Academy for Jewish Religion

Parashat Shoftim – 5785

One to Keep Before You… And One to Carry with You

A D’var Torah for Parashat Shoftim

By Rabbi Enid C. Lader

As Moses continues his instructions to all the people of Israel as they [we] are preparing to enter the Promised Land, he says:

“You shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Eternal your God… He shall not keep many horses… He shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.

When he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he is to write himself a Mishneh Torah – a copy of this Instruction – in a scroll, before the presence of Levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to revere the Eternal his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-08-26T13:32:16-04:00August 26, 2025|

Parashat Re’eh – 5785

The Torah of Vacation

A D’var Torah for Parashat Re’eh

By Rabbi Rob Scheinberg, PhD

Here’s a good question to ask in August: What does the Torah teach us about how to go on vacation?

Our initial answer might be: not so much. You would have a hard time coming up with references to vacation in the Torah. Perhaps one could refer to Shabbat as a weekly vacation, but that uses the word “vacation” very differently from how we tend to use it.

There is a lot of discussion of travel in the Torah: Abraham moves to the land of Israel; the people of Israel go down to Egypt, and then take a long and scenic route for forty years back to the land of Israel. But most of this travel is desperate wandering and displacement, rather Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-08-19T13:27:37-04:00August 19, 2025|

Parashat Eikev – 5785

The Heart of the Matter¹

A D’var Torah for Parashat Eikev

by Rabbi Greg Schindler (2009)

In this week’s D’var Torah, Rabbi Greg Schindler digs deep to see if there is a central lesson hidden in our Parashah.

If you are a frequent reader of Divrei Torah, then you are probably familiar with some of the great Torah commentators: Rashi, Ramban, Ibn Ezra and many others have helped generations to better understand the weekly parashah.

But what if I told you that there was a Torah commentator even more ancient than these great scholars, older even than the Talmud? And more “plugged in” than any of them. Well, there is such a commentator, and it has been hiding in plain sight for millennia.

That commentator is the Torah itself².

No, this does not Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-08-11T12:20:45-04:00August 11, 2025|

Parashat Vaethanan – 5785

A D’var Torah for Parashat Vaethanan

by Rabbi Marge Wise (AJR ‘21)

Shalom Hevre,

The haftarah following the Torah reading of Parashat Vaethanan opens with the words Nahamu nahamu ami, the quintessential recipe for comfort for b’nei yisrael following the saddest day of the year for our people, Tisha B’Av. I would like to discuss three themes which I believe are woven into the fabric of parashat Vaethanan: Our love for God, gratitude and the concept of comfort, itself.

Tisha B’Av, for me, always brings to mind a significant memory. Curiously, this year for the first time I was able to reach some closure regarding that memory…. It was early in the afternoon of Tisha B’Av when, decades ago, my husband and I and our two children – both under two years old at the time! – headed out on the next leg of the cross-country trip which we took that summer.

Long story very short, we were Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-08-05T15:30:13-04:00August 5, 2025|

Parashat Devarim – 5785

Words of Questioning and Lamenting

A D’var Torah for Parashat Devarim

By Rabbi Susan Elkodsi (AJR ’15)

HaZaL, our Sages of Blessed Memory, knew exactly what they were doing when they manipulated the weekly Torah reading schedule to make sure that Parashat Devarim would be read on the Shabbat immediately preceding Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

Tisha B’Av is a day of collective national mourning for a time, place, and way of life that no longer exist. Devarim, Moses’ final address to the Israelites during the last month of his life is similar; by looking back on what has transpired over 40 years, he is lamenting missed opportunities on an often frustrating journey and mourning the loss of a future he won’t be physically part of.

The connection between this reading and Eikha, the Book of Lamentations, is more than the fact that the two share the word, eikha, translated simply as “how?” or “Alas!”.

In Devarim 1:12

Parshiyot Mattot-Masei – 5785

Reuben, Gad, and the Tension Between Place and Purpose

A D’var Torah for Parshiyot Mattot-Masei

By Hazzan Rabbi Luis Cattan (AJR ’20)

When Natan Sharansky was Chairman of the Jewish Agency, I had the privilege of sitting with him and a small group of global Jewish leaders to discuss Jewish identity. In that conversation, he shared a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since.

