A Ladder to the Heavens
Dec 9, 2016 By Tim Daniel Bernard | Commentary | Vayetzei
As Jacob sleeps, he sees a ladder with its base on the ground and its top touching the heavens (Gen. 28:12). The seemingly unreachable realm above the earth, Jacob discovers, is actually relatively accessible, almost within our grasp. The images from the Hubble Space Telescope—and space exploration more broadly—play a similar role for us. One might have expected that humanity’s newly found ability to discover more about space would have blunted our sense of wonder, as more and more of the universe ceases to be so mysterious.
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Experiencing the Light of Torah
Aug 19, 2016 By Nicole Wilson-Spiro | Commentary | Va'et-hannan
This summer I returned to Jewish overnight camp after a 15-year hiatus. After all this time, s’mores, a love of cheering in unison (has the cheering gotten louder or am I older?), and earnest, hard-working counselors (I was one, once) are still to be found at camp. I am happy to report that the food is now much, much better than I remembered, and the supervision and attention to camper care have improved vastly, as well.
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How Many Harvests
May 27, 2016 By Joel Alter | Commentary | Behar
In its radical reframing of our right to claim ownership of anything and anyone, Parashat Behar sets our mortality against God’s eternality, and our contingent lease to the Land against God’s permanent deed: “The Land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the Land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me” (Lev. 25:23).
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Rituals and Ethics in our Food
Nov 27, 2010 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Vayeshev
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than forty-five million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the U.S. at Thanksgiving. In 2010, more than 242 million turkeys are being raised with an average liveweight per bird of twenty-eight pounds. By contrast, in 1970, only 105 million birds were raised, with an average liveweight of seventeen pounds.
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The Cycles of Nature
May 7, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Emor
A midrash for any attorney or accountant to love, the last line of which already rings with the oy vey iz mir tone which has come down to us via Tevye and Seinfeld as a quintessentially Jewish mode of wry humor.
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Praying for Rain
Sep 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
Rainfall has been sparse this summer in much of the northeast, and the reservoirs of New York City are some 24% lower than normal for this time of year.
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Vulnerability and Joy
Oct 10, 2009 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Shemini Atzeret | Sukkot
How do we make sense of two of the central narratives of the holiday of Sukkot that seemingly point us in different emotional directions?
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The Species of Israel
Aug 27, 2005 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Eikev
This past summer, I walked through a dream. I had the blessing, along with Rabbi David Hoffman, of leading a very special group through the length and breadth of the Land of Israel. Some forty-two leaders from Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico – many of them students of the JTS Kollot: Voices of Learning program – joined together in the presence of Chancellor Ismar Schorsch to journey through Jewish tradition and text. With Tanakh in hand, we began our journey at Beit Hatefuzot, The Museum of the Diaspora. There we were treated to a bird’s eye view of Jewish history. The following morning, we embarked on an expansive and emotional ten-day trek, in which we encountered the biblical, Rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods. More than a mission, this experience was a pilgrimage that animated Torah. And nowhere did this encounter come alive more than at Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel.
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