JTS Torah Archive

How We Build Character

Jun 14, 2019 By Marjorie Lehman | Commentary | Naso

Parashat Naso begins with the appointment of the Levite families of Gershon and Merari to take care of the Mishkan, the Israelites’ portable sanctuary in the desert. While Aaron and his family were given the responsibility of overseeing the actual service of God in the Mishkan, the descendants of Gershon and Merari were defined as mere helpers, charged with the role of caring for the structure of the Mishkan, its cloths, its equipment, its posts and their sockets, its planks, pegs, and furnishings.

What Now? Episode 3 podcast transcript

Jun 13, 2019

The following is a transcription of episode 3 of the podcast What Now?, “Mourning in Public” with Shuly Rubin Schwartz, provided for accessibilty for all website visitors.  [Music] Sara Beth: Welcome to What Now? A podcast from the Jewish Theological Seminary that asks how we respond when it all goes wrong. I’m Sara Beth Berman, […]

Counting Ourselves As Israel

Jun 7, 2019 By Leonard A. Sharzer | Commentary | Bemidbar | Shavuot

Sefer Bemidbar, the Book of Numbers, which we begin reading this week, opens with the taking of a census. After the rather arcane matters we have been reading about in recent weeks—the sacrificial cult, laws of purity and impurity, skin eruptions, bodily discharges, and so on—the monotony and repetitiveness of this week’s parashah comes almost as a relief.

A Virtual Minyan? Communal Prayer in the Digital Age

Jun 4, 2019 By Daniel Nevins | Public Event video | Video Lecture

Judaism places great value on communal prayer, mandating that we pray with others whenever possible. But what does it mean to pray in community? Are we really connecting if we make a minyan via videoconference?

Remember the Land

May 31, 2019 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | 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.

What Now?

May 29, 2019 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Podcast or Radio Program

After tragedy, what happens next? How does Jewish tradition help us respond? To put to rest her own years of turmoil with life’s most fundamental questions, alum Sara Beth Berman interviews faculty members of the Jewish Theological Seminary to finally get some answers.

Four Rabbis at Lunch: Candid Conversations Among American Clergy

May 28, 2019 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event audio

Four rabbis from a local community—one Orthodox, two Conservative, and one Reform—meet each week at a local kosher deli to discuss Jewish law, theology, and synagogue business. This new work of fiction from Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins is an opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall and find out what rabbis talk about when no one else is listening. 

Leveling the Field

May 24, 2019 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Behar

Growing up in Philadelphia, I often went with classmates to Independence Hall, where I swelled with pride to see that the Liberty Bell bore engraved words from the Torah:

 “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof.” (Lev. 25:10)

Counting Whole Jews

May 17, 2019 By Arielle Levites | Commentary | Emor

We are in a season of counting. Beginning on the second night of Passover, Jews around the world began a collective counting project, marking the days from the Exodus from Egypt to the holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the Israelites’ receiving of the 10 Commandments at Sinai.

To Whom is Honor Due?

May 10, 2019 By Jeremy Tabick | Commentary | Kedoshim

Who deserves our respect and why? This vital question is encoded in the verse:

Before grey hair you should stand;
You should honor the face of an elder;
You should fear your God;
I am YHVH. (Lev. 19:32)

The Great Escape

May 3, 2019 By Marc Gary | Commentary | Aharei Mot | Yom Kippur

Last year, the eminent Bible scholar Robert Alter completed a project that only a handful of people have ever even attempted: a brand-new translation of and commentary on the entire Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). The work comprises more than 3,000 pages and took him almost 25 years to complete. Professor Alter is rightfully the subject of much admiration for this outstanding achievement, but one of his predecessors did not fare as well.

Does the Holocaust Play an Outsized Role in Contemporary Jewish Identity?