He spoke of the pain of living under Soviet rule—of the repression, the fear, and the impossibility of making aliyah. But then he added, “More than the Iron Curtain once prevented Soviet Jews from making aliyah, today it is the Golden Curtain that prevents American Jews.”

In other words, it’s not external oppression that distances many Jews from Israel—it’s comfort. Affluence, freedom, and assimilation create a different kind of barrier. A quieter one. But perhaps no less potent.

Something similar is reflected in this week’s parashah. As the Israelites stand on the threshold of entering the Land Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-07-23T07:07:29-04:00July 23, 2025|

D’var Torah – Pinhas 5785

As the Children of Israel prepare to come to the final stages of their journey to the Promised Land, God instructs Moses to “Take a census of the whole Israelite community from the age of twenty years up, by their ancestral houses, all Israelites able to bear arms.” [Numbers 26:2]

By Linda Ripps|2025-07-14T13:51:40-04:00July 14, 2025|

Parashat Balak – 5785

“Listening to the Whole Story”

A D’var Torah for Parashat Balak

By Rabbi Rob Scheinberg

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

When Simon and Garfunkel sang these words more than 50 years ago, it was not in a political context, but this concept seems so relevant to contemporary politics. Whether with regard to American issues, Israeli issues, internal Jewish communal issues, or any other topic, many of us are so wedded to our preexisting assumptions that we pay deep attention to anything that supports what we already believe, and dismiss even reputable information if it challenges what we already believe. I often see this tendency in myself; I try to resist it, and I sometimes succeed.

Balak, the king of the Moabites and the namesake of this week’s Torah portion, may be the Torah’s most outstanding exemplar of this tendency towards selective attention and confirmation bias.

The Torah portion of Balak is the only narrative Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-07-08T10:06:13-04:00July 8, 2025|

Parashat Hukkat – 5785

A D’var Torah for Parashat Hukkat

By Rabbi Marge Wise (AJR ‘21)

As someone who has struggled with understanding the concept of s’khar v’onesh, reward and punishment in Judaism, I find in parashat Hukkat perhaps a partial answer. Volumes have been written about what Moshe may have done wrong in this parashah, why God reacted as He did, whether it was Divine punishment and if it was, what can we learn from it.

Although I’m tempted to discuss some other themes in this parashah – the parah ha-adumah, the red heifer, the effect on Moses of Miriam and Aaron’s death, the plague which killed 15,000 individuals and the copper serpent cure, I’m determined to remain faithful to the theme of Moses’ striking the rock – twice – and what follows, in the hope of gaining additional insights into the subject of reward and punishment.

I searched through many commentaries because I was unhappy with the focus on punishment for Moses’ act of Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-06-30T13:49:38-04:00June 30, 2025|

Parashat Korah – 5785

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and The 250 Men

A D’var Torah for Parashat Korah

By Rabbi Greg Schindler (AJR ’09)

Tom Stoppard’s 1966 play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, brings to the forefront two minor players from Hamlet – the couriers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. While they prepare for, and perform, their small parts in the play, unknown scenes occur “offstage” (in Shakespeare’s Hamlet) that have major impacts on their lives.

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Korah , is named for the insurrection led by Korah and his accomplices, Dathan and Aviram, against Moses. And – like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – there are another 250 characters who play minor roles and whose lives are affected by “offstage” events beyond their knowing.

וַיִּקַּ֣ח קֹ֔רַח בֶּן־יִצְהָ֥ר בֶּן־קְהָ֖ת בֶּן־לֵוִ֑י וְדָתָ֨ן וַאֲבִירָ֜ם בְּנֵ֧י אֱלִיאָ֛ב וְא֥וֹן בֶּן־פֶּ֖לֶת בְּנֵ֥י רְאוּבֵֽן׃

וַיָּקֻ֙מוּ֙ לִפְנֵ֣י מֹשֶׁ֔ה וַאֲנָשִׁ֥ים מִבְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל חֲמִשִּׁ֣ים וּמָאתָ֑יִם נְשִׂיאֵ֥י עֵדָ֛ה קְרִאֵ֥י מוֹעֵ֖ד אַנְשֵׁי־שֵֽׁם׃

Took Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, along with Read More >

By Marisa Amith|2025-06-24T14:21:18-04:00June 24, 2025|

All shall unite to do God's will with an open heart.

All shall unite to do God's will with an open heart.

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Parashat Shoftim – 5785

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