Part of the series, Seasons of Responsibility: Interreligious Conversations on Environmental Justice and Repair

What does it mean to act responsibly when there is no guarantee of results? Jewish and Hindu traditions both turn to fasting as a practice of restraint and agency. Focusing on the Fast of Esther, alongside Hindu fasting traditions, this session explores how intentional self-restraint—held in tension with celebration—can shape ethical responses to the climate crisis. 

About the Speakers

Gopal Patelleads FutureFaith as Co-Founder and Board President, mobilizing faith communities for environmental action through innovative multi-sectoral partnerships. He has advised multiple UN bodies and partnered with a range of organizations, includingthe Bloomberg Ocean Fund, the World Economic Forum and WWF International. Through his work, he has engaged faith leaders and communities representing over 1 billion people worldwide.

Benjamin Kamine holds a joint appointment as Lecturer in Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Assistant Teaching Faculty in Interreligious Engagement at Union Theological Seminary.  In this role, he also works as Associate Director of the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue at 91�첥 and as a Special Advisor in the Office of the President at Columbia University.  He is a PhD candidate in Midrash at 91�첥.  Kamine serves as 2nd Vice President of the Executive Board of the International Council of Christians and Jews and Jewish Co-Chair of the International Abrahamic Forum. 

About the Series

Across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, spring is a season of reflection, renewal, and ethical commitment. Grounded in holidays from Tu Bishvat and Lent to Ramadan, Holi, and Passover, this interreligious series explores responsibility, repair, and leadership in the face of urgent ecological challenges. Together, participants consider how religious wisdom can inspire ethical action and collective hope. 

Part of the Learning Series,Seasons of Responsibility: InterreligiousConversationson Environmental Justice and Repair

What does it mean to act responsibly when power is uneven, harm is systemic, and silence can feel safer than action? Drawing on the Book of Esther, this Catholic–Jewish conversation reflects on moral agency, ecological responsibility, and the challenges of ethical decision-making within contemporary legal and institutional systems.

About the Speakers

Endy Moraes, Director of the Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work at Fordham Law School and Adjunct Professor of Law, is a Brazilian lawyer with extensive experience in interreligious and intercultural dialogue. At Fordham, she works closely with students to foster opportunities for multifaith and multicultural engagement. 

Endy holds both an S.J.D. and an LL.M., cum laude, from Fordham Law School, where her research focused on the intersection of law, technology, and religious values. A member of the Focolare Movement within the Catholic Church, Endy lives in community and brings a deeply rooted commitment to dialogue and service to her academic and professional work. 

Rabbi Jan Uhrbach is founding director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts. She brings her passion for prayer and teaching to the 91�첥 community. Through her work as director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts, she has developed and overseen programs and discussions, as well as prayer services on Shabbat and festivals, for the 91�첥 community and the general public.

About the Series

Across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, spring is a season of reflection, renewal, and ethical commitment. Grounded in holidays from Tu Bishvat and Lent to Ramadan, Holi, and Passover, this interreligious series explores responsibility, repair, and leadership in the face of urgent ecological challenges. Together, participants consider how religious wisdom can inspire ethical action and collective hope. 

Across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, the early spring season is a shared period of reflection, renewal, and ethical clarity. While rooted in different stories and practices—from Tu BiShvat to Lent and Easter, from Ramadan to Holi and Passover—these holidays collectively invite communities to consider how human choices shape the world we inhabit.

This series brings together people to explore questions of responsibility, agency, and repair in the face of urgent ecological challenges. Each session will examine pressing environmental issues through an interreligious lens, highlighting how wisdom traditions can inform ethical action and public leadership.

The series uses the spring season as a narrative frame: a moment when many communities turn inward, commit to repair, and seek renewal. Through interreligious dialogue, we aim to illuminate how diverse traditions encourage accountability, resist misinformation, and nurture hope and collective responsibility in a rapidly changing world.

Organized by the 91�첥 Division of Lifelong and Professional Studies and Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue

Programming Partners include The Center for Earth Ethic, Dayenu the Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work (Fordham University), Jewish Climate Trust

Thank You for Your Participation

We can also identify a further connection between the accounts of revelation and the golden calf in both stories’ references to Egypt and the Exodus. The covenant itself rests upon the foundation of what God did to the Egyptians, for the Israelites:

“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me. Now then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine.” (Exod. 19:4–5)

God refers not only to having saved the Israelites, which perhaps is reason enough for them to serve God, but also to what God “did to the Egyptians.” Although God does not spell out what that means, the Israelites of course understand; they saw with their own eyes how God pummeled the Egyptians with plagues and drowned them during the Exodus. Thus, the reference to what they saw God do to the Egyptians may imply a warning: Look what God can do to you if you do not accept God’s terms.