May 2, 2019 By Edna Friedberg | Commentary | Yom Hashoah

I am a Jewish historian—and that is a deliberately ambiguous label. In one reading of that phrase, I am a historian of Jewish people and their experiences. But I am also proudly Jewish myself and as such not neutral about my subjects. Jewish history is personal for me, as is my daily work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. When I began to work at the Holocaust Museum in 1999, I was wary that I would contribute to what some see as an unhealthy obsession with Jewish victimization.

Fear and Faith at the Exodus

Apr 25, 2019 By Lilly Kaufman | Commentary | Pesah

As they cross the Sea of Reeds and see the advancing Egyptian army behind them, the Israelites feel terror and cry out to God for help in Exodus 14:10. But in the next two verses they reject God’s wondrous efforts to bring them out of Egypt. The people ask for help and then reject it. Do they want God’s help or not? 

A Spiritual Caution for This Season

Apr 19, 2019 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Pesah

The Shulhan Arukh—the 16th-century law code that serves as the essential scaffolding for the Jewish legal system—introduces its discussion of the holiday of Passover with the Talmudic prescription:

We ask and inquire about the laws of Passover 30 days before the beginning of the Passover holiday. (OH 429:1, BT Pesahim 6a)

Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1530-1572) immediately comments on this law:

It is a custom to buy wheat and distribute it to the poor for the needs of Passover.

Passover after Pittsburgh

Apr 12, 2019 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol | Pesah

“Why is this night different from all other nights?”

Whether you are a twenty-something, a Millennial, a Boomer, or a member of the Greatest Generation; whether you are attending your first Passover seder this year or the latest in a long line of sedarim, chances are good that the discussion at your seder table will be different from all Passovers past. The Jewish community of North America has markedly changed since last Passover, shaken to its core by the synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and a significant spike in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States as well as in Europe that seem part of a larger outburst of racism and prejudice. 

How to Approach God

Apr 5, 2019 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Tazria

There are probably no Torah readings as widely misunderstood as the Torah readings for this week and next week, Parashat Tazria and Parashat Metzora. These parshiyot are devoted entirely to the subject of ritual purity. They discuss what causes people to become ritually impure, how they can become ritually pure again, and what the effects of this state are. For many modern readers, this topic is off-putting. It seems primitive and far removed from the real concerns of an ethical and monotheistic religion.

And yet to the authors of the Bible, these laws were of paramount importance. They were seamlessly intertwined with the idea of monotheism.

Renewing American Judaism: Experimentation and Creativity in a Changing Landscape

Apr 4, 2019 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Examine the initiatives revitalizing Jewish religious life in America, with Dr. Jack Wertheimer and three of today’s most innovative rabbis.

The Promise of a New Heart and a New Spirit: Lev Hadash Veruah Hadashah

Mar 29, 2019 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Shabbat Parah | Shemini

This Shabbat is Shabbat Parah, the Shabbat of the Red Heifer. The special Torah reading for this Shabbat, in Numbers 19, addresses the defilement of coming into contact with the dead. The Parah Adumah section makes clear that contact with the dead disrupts our ability to function, and that we must engage in a ritual in order to be restored into society and into proper relationship with God. And anyone who is involved with the ritual that purifies others will become impure in the process; there is no way to eradicate the impurity absolutely.

On the Bus! The Moral Obligation to Do Social Justice

Mar 27, 2019 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

A conversation with Sister Simone Campbell, longtime social activist and the executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. 

A Child’s Gifts

Mar 23, 2019 By Ariella Rosen | Commentary | Tzav

As an educator, I find it a unique challenge at this time of year to generate meaning from the book of Vayikra, especially for young learners. Homemade board games, guided meditations, and not-so-literal reenactments have all been attempts to translate detailed descriptions of burnt offerings and differentiation of the clean and unclean, into accessible and relatable concepts in our contemporary experience of Judaism.

I wonder how it is, then, that this book has customarily served as a child’s first taste of Torah study, an idea highlighted in a midrash on the opening verses of Parashat Tzav.