Your God is My God

With these words, Ruth takes on Naomi’s religion. Ruth is emblematic of the process of becoming a Jew and these texts illuminate both her model and others of conversion. TEXT Love for All (Judith Hauptman): The commandment to love the stranger as yourself as a connection to conversion at Sinai Video Insight on Conversion from […]

Gleanings

“Ruth came and gleaned in a field, behind the reapers, and as luck would have it, it was the piece of land belonging to Boaz, who was of Elimelech’s [Naomi’s late husband’s] family” (Ruth 2:3). Text Leftover Scraps (Julia Andelman): Using Millet’s painting, The Gleaners, to highlight the mitzvah of leaving the corners of fields and […]

Reflections on Ruth

The Book of Ruth provides a model for relationships–from family to strangers–kindness and compassion are at the forefront of the interpersonal connections. Below find images related to Ruth from JTS Special Collections. Text Ruth’s Torah Matters Now (Amy Kalmanofsky): The centrality of human relationships in Torah Lessons from the Book of Ruth (Ismar Schorsch): “To […]

Sensory Shavuot

On Shavuot, we read that the Torah was given with thunder, lightning, smoke, shaking ground, and a shofar blast. How do we continue to experience the Torah with all our senses? Text The Freshest Grain (Ofra Backenroth): Sharing the experience of Shavuot on a kibbutz Video Touch: Beyond the Mountain’s Edgewith Jan UhrbachSources Taste: Sweet […]

Counting the Omer

Starting with the evening of the Second Seder, we count the days between Pesah and Shavuot. These fifty days can be an opportunity for personal reflection and revelation. Text Counting the Moments (Shuly Rubin Schwartz): “The celebration of Shavuot was embedded in temporal ambiguity. Jews could strive for the moment when they would commemorate receiving […]

Torah & Haftarah

Torah Readings Shavuot Day 1 Shavuot Day 2 Haftarah Readings Shavuot Day 1 Shavuot Day 2

Revelation at Sinai

Both of the images below reflect the awe and wonder at Sinai, reflecting two types of revelation: both the perception of God’s presence and the manifestation of God’s will through the laws of the Torah. These 19th Century prints from Special Collections of the JTS Library highlight the overwhelming presence of this moment. Text Who […]

Counting the Moments

May 14, 2021 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Commentary | Shavuot

Among the many ways that the pandemic has impacted us this past year has been our relationship to the passage of time. On the one hand, time felt like a blur, with one day bleeding into another. Save for Shabbat, each day looked like the day before and the day after. We wore the same clothes and interacted face-to-face with the same few people in our pods. We sharply curtailed, cancelled, or postponed the life-cycle celebrations, sporting events, live performances, and travel that would normally punctuate our year. Our lives constricted dramatically, as did our hopes and dreams, and even if we were fortunate enough not to suffer illness, death, or job loss, many of us experienced a sense of monotony or diminishment.