Ta Shma

Tu Bishvat has become a day on which many Jews express gratitude for the earth and its bounty.  In this sense, it is closely connected to the practice of reciting blessings over food before we eat.  How do we experience, when we eat fully formed produce, the miraculous intricacy that produced it?  How do we go from the mundane act of eating to a deep sense of appreciation?

The Exodus from Egypt is, in one way of telling it, a ghost story.

This is not the usual genre we assign to the tale.  We describe it as a story of liberation.  The emotions we associate with it are a mixture of triumph, joy, and awe.  But stories are created, in part, by where we choose to begin and end them, and the Exodus is a story with many beginnings.

In a time of abounding artificial intelligence, we will attempt to define what makes intelligence "non" artificial. Our jumping-off point will be the Hebrew word da'at, which is prominently used in Jewish law to assert the importance of mental awareness, intention, and consent. As we excavate the many meanings of da'at, we will ask: What are the characteristics of our minds and thoughts that are at the core of our very real identities? Which parts of our minds matter most to ensure the dignity of a sense of self and to build trust in interpersonal interactions?

This lecture was delivered in memory of Dr. Eddie Scharfman z"l in January 2025.

Whose story do we tell on the Seder night?

The answer, at first, seems obvious: the story we tell is our own, the story of our deliverance from slavery to freedom. It is the core story of our people. It is the grand drama of Jewish history in which we are still enmeshed today.

But this week’s parashah offers another interpretation, one in which it is God, not (only) ourselves, at the center of the story. 

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the world by subduing the chaotic forces that threaten life; the notion that a concern for justice is what makes a god "qualified" to be one; and the question of what kind of character those who seek to live in God's presence must have. Recorded in Fall 2023. 

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldShirimTuesday2023.pdf

After Pharaoh's first refusal, after the Jewish people's burden increases because of his words, Moshe can't imagine redemption.

One of the most memorable and impactful lines of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is his invocation of the prophet Amos (5:24): “…No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”  Dr. King introduces the words of the prophet to close a section with the repeated refrain “We cannot be satisfied.”  Each repetition of the phrase describes a different oppression that Black Americans face, reaching its climax with Dr. King’s charge that protest against injustice cannot rest until justice and righteousness are as prevalent and unambiguous as the mighty waters.

Women’s wombs lie at the heart of the Exodus.

The narrative of Hannah in Tanakh paints the picture of a yearning journey through prayer as dynamic expression - one of varied posture, volume, intensity, and presence. Rabbis Miriam-Simma and Deobrah Sacks Mintz explore rabbinic sources, punctuated by learning and singing together a newly composed Nigun Hannah, to dig into the prayers of our own hearts. Recorded at Hadar's Manger Winter Learning Seminar, 2023. 

Source Sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/MWLS2023WalfishSacksMintzNigunHannah.pdf

It is easy to forget that the end of Bereishit is a surprise ending.

So used to the fact that all twelve sons and their descendants are included in the Jewish nation, we forget that that wasn’t always necessarily part of the plan, that the inclusion of all children is something new and unexpected.