The Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (also known as HUC, HUC-JIR, and The College-Institute) is a Jewish seminary with three locations in the United States and one location in Jerusalem. It is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism. HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, Ohio, New York City, Los Angeles, California and Jerusalem. The Jerusalem campus is the only seminary in Israel for training Reform Jewish clergy.
This special collection contains revised essays from a 2023 SBL panel on Tamara Cohn Eskenazi’s Anchor Bible commentary on Ezra. Contributors assess her portrayal of Ezra’s political artistry and formation of “peoplehood,” engage major debates in Ezra–Nehemiah scholarship, and reflect on the role and limits of the commentator in reconstructing history and interpreting the text amid contemporary resonances.
Modern surgical culture often reduces time to a quantifiable metric that must be optimized, managed, and monetized. Surgeons are evaluated by operative speed, documentation efficiency, and productivity benchmarks, producing a professional identity that equates professional worth with output. This theological reflection advances the Sabbath as a counter-narrative to the utilitarian temporality that dominates contemporary surgical practice. Proceeding through an interreligious theological lens, the paper engages Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat) theology on its own terms while placing it in moral dialogue with Protestant and Catholic moral theology. It carefully distinguishes Jewish Sabbath observance from the Christian Lord's Day, resisting any conflation of the two, while exploring their shared witness to time as sacred rather than merely instrumental. Drawing on scriptural interpretation, classical theological sources, and narrative examples from clinical training and practice, the paper examines four interrelated dimensions of the Sabbath: as holy, which consecrates creation and establishes rest as sacred; as Kairos, which reframes chronological time as divinely imbued time; as counter-formation, which resists the moral deformation produced by unrestrained productivity; and as application through concrete practices of rest. Building on these theological foundations, the paper develops a five-part rhythm of Sabbath practice-prepare, pause, presence, play, and pray-as a framework for moral formation that is both personal and communal. Sabbath practice is presented not as withdrawal from vocation but as moral reordering, reorienting surgical labor toward human dignity, trust, and relational presence. While the invitation of Sabbath extends to all healthcare workers, the analysis focuses particularly on surgeons, whose training and professional culture render questions of time, control, and endurance especially acute. Ultimately, to be shaped by the Sabbath is to resist becoming an instrument of efficiency alone and instead to be formed as a healer whose work unfolds within holy time.
