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Back to JTS Torah Online's Main pagePurim Heroines
Mar 18, 2016 By Stefanie B. Siegmund | Commentary | Purim
I did not wear the crown and satiny dress, or stand in line for the beauty pageant. Queen Esther was not a role model I—or many other children—could choose. Later, in the academy, I understood that Esther’s subterfuge and seduction were the strategies of the weak, the politics of the minority.
Read MoreHow to Be Righteous
Dec 3, 2015 By Adam Zagoria-Moffet | Short Video | Hanukkah
The purely righteous do not complain about darkness, but increase light. They don’t complain about evil, but increase justice. They don’t complain about heresy, but increase faith. They don’t complain about ignorance, but increase wisdom.
Read MoreRabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Arpilei Tohar (1914), p. 2.
Grief in a Time of Joy
Oct 2, 2015 By Alex Braver | Commentary | Sukkot
My mother was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia the day before Erev Rosh Hashanah last year. Through the Days of Awe we discussed her genetic profile, her symptoms, bone marrow transplants, and chemotherapy. We approached Hanukkah unsure of what was working and what wasn’t. She died on Purim.
Read MoreUshpizin
Oct 2, 2015 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary | Sukkot
Ushpizin, (literally, “guests”) is the tradition of inviting the exalted men and women of the Bible into our sukkot. Each year, since 5772, professional and novice artists including JTS students, faculty, and staff have taken the concept of ushpizin as the centerpiece and inspiration for an art installation in the famed sukkot built each year in the JTS courtyard. Part of the JTS Arts Initiative, the sukkot exhibit is managed under the guidance of Tobi Kahn, JTS artist-in-residence.
Read MoreSafe in God’s Memory
Sep 11, 2015 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Nitzavim | Rosh Hashanah
This week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim, contains stunningly beautiful verses that teach us that God’s Torah “is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it” (Deut. 30:14). The language of the verses is full of rich, physical imagery, “It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’” The Torah, the wisdom, is not far away, is not other. It is in our hearts. If we give our hearts space to be known and embraced, our hearts can share the wisdom that dwells inside. With this space, the wisdom of Torah emerges in new ways. It is not general; it is very specific to each person, to the challenges and blessings that he or she has encountered in his or her life.
Read MoreThis Time Could Be Different
Aug 31, 2015 By Mychal Springer | Short Video | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
Read MoreWhy Is Yom Kippur Every Year?
Aug 31, 2015 By Burton L. Visotzky | Short Video | Yom Kippur
Read MoreConquering Our Anger
Aug 31, 2015 By Julia Andelman | Short Video | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
Read MoreExercise Trackers And Mitzvah Motivators
Aug 31, 2015 By Judith Hauptman | Short Video | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
Read MoreThe Seasons of God
Jul 10, 2015 By Nancy Abramson | Commentary | Pinehas
Parashat Pinehas is one of several instances in the Torah in which the holidays and their sacrifices are described. In Leviticus, we read the verse, “These are the fixed seasons of God, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions;” (23:4) a prelude to the descriptions of festival practices with particular emphasis on the offerings made by the kohanim (priests). Here in Pinehas, the Torah lays out the religious calendar as a catalogue of these public sacrifices (Num. 28:1–29:39), which forms the maftir Torah reading for each festival.
Read MoreFrom Duty to Community and Back
May 29, 2015 By Nigel Savage | Commentary | Naso | Shavuot
Two weeks ago I was amongst a group discussing the nature of obligation in Jewish tradition and contemporary life. I played some role in convening the group because this is—for me—a central and often unaddressed paradox in the world we live in today. One can argue about the bounds of halakhah and about the nature and pace of its evolution. But it is hard to argue that we are not a people with a halakhic tradition. Halakhah is too engrained in Jewish tradition and in Jewish history to argue otherwise.
Read MoreThe Revelation in Sci-Fi
May 22, 2015 By Ryan Dulkin | Commentary | Shavuot
As the sun rises over a craggy, barren landscape, the first rays of light penetrate the cavernous sleeping quarters of a family of primates. Off in the distance arise the sounds of an other worldly choir, an inchoate chorus. Agitated, the apes approach the entrance of their cave, situated on the side of a desert mountain, and find a mysterious object—a thin, pitch-black, rectangular monolith—standing erect, singing to them.
Read More“I Will Go to the Mountain of Myrrh”
Apr 10, 2015 By Barbara Mann | Commentary | Pesah
The Song of Songs is an essential text for modern Hebrew culture, and was perhaps the most beloved biblical book of modernist authors such as S. Y. Agnon and artists such as Ze’ev Raban (1890–1970). Hebrew fiction writers and poets in Palestine in the interwar period plumbed the Song for its extensive lexicon describing the body and the landscape, and its sensitive depiction of psychological and sexual drama. Their modern descriptions of the land before them were often rendered in terms that recalled the erotic interiors and pastoral domain of the Song. Raban taught at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and his Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) illustrations of the Song of Songs (1923) are an exemplary cultural product of their time.
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