The Day Is Short, but Our Story Is Long
Mar 14, 2025 By Yael Landman | Commentary | Ki Tissa | Purim
Within the book of Exodus, certain details link the golden calf story with the account of revelation at Sinai. Mount Sinai is the site of the Israelites forming a covenant with God, but it is also the site of them violating that covenant. It’s where God tells Moses to go up and receive the stone tablets, and where Moses carries down those tablets before he witnesses the Israelites partying and hurls the tablets to the ground. The word kol (which we might translate “sound,” “noise,” or “thunder”) recurs in the context of God’s revelation, only to recur in the account of the golden calf with respect to the Israelites’ ill-advised festivities. In these ways, the golden calf story is inextricably connected to the initial moment of revelation and lawgiving at Sinai, even as it threatens to destroy that covenantal foundation.
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The Golden Crown of Parenting
Feb 28, 2025 By Lilly Kaufman | Commentary | Shabbat Shekalim | Terumah
These are architectural details of the Ark of the Covenant, the central element of the Holy of Holies, where the tablets of the Ten Commandments will be held and carried. The Ark has a covering of gold, inside and out, and a crown of gold. Four gold rings are attached to it, two to each side wall, and through these rings poles of acacia wood are inserted, which remain in place, even when the Ark is at rest. To what may this Ark be compared? To parents. How so?
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Don’t Be the Terumah
Feb 21, 2025 By Stephanie Ruskay | Commentary | Mishpatim
Last week JTS, The Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue Youth, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Camp Ramah, the Jewish Youth Climate Movement Powered by Adamah, and Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, DC, launched Ruchot, the first ever advocacy and lobbying training for Conservative Movement teens. We gathered as an erev rav (mixed multitude) of 36 teens from 11 states (and one Canadian), 7 rabbinical students, 6 rabbis, three youth director staff, and an Israeli shaliah.
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The Confusion of Revelation
Feb 14, 2025 By Barry Holtz | Commentary | Yitro
We have now come to Parashat Yitro in our annual Torah reading cycle, arguably the most significant sedra in the Humash. While Parashat Bereishit has the mythic power of the creation stories and Parashat Beshallah includes the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt and the miraculous crossing of the Sea, it is in Yitro that […]
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Aggressor and Aggrieved
Feb 7, 2025 By Dr. Phil Keisman | Commentary | Beshallah | Pesah
The Israelites find themselves in a new position in Parashat Beshallah. After generations of suffering as slaves to the pharaohs, and after decades of uncertainty about how and when their suffering might end, the Israelites are now staring backwards as their oppressors die violently.
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The Worst Possible Plague
Jan 31, 2025 By Rebecca Galin | Commentary | Bo | Pesah
Terror. Annoyance. Foreboding. Among the Egyptians, each plague feels so much worse than anticipated. A shared sense of eeriness seeps in as the world becomes apocalyptic. Yet, each time a plague ends, the depth of the horror dissipates, forgotten until the next one arrives—more all-consuming and destructive than before. Locusts, darkness, death, grief. The world is overturned by a foreign God. Egyptian safety depends on the emotional whims of their leadership, plagues ending only when God softens Pharaoh’s heart.
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Moses’s Lessons in Interfaith Dialogue
Jan 24, 2025 By Claire Davidson Bruder & Sherouk Ahmed | Commentary | Va'era
In the first week of 2025, the Washington Theological Consortium hosted a weeklong interfaith dialogue program at the United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. Third-year JTS rabbinical student and Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue program manager Claire Davidson Bruder participated in this program, alongside other Jewish, Christian, and Muslim seminary students. The following d’var Torah is […]
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A Turn for the Better
Jan 17, 2025 By Ariella Rosen | Commentary | Shemot
In Parashat Shemot, it appears that Moses took conscious steps to operate as a lone bystander, taking action that seems unlikely had a larger crowd been present. Raised in Pharaoh’s household, now an adult, Moses went out to walk among the Hebrew slaves as they labored. After witnessing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, “He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. 2:12).
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