Our Very Life

Oct 3, 2025 By Lilly Kaufman | Commentary | Ha'azinu

At the end of his life, with Joshua by his side, Moses begins his great, thunderous poem, Ha’azinu, summoning the heavens and the earth as witnesses to his powerful, angry message, as God commanded him to do in the preceding parashah, Vayelekh. And yet, in a one-verse reshut, a prayerful, wishful intention, preceding the central portion of his sermonic poem, he says that he wants his words to land lightly: “May my discourse come down as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like showers on young growth, like droplets on the grass” (Deut. 32:2). Then suddenly, the central angry theme emerges, and he calls the people “unworthy of [God], crooked, perverse” (32:5), “dull and witless” (32:6). 

The Meaning of Kol Nidre: Human Frailty, Inclusive Community, and the Gravity of Words

Sep 26, 2025 By Shira Billet | Commentary | Yom Kippur

The Kol Nidre service, with its solemn choreography and somber traditional melody,[1] ushers in Yom Kippur with a sobering reminder of the gravity of speech and the importance of honoring our words, setting the tone for a long day of fasting, repentance, and communal prayer.

When Teshuvah Feels Impossible

Sep 19, 2025 By Noam Blauer | Nitzavim | Rosh Hashanah

Are we really being set up for success for this whole teshuvah business? We might commit to doing all the preparation—journaling, going to shul, talking to therapists, chatting with rabbis, calling up hurt family and friends, New Year’s resolutions, etc.—and it still feels inadequate. Am I actually morally transformed? I am some infinitesimally small fraction of a hypermodern, global, complex network. My actions bear consequences for people on the other side of the globe I will never meet and whose names I will never even know. I still need to bring teshuvah to bear on my most intimate relationships,  but is this millennia-old process suitable to the messiness and uncertainty of modern moral life?

Family Matters

Sep 5, 2025 By Jonathan Milgram | Commentary | Ki Tetzei

Academic talmudists are often asked, “Of what use are the findings of academic Jewish Studies to lay people? Can historical research inform our contemporary dialogue on the pressing issues of our day?” I propose that developments in family law from biblical to Rabbinic times have much to teach us in our evaluating the rapidly changing values and their accompanying changing laws in our own times.

I begin in an unlikely place: the curious set of verses in this week’s parashah, Ki Tetzei, about filial favoritism:

Adhering to God’s Word

Aug 15, 2025 By Raymond Scheindlin | Commentary | Eikev

In Parashat Eikev, we hear the voice of Moses, that most eloquent of preachers, exhorting the Israelites as to how to behave in the Land that he is never to see. He reminds them of their past misconduct and warns that if it continues, they will not thrive in the Land. He devotes much of his attention to the Land itself. Except for a historical digression on the episode of the Golden Calf and several other occasions of Israelite backsliding, most of the parashah is devoted to describing the excellent qualities of the Land of Israel, foretelling the easy conquest of its inhabitants, promising its bounty, and warning of the consequences of using it badly.

Black North, White West: Color, Grief, and the Geography of the Soul

Aug 1, 2025 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Devarim | Tishah Be'av | Yom Kippur

There’s a tradition in ancient Semitic languages of mapping the world with colors. The north is black. The south is red. The west is white. The east—sometimes blue, sometimes green. In Arabic, the Mediterranean is still called al-baḥr al-abyaḍ al-mutawassiṭ—the White Middle Sea. The Red Sea is to the south. The Black Sea lies to the north.

Boundaries on the Move

Jul 25, 2025 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Masei | Mattot | Shabbat Rosh Hodesh

Every week, we read a parashah from the Torah during our Shabbat morning service, and then the beginning of the next parashah during our Shabbat afternoon service. The result of reading from two parashiyot on a single day can be surprising. This week, as we read first from Masei, the last parashah of Numbers, and then from Devarim, the first from Deuteronomy, we can hear an ancient debate about an issue that remains deeply contested: where to draw the line.

The Liberator and the Zealot

Jul 18, 2025 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Pinehas

In his recently published book, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom,  H.W. Brands contrasts the attitudes of Brown and Lincoln toward slavery, and the methods used by each to end it. In doing so, he makes the case that the terms “liberator” and “zealot” accurately encapsulate the role of each in abolishing slavery.