation.
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Anina Dassa – Senior Sermon (’25)
Mar 12, 2025 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Ki Tissa
Ki Tissa
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The Masks of Doubt: Exploring Purim, Uncertainty, and the Hidden Divine
Mar 10, 2025 By Rabbi David Ingber | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Purim
Purim is a celebration of uncertainty—a holiday that invites us to embrace the hidden, the paradoxical, and the unknown. Join Romemu’s Rabbi David Ingber for a deep dive into the mystical themes of Purim, where doubt becomes a gateway to faith and masks reveal more profound truths. Together, we explore how the story of Purim reflects the concealment of the Divine, the role of chance and chaos in our lives, and the profound spiritual lessons that arise when we step into the space of not knowing. Discover how Purim challenges us to find meaning and connection amid mystery.
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Remembering Who We Are
Mar 7, 2025 By Gordon Tucker | Commentary | Shabbat Zakhor
The coming Shabbat is designated as Shabbat Zakhor. The word is quite prevalent in Jewish literature and thought, and its basic meaning is generally translated by the words “memory,” “remembrance,” or “memorial.” And as a people we seem always to be remembering, and exhorting others to remember. It’s at the core of what we believe to be essential in Jewish education. As Isaac Bashevis Singer once remarked: “Jews suffer from many diseases, but amnesia is not one of them.
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“Youth Shall See Visions”: Engaging the Next Generation of JTS Learners and Doers
Mar 3, 2025
In this past year, JTS launched two national fellowship programs for teens: Ruchot (in partnership with the Rabbinical Assembly, Adas Israel Congregation, USY, USCJ, and Ramah), which engages them in community organizing and social action, and the Emerging Leaders Fellowship, a student-led research program that introduces high school students to academic Jewish Studies. Both programs are inviting young Jews to establish their own connections to Jewish life and tradition.
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JTS Rabbinic Convocation 2025
Mar 3, 2025
JTS bestowed honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees at a convocation ceremony recognizing rabbis for their achievements over many years of distinguished service.
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The Golden Crown of Parenting
Feb 28, 2025 By Lilly Kaufman | Commentary | Shabbat Shekalim | Terumah
These are architectural details of the Ark of the Covenant, the central element of the Holy of Holies, where the tablets of the Ten Commandments will be held and carried. The Ark has a covering of gold, inside and out, and a crown of gold. Four gold rings are attached to it, two to each side wall, and through these rings poles of acacia wood are inserted, which remain in place, even when the Ark is at rest. To what may this Ark be compared? To parents. How so?
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Don’t Be the Terumah
Feb 21, 2025 By Stephanie Ruskay | Commentary | Mishpatim
Last week JTS, The Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue Youth, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Camp Ramah, the Jewish Youth Climate Movement Powered by Adamah, and Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, DC, launched Ruchot, the first ever advocacy and lobbying training for Conservative Movement teens. We gathered as an erev rav (mixed multitude) of 36 teens from 11 states (and one Canadian), 7 rabbinical students, 6 rabbis, three youth director staff, and an Israeli shaliah.
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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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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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