The Rosh Hashana machzor has 100’s of pages and the davening is really long. You already know about the shofar, the apple, the honey, and about Unesaneh Tokef. But you don’t know everything. In this shiur, Rabbi Dunner helps you notice the messages behind what you know, because what Rosh Hashana really demands is that you get yourself off autopilot.

In 1544, a Flemish mapmaker sat in a castle dungeon on a charge of heresy. Twenty-five years later he published the map that still hangs in every classroom, and still makes Greenland look the size of Africa. Like him, we are all guilty of distorting proportion - but Rosh Hashana forces us to redraw our map.

In 1925, master conman Victor Lustig managed to “sell” the Eiffel Tower to a respectable Paris scrap dealer. The scam was outrageous, but its success exposed something deeply human: we are often easiest to fool when we desperately want a story to be true. Rabbi Dunner finds an unsettling echo of this exact weakness in Parshat Nitzavim.

Why can a person have everything and still feel empty? Parshat Ki Tavo offers a startling answer: fulfillment depends not on what we possess, but on how we receive it. From John Stuart Mill to Bikkurim, Holocaust survivors, and modern psychology, Rabbi Dunner explores how gratitude transforms abundance into gladness — and why that may be the essential spiritual work of Elul.

In 1897, New York’s wealthiest families spent a fortune dressing as European royalty at the spectacular Bradley-Martin Ball. Parshat Ki Tavo opens with another elaborate ceremony of success—but with a very different script. Rabbi Dunner explores ancestry, ambition, memory, and the strange temptation to improve the past once the present has turned out rather well.

Patti Lyle Collins could decipher addresses everyone else considered hopeless, rescuing thousands of letters from Washington’s Dead Letter Office. Her remarkable gift offers a striking lens on Parshat Ki Teitzei’s command not to ignore what others have lost. The Torah asks more than helpfulness: it asks us to resist indifference, and never to look away from those in need.

Joshua Norton lost his fortune, declared himself Emperor of the United States, and somehow became one of San Francisco’s most beloved characters. His strange story offers a surprisingly sharp lens on Parshat Shoftim’s vision of royal leadership: titles may confer authority, but they never make one human being inherently greater than another.

The railway revolution transformed Britain, but it also exposed an unexpected problem: every town kept its own time. What followed offers a striking lesson for Parshat Re’eh. Diversity is a blessing, but only when it rests on a common foundation. Without a shared center, even strength, talent and sincerity can leave people fragmented, confused, and unable to move together.

We imagine that seeing is automatic, but Parshat Re’eh insists otherwise. From Harvard’s invisible gorilla to the Torah’s blessing and curse, this shiur explores how easily we miss what matters most. True vision means recognizing where a road leads, seeing the people beside us, and discovering that blessing begins when we learn to look at life through Torah-trained eyes each and every day.

Christopher Nolan’s new Odyssey has revived the world’s fascination with the oldest homecoming story in Western literature. But why does the journey of Odysseus still resonate so deeply—and what can it teach us about Parshat Eikev, Jewish history, and the meaning of coming home? The answer lies not in the voyage itself, but in what begins after we arrive home.