JTS Torah Commentary

Israel at 70: Bridging Divides

Apr 17, 2018 By Arnold M. Eisen

Art, Artists, and Activism

Apr 16, 2018 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody in conversation with Ruth W. Messinger: What are the most responsible and effective ways for actors, singers, directors, and other artists to use the power of their public platforms on behalf of social causes?

Six Takes on a Leader’s Attributes

Apr 13, 2018 By Walter Herzberg | Commentary | Shemini

In chapter eight of Leviticus, Moses is essentially serving as temporary kohen gadol, high priest, during the dedication of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. On the eighth day, according to Rashi, Aaron and his sons are officially inaugurated into the priesthood. Moses transfers the position to his brother Aaron, who along with his descendants will officially serve as priests and high priest. 

What Can Jewish Music Do?

Apr 13, 2018 By Nancy Abramson | Commentary

Music allows us to navigate through the loudness, to find the silence. Music organizes the loud sounds so that we can recognize the power of the quiet, acting as an intermediary between God’s loud, external “persona” and the quiet, holy, inner being where truth is found. Music hangs in the subtle balance between sound and silence. It is music that tunes up our beings, that tunes up the entire world, to allow for an interchange between the soft, inner and the loud, outer manifestations of truth.

Supreme Court Cases and Jewish Values

Apr 10, 2018 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Seth P. Waxman, former Solicitor General of the United States and leading Supreme Court advocate, discusses three high-profile, momentous cases are currently before the US Supreme Court.

Freedom through Torah

Apr 5, 2018 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Pesah

“The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets” (Exod. 32:17). Do not read, “incised,” (harut), rather [read] “freedom” (herut)—for no person is truly free except the one who labors in Torah. (Mishnah Avot 6:2)

Freedom in biblical and rabbinic Judaism is a highly complex idea. Consider the mishnah above. At first glance one might think the law, the Ten Commandments carved on the two tablets, would be limiting, constraining human freedom. Counterintuitively, the Sages argue that true freedom only comes from an engagement with Torah! How might “laboring in Torah” and living a life according to the demands of the Torah induce freedom?

The Pogrom that Endured

Apr 5, 2018 By Barbara Mann | Commentary

The sun shone, the blossom bloomed, and the slaughterer slaughtered.

The image of the slaughterer in springtime is an indelible part of the DNA of twentieth-century Jewish experience, juxtaposing as it does the casual brutality of history with the most mundane of natural events. Its source is Bialik’s epic poem about the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Despite the many words written about the events of that April—personal testimony, journalistic reportage, memorial texts, poetry, and even a Broadway play (The Chosen People by Evgenii Chiriko)—the warp and woof of this particular incident simply won’t let us alone.

The Challenges of Change

Mar 30, 2018 By Mona Fishbane | Commentary | Pesah

I love Pesah, the holiday of intergenerational narrative. When we used to host the seder, our parents, siblings, and young children would join us at the table as we passed on and renewed the tradition each year. My husband’s puppet show was a favorite—he would spin a story from his vivid imagination—including, in one memorable year, how the bad guys stuffed Matzah into the Omphalos, the center of the world, causing havoc and chaos, and how Moshe had to get it unstuck and open the pathways. Sesame Street meets Kabbalah.

Jews Behaving Badly

Mar 30, 2018 By JTS Alumni | Commentary

By Dr. Edward Portnoy (GS ’08)

As a graduate student, I logged many, many hours in the old JTS Library (which has a special place in my heart) reading the seminal texts of Jewish life and history. I hunkered down next to my most beloved Jewish texts, Yiddish periodicals. While Yiddish newspapers and magazines may not be considered among traditional Jewish texts, they comprise an incredibly rich resource for the study of Jewish life from the 1860s through the 1930s.

Heroes of Jewish Heritage

Mar 23, 2018 By David Fishman | Commentary

Several months ago, I gave a lecture in Lviv, Ukraine, on my new book to a young non-Jewish audience. There are very few Jews left in Lviv (formerly Lemberg), even fewer than in Vilnius (formerly Vilna), where my book’s events take place. The audience listened attentively as I described the rescue of cultural treasures from the Nazis by a group of ghetto inmates nicknamed the Paper Brigade: a diary by Theodore Herzl, rabbinic manuscripts, Sholem Aleichem’s letters, paintings and sculptures.

