JTS Torah Archive

Sitting in God’s Presence

Nov 6, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Vayera

What do we find ourselves doing when God’s Presence suddenly appears to us?

Connecting to an Ancient Text

Oct 31, 2009 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

A wondrous quality of Torah study is that you can link the parashah to nearly any time, place, or subject. This puzzle is enjoyed by rabbis every week—how can I connect the ancient text to our contemporary context? I embrace this challenge, yet sometimes it makes me wonder: how much are we gleaning from the text, and how much are we interpolating?

Abraham the Wanderer

Oct 31, 2009 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Lekh Lekha

What inspires one to leave home, to embrace mystery, to seek insight into the nature of our world?

Topics in Talmud: Suffering

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

The Essential Talmud: 10 Talmudic Topics Every Jew Should Know. 

Topics in Talmud: Funerals and Mourning

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

Topics in Talmud: The High Holidays

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Topics in Talmud: Weddings

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

Topics in Talmud: Matan Torah

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture | Shavuot

Topics in Talmud: Hanukkah

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture | Hanukkah

Topics in Talmud: Bar and Bat Mitzvah

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

Topics in Talmud: Kashrut

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

The Essential Talmud: 10 Talmudic Topics Every Jew Should Know.

Topics in Talmud: Shabbat

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

The Essential Talmud: 10 Talmudic Topics Every Jew Should Know.

Topics in Talmud: Conversion

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture

Noah’s Repetition and Contradiction

Oct 24, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Commentary | Noah

Read the Noah story—the whole thing, from the very end of Genesis 5 and not just from the beginning of the parashah—and you will immediately sense that there is a problem. Why are there so many repetitions, tensions, and outright contradictions? Why are we told twice about Noah’s offspring (5:32 and 6:10)? Why does the story offer two explanations for God’s decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth—one explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)?

Our Lying Patriarch

Oct 21, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Toledot

The evidence stared at us: a hot pink eye embedded in dark skin. “Which one of you did this?” my mother demanded. I, of course, knew the secret, having mashed the Bubbilicious bubble gum into a crack in the dark-stained paneling of our family room some hours earlier. My little sister, trying to be helpful, asked with what I knew to be complete innocence: “Well, what kind of gum is it?” Which was all our mother needed to hear to jump to a conclusion that brought her investigation to its end and my sister to her inevitable reprimand.

The Torah and Its Clearly Ambiguous Message

Oct 17, 2009 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Bereishit | Simhat Torah

There is a verse that I love to invoke whenever I teach about “the poetics of biblical narrative,” and it doesn’t come from this week’s portion (but who’s keeping score, anyway?). Instead, it is found in the first extended legal section, Parashat Mishpatim (Exod. 21–24). Loosely translated, this is the text: “In all charges of misunderstanding . . . whereof one party alleges, ‘This is it!’—the case of both parties shall come before God” (Exod. 22:8); the Hebrew phrase underlying the words “this is it!” is: כי הוא זה (ki hu zeh). The verse seems to be addressing a case in which no one side has a total claim on the truth; in such a case, then, one is bidden to consider both possibilities.

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?

Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 157b

Oct 9, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study

Our Sages forbade us to take measurements on Shabbat. In their day, as in ours, measurements were most often associated with commerce. They strove to create a day free from the workaday stresses of acquisition. We see this sensitivity in this prohibition, as in the many prohibitions and commandments we have seen throughout the year. As we began the year, I hoped to convey that Shabbat is first and foremost a spiritual discipline. 

Avraham the Avatar

Oct 7, 2009 By Carol K. Ingall | Commentary | Vayera

Although many of us recognize the word avatar as a representation of the self in computer games (a “mini-me,” or so my granddaughter tells me), in fact the term originates in Hindu mythology. An avatar is a personification or embodiment of a divine principle. While we traditionally refer to Avraham as avinu, our father, perhaps we would get a more nuanced view of this biblical hero by imagining Avraham as an avatar.

Innovation in Jewish Tradition

Oct 3, 2009 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Sukkot

I have yet to cave and get a Kindle, but I will be honest and say that it will probably be within a few weeks. From my years of schooling, I have gained an appreciation for, and on some level, a preference for the printed word—that is, a tangible, heavy, dusty, written word. I like holding a book, turning the pages, feeling the weight of the paper—and the Kindle just seems to fall flat. Nonetheless, the idea of browsing The New Republic and Commentary Magazine on one device seems almost a little bit too exciting to pass up.