Remember the Land
May 8, 2026 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
Spring is my favorite season because it draws me outdoors, enticing me to leave the city and enjoy the rivers, fields, and mountains of this glorious earth. Even near the city I often find myself in nature, biking along the Hudson and up the Palisades past waterfalls and nesting eagles. Returning to the land reminds me of the many blessings of our world, filling me with gratitude and awe. It also causes foreboding since the signs of stress on the natural systems that make our lives possible are everywhere evident. While this era of anthropogenic climate change may be new, the concern that human conduct could lead to ruin and exile from the earth is found already in our Torah portion.
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Holy Frustration
May 1, 2026 By Yitz Landes | Commentary | Emor
Like much of Leviticus, Parashat Emor opens with yet more of these rules. But now the Torah needs to acknowledge that even when everything is in the right place, there is still death. What’s a priest to do when tragedy strikes? “Speak [Emor] to the priests, the sons of Aaron,” God tells Moses, “and say to them: None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin, except for the relatives that are closest to him” (Lev. 21:1). In order to stay pure, priests are limited in terms of when they can come near a dead body; even though they may mourn the death of another, the Torah says that they can only be near the corpse of a close relative. After a few terse verses about mourning practices, the Torah enumerates further rules that are meant to keep the priests and High Priest pure, with the upshot being that a priest is “holy to their God” (21:7).
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How to Be Holy
Apr 24, 2026 By Raymond Scheindlin | Commentary | Aharei Mot | Kedoshim
This week, we read two parashiyot from Leviticus: Aharei Mot and Kedoshim. Taken together, they cover five clearly defined topics. Aharei Mot deals with the rituals of the high priest on Yom Kippur; regulations governing the slaughter of animals for food and sacrifice; and the prohibition of various sexual relations, especially incest. This last subject is resumed at the end of Kedoshim. Between the two discussions of sexual relations is the famous Chapter 19, which opens Kedoshim. This chapter stands out from the rest of our double parashah—in fact, from the rest of the book of Leviticus. It is a reprieve from the seemingly endless ritual instructions, most of which are no longer applicable, that make up the bulk of the book; and, though Chapter 19 does include some important ritual instructions, it is mostly devoted to the kind of rules for life that should govern every well-organized society, rules that people of most cultures and religions have tried to inculcate for everyone’s benefit.
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Gender Inside and Outside the Camp
Apr 17, 2026 By Joy Ladin | Commentary | Metzora | Shabbat Rosh Hodesh | Tazria
Most benei mitzvah would do anything to avoid having to talk about Parashat Tazria-Metzora, a section of the Torah that focuses communal attention on intimate changes in human bodies. In Leviticus 13, God orders Israelites to notice and monitor intimate changes in one another’s bodies—menstruation, discharges, eruptions, inflammations, hair growth, “swelling, rash, discoloration,” and so on. For example, Leviticus 13:2 commands:
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The Deathly Power of the Holy
Apr 10, 2026 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Shemini
Finding the right words after loss is hard, but Moses’s comments to Aaron in this week’s parashah are unusually difficult. At the moment that God fills Aaron’s hands with abundance, appointing him as high-priest and his descendants as an eternal priesthood, his two eldest die when they attempt to offer incense with a flame brought from outside the newly dedicated sanctuary—a strange, uncommanded offering. “And fire came forth from the LORD and consumed them . . .”
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Elijah—and Santa Claus?!
Mar 27, 2026 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol
I am certain that I am not the first to point out the similarities between the figures of Elijah the Prophet and Santa Claus…at least in the way those figures have been popularly imagined. Put simply, folklore posits that each of these figures visits individual homes on a religious holiday (Elijah—that old shikkur!—sneaks in to […]
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A Covenant of Salt
Mar 20, 2026 By Tim Daniel Bernard | Commentary | Vayikra
Covenant is a central concept in Judaism. The Torah and later tradition make clear that the people Israel have a special relationship with God, and Jews have acquired the epithet “the chosen people” (though Jewish particularism need not preclude other peoples having their own unique relationships with God). Rabbi David Hartman, z”l, titled his exposition of Jewish theology A Living Covenant. Rabbi David Wolpe, in a speech at JTS, proposed highlighting the mainstream ideological approach of Conservative Judaism by rebranding it as “Covenantal Judaism.”
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The Give and Take of Strength
Mar 13, 2026 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Pekudei | Shabbat Hahodesh | 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.
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