Four New Questions from the Four Children

Mar 23, 2018 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol

Here’s a challenge for the rising generations seated around the seder table this year: make sure your Four Questions address the ways in which things truly are different in 2018 from how they have been at Passovers in the past.

Leviticus on Love

Mar 16, 2018 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Vayikra

I was on a small cruise ship with my family in Alaska this summer, when a couple whom I had come to like and admire asked me with great respect a question that Jews have been been hearing from Christians for many centuries, one that had been put to me more than once by students at Stanford: “How can Jews worship the God of the Old Testament, so full of harsh judgment and wrath, and so unlike the God of the New Testament, who calls to human beings in love?”

If All the Seas Were Ink

Mar 13, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio

At the age of 27, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce, Ilana Kurshan decided to begin learning daf yomi, the “daily page” of the Talmud. By the time she completed the Talmud after seven and a half years, Kurshan was remarried with three young children.

JTS Convocation 2018

Mar 12, 2018

The Give and Take of Strength

Mar 9, 2018 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Pekudei | Vayak-hel

Rituals of closure are common in both the secular and religious realms. An example of the first is the sounding of retreat and the lowering of the flag marking the end of the official duty day on military installations. An instance of the second is the siyyum, a liturgical ritual and festive meal that is occasioned by the completion of the study of a Talmudic tractate. Closure rituals relate not only to the past but to the future as well. On the one hand, the temporal demarcation of a past event facilitates the emergence of its distinct identity, internal coherence, and significance, thereby providing insight, understanding, and, at times, a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, by declaring an end, a closure ritual creates space in which one can—and must—begin anew; the past is to be neither prison nor refuge.

God, Judaism, and Divine Law

Mar 9, 2018 By Matthew Goldstone | Commentary

We all know that divine law is supposed to be true, unchangeable, universal, and make sense . . . right? Wrong. In fact, for the Rabbis, precisely the opposite may be the case. As Christine Hayes argues in her book What’s Divine about Divine Law, many of our preconceptions about what makes Jewish divine law “godly” are, in fact, incorrect.

Cosmopolitan Scholarship in Provence

Mar 2, 2018 By Tamar Marvin | Commentary

The intellectual achievements of the vibrant Jewish communities of medieval Provence—what is today the superlatively lovely Mediterranean coast of France—were largely lost to subsequent Jewish conversation. Situated at the crossroads of Sefarad and Ashkenaz, Provençal Jewry was influenced by northern European currents of thought while absorbing insights from the Judeo-Arabic sphere. The expulsions suffered by European Jews in the late Middle Ages included the dispersal of Provençal communities.

Kept by Shabbat

Mar 2, 2018 By Amy Kalmanofsky | Commentary | Ki Tissa

Ahad Ha’am famously said: “More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” Pretty remarkable coming from the founder of cultural Zionism!

Parashat Ki Tissa either supports or challenges Ha’am’s words. This week’s parashah relates one of the lowest moments in Israel’s story—the sin of the golden calf—in which Israel dances before a god of their own making. Coming down Mount Sinai with the stone tablets inscribed by God’s finger (Exod. 31:18), Moses sees Israel’s frenzy and smashes the tablets. Moses spends the rest of the parashah picking up the pieces and working to restore Israel’s relationship with God.

The Jewelry of a Master Teacher

Feb 23, 2018 By Lilly Kaufman | Commentary | Tetzavveh

Without using alchemy, the 16th-century Italian commentator Seforno (1470–1550) turned gems into gold. Writing a few short words about the gemstones that adorned the clothing of the High Priest, described in Parashat Tetzavveh, Seforno shares a truly fine insight about achieving greatness as an educator.

A Precious Hebrew Manuscript

Feb 23, 2018 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary

Knowing almost nothing about this beautiful manuscript, what would you guess it is? Finely decorated with gold leaf, Hebrew, small for easy carrying (these qualities are all obvious from the photo)—all of these characteristics suggest that it is a dear personal item, one that a wealthy Jew commissioned because of the importance of what it records. Knowing that it is a fifteenth-century manuscript, produced in Spain—before the age of printed books—would only highlight for us how rare it was.