JTS Torah Commentary

Across the Atlantic: Lifesaving Friendships during the Holocaust

Oct 23, 2023 By Edna Friedberg | Public Event video | Video Lecture

During the 1930s and 40s, friendship ties could mean the difference between life and death, refuge and danger. In this session we learn about Americans who went to great lengths to help European Jews in need of escape–whether penpals, exchange students, or total strangers. 

Between the Lines: Qohelet

Oct 18, 2023 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Sukkot

In Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, philosopher Menachem Fisch and artist Debra Band together probe the biblical thinker’s inquiry into the value of life “under the sun.”

Caring for Ourselves and Others in This Time of Crisis

Oct 17, 2023 By The Center for Pastoral Education | Public Event video

As we navigate our personal and professional roles during this distressing time, rabbis, cantors, chaplains, educators, and other leaders in helping professions are invited to gather for an online program helping us to reflect on caring for ourselves while caring for others. This session will provide a trauma-informed approach to our work and experience as religious and spiritual leaders.

How Shall It End?

Sep 26, 2023 By Gordon Tucker | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Shemini Atzeret

The Torah presents Shemini Atzeret—the “Eighth Day of Assembly”—as an add-on to the seven days of the Sukkot pilgrimage festival. The lulav is set aside, and the sukkah vacated. So, is it a “holiday about nothing”?  Or can we see in it a most meaningful coda to the Days of Awe, in which we learn profound lessons about endings? Through a close reading of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), the Yizkor prayer, and other significant texts, we explore answers to these questions.   

The Yom Kippur Avodah as a Template for Spiritual Practice 

Sep 19, 2023 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Yom Kippur

It is generally thought that the Yom Kippur Haftarah taken from Isaiah is supposed to be read as being in tension with the Torah reading from Aharei Mot (Leviticus 16).  While the Torah reading focuses almost exclusively on the rites performed by the High Priest in the Temple on Yom Kippur, Isaiah declaims that the ritual piety without social justice and Shabbat observance is nothing more than worthless hypocrisy. 

While this observation has merit, it can encourage the view that ritual has no ethical or spiritual content. In this session we see that the Avodah, the Temple rites, can indeed serve as a model for a life of spiritual discipline.

The Sacrifices of Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac

Sep 12, 2023 By Aaron Koller | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Vayera | Rosh Hashanah

In the Torah readings for Rosh Hashanah, we read about the dissolution of Abraham’s family. First Ishmael is banished and nearly dies in the desert; Hagar leaves the household where she has lived for decades; and finally God commands Abraham to sacrifice his remaining son, Isaac. How do these stories come together, and how do they contribute to the ‘biography’ of the first patriarch? We see how these linked narratives develop some of the themes of Genesis—and why they are appropriate for the New Year. 

After Dobbs: Jewish Advocacy for Abortion Rights

Sep 11, 2023 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

The Bernard G. Segal Memorial Lecture in Law and Ethics The U.S. Supreme Court overturned 50 years of constitutional protection for abortion in June 2022. Since the landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, many states have banned or severely limited abortion access, leading the Jewish community to become increasingly involved in advocacy efforts […]

The Torah of the New Year

Sep 6, 2023 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Shemini Atzeret | Yom Kippur

Join JTS faculty for a close reading of several of the biblical texts that we read during the fall holiday season. Discover new insights into these readings and reflect on what meanings they hold for us today.

Exile and Return as a Spiritual Paradigm

Sep 6, 2023 By Mychal Springer | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

The haftarot of the High Holidays link personal teshuvah with the return to the land of Israel.  When we hold these two returnings together the spiritual and communal dimensions of teshuvah come into powerful focus. We explore the exiles of our soul and pathways of return in this season of teshuvah.

Can Institutions Be Nimble? Community Organizing in Tumultuous Times 

Aug 14, 2023 By Stephanie Ruskay | Public Event video | Video Lecture

It’s human nature to build and rebuild, organize and disorganize. Institutions both large and small are grappling with the challenging tasks of shaping the present and future.  Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, Associate Dean of The Rabbinical School, JTS, will lead us in a process of exploring communal narratives and asking provocative questions that help us discover solutions.  

Becoming Jewish Americans: Popular Culture and Protest in Yiddish New York

Aug 7, 2023 By Annabel Cohen | Public Event video | Video Lecture

For newly arrived Jewish immigrants, New York was a city of contradictions. Here they experienced freedoms and opportunities they hadn’t enjoyed in the “old country,” allowing for the development of a mass popular culture that was at once Yiddish and American. Yet for many Jews, the pace of change was too fast, representing the decline of traditional Jewish values and cultures. Meanwhile, for those who found success on the Yiddish stage, screen, and in the press, America was indeed a “golden country,” but the vast majority of Jewish immigrants lived in extreme poverty and hardship. Home to the first popular Yiddish press and the world’s biggest Yiddish theater district, New York was also soon home to a sizeable Jewish labor movement and an important center for the transnational Jewish left. Using materials featured in the JTS Library’s exhibition, we learn about Jewish immigrants in late-19th to early–20th century New York, and the various ways that they embraced, resisted, and demanded change. 