If we view the covenant through this lens, we might question the extent to which the Israelites could have refused God’s proposal. And in fact, drawing on language from Exodus 19, the rabbis similarly suggest that the covenant at Sinai was coerced through a divine threat of violence:

“They took their places ‘at the foot of’ the mountain” [Exod 19:17]. Rabbi Avdimi bar Hama bar Hasa said: This teaches that the Holy One Blessed be He overturned the mountain above them like a tank, and said to them, “If you accept the Torah, good, but if not—here shall be your grave.” (BT Shabbat 88a)

Returning to the story of the golden calf, we find repeated references to Egypt. While in one instance, Moses appeals to God not to destroy the Israelites by imagining what the Egyptians might say, the remainder of these cases refer either to Moses, God, or the golden calf as the one who delivered the Israelites from Egypt. Arguably, the text would read just as coherently without most of these references to Egypt, so why include them? In my view, the repeated mentions of Egypt build on their function at the beginning of the revelation account: they remind the Israelites of the violence of which God is capable. But if at the beginning of revelation, God only implies a threat of violence should the Israelites not accept God’s terms, in the story of the golden calf that threat becomes explicit, as God prepares to destroy the Israelites wholesale. Of course, the story continues; Moses successfully intervenes on Israel’s behalf, and God allows for a new set of tablets and a repaired covenant.

The links between the accounts of revelation at Sinai and the golden calf suggest that we read these episodes as part of a single, protracted story of the foundation of Israel and God’s covenantal relationship. This relationship experiences bumps from the very beginning but survives devastating mistakes and existential threats. This is a relationship with staying power.

This year, Shabbat Parashat Ki Tissa arrives on the heels of Purim. As in the story of the golden calf, the story of Purim involves a threat of annihilation, if under different circumstances. In the Talmudic passage cited above, Rava responds as follows to the suggestion that God effectively coerced the Israelites into accepting the covenant:

“Even so, they again accepted it (i.e., the Torah) in the time of Ahasuerus, as it is written: קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ הַיְּהוּדִים ‘The Jews undertook and accepted’ (Esther 9:27)–The Jews undertook that which they had already accepted.” (BT Shabbat 88a)

Although at Sinai the Israelites experienced duress, during the Purim story the Jewish people were thoroughly uncoerced and embraced the Torah willingly. Rava connects the dots between two seemingly distant and disparate stories.

In the face of crisis, it can feel like there are no options and no future. Certainly, in different ways, the stories of the golden calf and of Purim point to such moments, and the Jewish story has included many more moments that have felt inescapably grim. But the story of the Israelites continues past the episode of the golden calf, and the story of Esther creates a legacy that we continue to participate in today. Let us remember that though, to quote Rabbi Tarfon, “the day is short” (Avot 2:15), our story is long.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

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With Rabbi David Ingber, Founding Rabbi, Romemu, and Senior Director of Jewish Life and the Bronfman Center, 92NY

Purim is a celebration of uncertainty—a holiday that invites us to embrace the hidden, the paradoxical, and the unknown. Join Romemu’s Rabbi David Ingber for a deep dive into the mystical themes of Purim, where doubt becomes a gateway to faith and masks reveal more profound truths. Together, we explore how the story of Purim reflects the concealment of the Divine, the role of chance and chaos in our lives, and the profound spiritual lessons that arise when we step into the space of not knowing. Discover how Purim challenges us to find meaning and connection amid mystery.

About the Series – What’s Next: New Ways of Engaging with Jewish Sources

91�첥 is well-known as a hub of innovative scholarship and a center of academic Jewish Studies. Recently, 91�첥 has launched programs in Biblical Hebrew, Pastoral Care, and Teen Learning, offering accessible entryways into the Jewish textual tradition. Explore how 91�첥 is bringing together new modes of learning with classical sources to meet the needs of today’s world. Sessions will give participants a taste of the ideas and teaching that are central to these programs. 

In order to understand this aspect of the holiday, it is important to reflect first on the ways that the giving of the Torah is marked on the Jewish calendar more generally. Of these days, the most well-known is Shavuot. The biblical text relays that the Torah was first given to the People of Israel in the third month (Exod. 19.)—i.e., Sivan—and early rabbinic texts explicitly state that this occurred on the months’ sixth day—i.e., the holiday of Shavuot (Seder Olam, Ch. 5). The Shavuot liturgy brims with references to this theme, and the holiday is even referred to as Hag Matan Torah—“the Holiday of the Giving of the Torah.”

