weekly commentaries on the Torah
i find spiritual works with a timely component fascinating, whether that is a daily component[1], weekly component[2], monthly component or seasonal component[3]. i had a little thing back then where i would hunt down pagan books with said component and make a list of them on zlib. no wonder then, that when my intellectual interest in judaism began, i got obsessed with the idea of parashah! i think i still am. as a spoonie, i think it's an accessible way to study the torah and join a community of people studying the torah along the way. you can dip in, dip out, you can go all in with tons of notes and indepth research and different methods of interpreting the text, or you can go small, maybe read a summary or listen to the parashah and leave it at that. there's also a lot of novelty with the endless dvar torah and weekly commentaries available.
hence, my little collection of weekly commentaries on the torah:
| name | author/source | type | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| disability torah | multiple | web | yay! |
| a year with the sages | |||
| torah queeries | |||
| the five books of miriam | |||
| the bedside torah | |||
For polished, high-level weekly essays, Covenant & Conversation is the safest bet: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s weekly Torah essays are collected in a five-volume series, and the publisher describes it as blending Jewish tradition, Western philosophy, and literature. The Heart of Torah is similarly strong but a bit more expansive in tone; it gives two essays per weekly portion and explicitly draws on Talmud, midrash, world literature, and even non-Jewish commentators.
For something more readable and reflective, The Everyday Torah offers three essays per weekly reading and is aimed at lay readers, with a psychological and spiritual angle. Torah Encounters is also practical and approachable; the publisher says it makes the weekly parashah “approachable and applicable” and presents it as a five-volume series. A Torah Commentary for Our Times is a more old-school classic: it juxtaposes ancient, medieval, and modern commentators.
For more specific lenses, Open Minded Torah is a compact book on irony, fundamentalism, and love; In the Image of God is a feminist commentary that goes parashah by parashah and focuses on women in the Torah; The Passionate Torah collects essays on sexuality and Judaism; and Torah from Texas frames weekly parashah reading through contemporary Jewish perspectives. Shalom for the Heart is more devotional and explicitly aimed at weekly Torah-inspired devotions
footnotes
examples: 365 tarot spells, 365 tarot spreads by sasha graham, a pagan book of days, ↩︎
examples: every day, holy day by alan morinis, the artist's way, seasons of wonder by Bonnie Smith Whitehouse, ↩︎
examples: a year in the enchanted garden by monica crosson, ancestral tarot and ancestral grimoire by nancy hendrickson, a year of pagan prayer, ↩︎