From Justification to Justice: Evolving Jewish Attitudes Towards Abortion

Jul 31, 2023 By Michal Raucher | Public Event video | Video Lecture

In the 1980s, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards—the Conservative Movement’s central authority on Jewish law—ruled on abortion’s permissibility based on a justification framework. This framework assumes that abortion is generally prohibited but permitted in certain circumstances. They based their position on their reading of particular biblical and rabbinic sources. In the decades that followed, many Jewish institutions in the United States supported abortion rights on similar grounds and using the same texts. More recently, we’ve seen a shift in Jewish attitudes towards abortion. As more Jews have shared their own abortion experiences, their narratives have moved to the forefront and shifted the conversation. Jews are now advocating for abortion rights based on their experiences of abortion and a different reading of classical sources. In this session, we explore why and how this change occurred and consider the impact it might have on abortion rights in the United States.

The Evolution of Law in the Bible

Jul 24, 2023 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Download Sources Part of the series, The Dynamics of Change  This session has generously been sponsored by Yale Asbell, JTS Trustee. With Dr. Benjamin Sommer, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages, JTS  Professor Sommer will use laws pertaining to the Sabbath and Passover to show how ritual law evolved in the Bible. During the session, he […]

Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World, Healing God in Kabbalistic Thought

Jul 17, 2023 By Eitan Fishbane | Public Event video | Video Lecture

The term tikkun, which refers to the process of cosmic-divine repair as well as the personal-psychological repair of the human soul, was central to Jewish mystical thought and literature. The idea and practice flourished especially in the Zohar and related texts in 13th- and 14th-century Spain; in the teachings of Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria, and other Kabbalists of 16th-century Tzfat; and in the Kabbalah of modern eastern European Hasidism. In this session, we will delve into sources that understand tikkun olam as an act of healing the Divine Self, which has the potential of bringing God closer to our world.

The Power of Words: How What We Say Affects Us and Those Around Us

Jul 10, 2023 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Public Event video | Video Lecture

How does our speech affect us and others both for good and ill? How can changing our speech impact our character and our relationships with others?  Dr. Eliezer Diamond guides us in the study of both traditional sources and contemporary discussions as we seek to answer these questions.

Patient Change, Slow Influence: The Model of the Rabbis of Late Antiquity

Jun 26, 2023 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Download Sources Part of the series, The Dynamics of Change  With Dr. David Kraemer, Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS  Perhaps the most important change-agents in all of Jewish history were the Rabbis of Late Antiquity. It is they who transformed Judaism—and Jews—from a Temple-based religion to one that needed no […]

Between the Lines: Where I Am

Jun 20, 2023 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Dana Shem-Ur‘s book is a piercing novel about life abroad in a cultural setting not one’s own: Reut is an Israeli translator living in Paris with a French husband and their child. She’s made sacrifices for her family but now feels a simmering discontent and estrangement that erupts at a festive dinner party with affluent, intellectual friends. During the sumptuous meal, she navigates a tangle of cultural codes with which she’s never been fully at ease. This is a novel about big life choices that examines a woman’s attitudes toward belonging to a man, to a culture, to a language. Where I Am is an intimate, witty book portraying a profoundly human yearning to stop everything, to lay down one’s head, and to feel―if only for a moment―at home.

Between the Lines: The Confidante

Jun 13, 2023 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Christopher C. Gorham discusses his book The Confidante, the first biography of Anna Marie Rosenberg, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant with only a high school education who went on to be dubbed by Life Magazine, “the most important woman in the American government.” Her life ran parallel to the front lines of history, yet her influence on 20th-century […]

God: Unchanging? 

Jun 12, 2023 By Alan Cooper | Public Event video | Video Lecture

When we sing the hymn Yigdal, we declare that God is One and unique in Unity, of mysterious and infinite Oneness. The idea that God is ineffable and unchanging is embedded in Jewish (as well as Christian and Muslim) thought. While that may be true of God, however, it does not apply to the various ways of discerning God’s Presence from biblical times to the present. In this session, we explore some of the ways in which perception of God has changed, especially in the transition from biblical religion to post-Temple and post-prophetic Judaism. 

“Perhaps They Will Listen”: Prophets and the Art of Persuasion  

Jun 5, 2023 By Yael Landman | Public Event video | Video Lecture

While the biblical prophets wore many hats—defense attorney, miracle worker, leader, and commander-in-chief, among others—one role of the prophets was to persuade their audiences. These audiences are often portrayed as uninterested in the prophets’ words, or even violently opposed to them. In the face of resistance, the prophets deploy numerous rhetorical strategies in order to convince their audiences to listen to them; many of these strategies, which we explore in this session, are the same devices that make biblical prophecies works of art that continue to strike a chord with readers today.