Of course, not everything goes as planned. Moses breaks the Tablets, and after some pleading on his part, the Torah is given yet again—this time on the holiday of Yom Kippur. To be sure, the theme of Torah does not come up in the liturgy for the day. But the holiday is, at its essence, about the opportunity for second chances, and the giving of the Tablets for a second time—this time, written in Moses’s hand—is a model for the process of teshuvah, repentance. A few days later, Jews celebrate Simhat Torah, marking the completion of the Torah just as they read of Moses’s tragic death at the end of Deuteronomy. These holidays thus reflect varied aspects of the Torah and its acceptance: Shavuot marks the covenant itself; Yom Kippur introduces the concept of repentance, without which Torah observance would be impossible; and Simhat Torah marks the continued vitality of the Torah after the lawgiver himself, Moses, no longer leads the people.

In Hasidic traditions, Purim introduces yet another aspect: It is imagined as a celebration of the Oral Torah, the Torah shebe’al peh. In a famous Talmudic passage, God is depicted as hanging Mt. Sinai over the People of Israel, threatening them to accept the Torah—or else. The passage ends by saying that despite this lack of agency, the Jews eventually accepted the Torah willingly at the conclusion of the Esther story: “Rava said: nonetheless, they returned and accepted it in the days of Ahasuerus, as it is written ‘the Jews fulfilled and accepted (Esther 9.27)—they fulfilled what they had already accepted’” (b. Shabbat 88a). While the Torah was essentially forced on them at Sinai, in Shushan the Jews accepted it by choice. In another rendition, found in the Midrash Tanhuma (Noah, 3), this refers not to the Torah writ large but specifically to the Oral Torah, for while the Israelites willingly accepted the Written Torah, the Oral Torah needed to be forced upon them due to its “myriad commandments, easy ones and difficult ones,” and was taken on by choice only in the time of Esther.

R. Tsadok haCohen of Lublin (1823–1900) connects this idea to a concurrent historical event from the rabbinic imagination—the cessation of prophecy (Pri Tzedek, Mikeitz 7, relying on Seder Olam, Ch.30). In R. Tsadok’s interpretation, when prophecy was waning and God’s presence no longer felt, Jews filled the void by reaffirming their commitment to the Oral Torah. Purim, then, is a holiday that marks the cessation of prophecy and the acceptance of the Oral Torah—a mode of Torah that contains “myriad commandments, easy ones and difficult ones,” but also one that necessitates human agency and that requires analysis, intervention, and interpretation on the part of its adherents.

But our celebration of the Oral Torah on Purim is threatened by the presence of Amalek. In the Hasidic tradition, Amalek is connected to safeq, doubt, its numerical equivalent. The absence of prophecy—indeed, the lack of any explicit mention of God in the Scroll of Esther—could lead one down a different path, towards one of doubt, and to ways of knowing and making sense of the world that conflict with the rabbinic path of Oral Torah. In this framework, Amalek is re-imagined not as an external threat to the nation, but as an internal threat located within the individual psyche. The Talmud asks, “Where is Haman found in the Torah?” and the rabbis answer with a pun, “From the tree—ha-min ha-etz—I commanded you not to eat” (Gen. 3.11). Similarly, it asks, “Where do we find Esther in the Torah?” and answers that it is in the verse, “I will surely hide—hester astir—My face” (Deut. 31.18)” (b. Hullin 139b). The danger presented by Haman, Amalek’s descendant, comes about on account of the absence of prophecy and the resulting difficulty of finding God. And the danger is that one will choose not the Oral Torah, but some other way to lean into this doubt, a way that is likened to eating from the forbidden fruit.

It may seem odd to celebrate the Oral Torah not by knowing and interpreting the Law, but rather, by not knowing—by confusing oneself to the point of “being unable to differentiate between the wickedness of Haman and the blessedness of Mordechai” (b. Megillah 7b). But for R. Tsadok and other Hasidic thinkers, the carnivalesque is indeed an appropriate celebration, as it is through not knowing and through “Purim Torah” that one reflects on why it is that they want to know, checking their intentions as they fill the void. And thus, as a celebration of the Oral Torah—the analytical Torah of human interpretation—Purim reminds us that we must be aware of where our doubt takes us: is it to a place of Amalek-like urges, or to a place of serving God?

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

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Dr. Aaron Koller, Adjunct Professor, 91�첥, and Professor of Near East Studies, Yeshiva University

The Book of Esther is a diaspora book. None of the action takes place in the Land of Israel, and the Temple is never mentioned. One of the most famous—and significant—features of the Hebrew Book of Esther is the absence of any mention of God. But these features that make Diaspora Jews feel comfortable were profoundly disturbing to some of the book’s earliest readers—so disturbing that they actually changed it. The Jewish-Greek version of Esther adds several elements into the story, including prayers to God, prophetic dreams, and recognition of God’s intervention. These passages were added in Hasmonean Jerusalem and highlight the conflict between the original diaspora book and how it was received in Hasmonean Judea. We gain deeper appreciation for the ideologies of both versions of the book through a careful comparison of the two, and discuss how these tensions play out today as well.

