One of the distinctive features of traditional Jewish prayer and study is shuckling, moving back and forth. The Zohar explains that this movement of the body is more accurately understood as the movement of the soul. The spirit of holiness and purity moves in response to the connection that it feels when engaging with holy words. The body is moved by the passion and excitement that the soul feels in connecting with God.The Kedushat Levi links this motion back and forth with a core human trait...

Let it Move You: The Tisch with Dena Weiss #10

Bringing you recent lectures, classes, and programs from the Hadar Institute, Ta Shma is where you get to listen in on the beit midrash. Come and listen on the go, at home, or wherever you are. Hosted by Rabbi Avi Killip of the Hadar Institute.

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I am lucky to live a life with no food sensitivities.  I can eat what I want and I’m happy to be an “easy guest,” quick to assure hosts that I have no special food needs.  However, several years ago, in an attempt to identify the cause of my migraines, I found myself a person suddenly with many food sensitivities I was told to avoid.  I went from being a person who could eat everything to a person who approached each meal with anxiety, wondering what food I would find to fill m...

R. Avi Strausberg on Pesah Sheini: Demanding a Seat at the Table

Every year, by good calendrical fortune, we read in Parashat Emor the commandment of Sefirat ha-Omer, the “Counting of the Omer,” during the period in which we actually count the Omer.  This moment of sync between reading and ritual presents us with an opportunity to recognize our contemporary practice as continuous from the words of the Torah.  Yet when we begin to read through those words, we quickly see that our counting ritual today looks very different from the original mitzvah...

R. David Kasher on Parashat Emor: Recounting the Omer

I have always found it difficult to find an observance of Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzma’ut that feels meaningful and authentic as a Jew living in the Diaspora.  In Israel, the observance of these holidays is effortless and all-encompassing: you simply have to be present and you are in it, flowing from the intensity of Yom HaZikaron to the joy of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut.  It’s the music on the radio, it’s the tzfirah (siren) in the streets that brings everything to a halt in a moment of sil...

R. Avi Strausberg on Yom HaZikaron/Yom Ha'Atzma’ut: At a Distance

The style and content of Parashat Kedoshim remind us immediately of an earlier reading: Parashat Mishpatim—back in the Book of Exodus, just after the revelation.  Both parashiyyot are composed almost entirely of dense legal code: one law after another, for chapter after chapter.  And both open with a framing statement naming a value category that characterizes the laws that follow.With this structural similarity, the Torah places the two primary values named by the two codes—justice...

R. David Kasher on Parashat Kedoshim: Codes in Conversation

For many of us, the past six months have been an education in powerlessness.  From where I sit in America, I felt powerless hearing about the brutality and depravity of October 7.  I felt powerless sitting comfortably in my home while day after day people were held hostage in underground darkness, uncared for and unseen.  I felt powerless as the death toll of Palestinians civilians rose and Gaza’s population fell into immense suffering.  I could do my one minute a day to c...

Let it Move You: The Tisch with Dena Weiss #10

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