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We read in , “And you shall make sacred garments for Aaron your brother, for honor and for glory.” On the word tiferet (glory), Seforno asserts that the High Priest will be a kohen-moreh norah, an awesome priest-teacher. He explains שהם תלמידיו החקוקים על לבו וכתפיו, “for they are his students who are engraved on his heart and shoulders.”

This phrase refers to the names of the tribes of Israel, which were engraved on gemstones worn by the High Priest as part of his ritual garb: the High Priest wore avnei-shoham, which were probably lapis lazuli, in the form of an epaulet on each shoulder, each stone engraved with the names of six tribes of Israel, totaling twelve names. He also wore twelve different gems, arrayed in rows on the breastplate of judgment, set in gold. Each gem on the breastplate was individually engraved with the name of a tribe of Israel (, 15–21).

Why was the High Priest adorned with tribes’ names on his shoulders and his chest? We can speculate that wearing the names of his people was meant to keep the supreme religious leader humble, remembering who he represents before God. But Seforno’s comment directs us away from the topic of religious leadership, to the seemingly unrelated field of education.

Seforno borrows the phrase priest-teacher from , in which a troubled era of Israelite history is decried as being “bereft of a priest-teacher and bereft of Torah.” He seizes on this brief biblical allusion to the priest functioning as a teacher to define what it takes to be a master educator.

For Seforno, as I understand him, a master teacher who carries her students’ names engraved on her shoulders takes responsibility for them, for what they learn. This is task-orientation. A master teacher who carries her students’ names engraved on her heart cares about her students. This is person-orientation. A master teacher practices both.

These two essential values in teaching, caring about the subject matter and caring about the student, can conflict. A teacher who is very focused on covering a substantial amount of course material by a set date might overlook how her student learns. As a result, the student might master the data superficially, never connecting imaginatively with material that requires imaginative engagement; or emotionally with material that demands emotional connection; or critically, with material that requires independent thought. Will this student ever love the subject enough to learn more on his own? This teacher’s focus on powering through the material may neglect whether it will become meaningful to her student.

A teacher who focuses too much on the person, on the other hand, may become overly concerned about the emotional comfort of her student, and might relax her demands that the student develop the discipline to learn complex material. This teacher risks not challenging her student enough, allowing the student to evade the hard work of mastering essential content or skills. This teacher’s focus on how the student feels can neglect what the student learns.

Extreme emphasis on either task-orientation or person-orientation is not desirable. The wise teacher works perennially in the creative tension between the two.

Fortunately, teachers can change: they can learn! A teacher can recognize her own teaching preference or bias, identifying whether she is naturally inclined toward task-oriented teaching or person-oriented teaching, and she can work to balance her instincts with what her students need. Such self-knowledge allows the “awesome” teacher to uphold educational standards and be sensitive to the ways different students’ minds and imaginations work. Steady expressions of interest in both—in the content and in the student—make for a stable and rich learning environment for the student.

A month from now, on Purim, we will read, in Megillat Esther, a tragicomic fantasy of royal power, expressed through objects, such as limitless food and drink, lavish tapestries, and couches made of solid gold; and through the objectification of women; all designed to satisfy the whims of an impulsive, powerful fool of a king. The Persian fantasy of royal garb shares some physical similarities with the ritual garb of the High Priest, detailed in Tetzavveh. But in Exodus, the Bible adapts royal extravagance when fashioning the religious leader’s symbolic clothing, retaining some of the dazzle, but carving responsibility into the glitter—adding kavod (dignity) to the tiferet (glory). The rabbinic tradition deepens the Bible’s understanding of what it means to be genuinely awe-inspiring, with comments such as those of Seforno.

Seforno’s insight about the awesome teacher invites emulation. We cannot all be the High Priest, but we can be wonderful teachers. We can ask two questions of ourselves, when we teach in a formal setting, or in our homes with our own children and grandchildren, or as mentors in our workplace. We can ask: When I take this person on as my student, am I genuinely carrying his or her name on my heart? Am I successfully carrying his or her name on my shoulders?

If we can answer “yes” to these questions consistently, then we have directed our energy diligently to the service of the text and the student, and we have achieved deep integrity as teachers. Then we become mamlekhet kohanim vegoy kadosh, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And that is pure gold.

This commentary originally appeared in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).