Ta Shma

To prepare ourselves for the approaching Days of Awe, we'll engage in two sets of reflections. In this first part, we'll explore some key passages on teshuvah from Maimonides', paying special attention to how he creatively reads Talmudic sources to make the spiritual-ethical-educational points he thinks are important for us. Recorded on Hadar's Virtual Beit Midrash, Elul 2024. 

Source sheet:
https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldTeshuvahPart12024.pdf

The rules of inheritance are just another law in Deuteronomy’s massive catalog of laws, but something in the way it’s written sounds like a fragment from some lost legend. It somehow breaks the heart to hear them. A hated wife, in the shadow of a beloved one. A husband’s unfair disregard. And the poor child who was innocently born into disfavor. It reads like a story.

What does it mean to think of hesed as the bedrock of Jewish practice? Rav Aviva explores this question through an essay by Rav Yitzhak Hutner, the author of Pahad Yitzhak, in which he argues that the most foundational attribute of the world is Hesed. Recorded at the Manger Winter Learning Seminar 2024. 

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/MWLS2024RichmanHesed.pdf

Back in Elul of 2023, when I began this year of writing Divrei Torah for the holidays, we didn’t know what devastation lay ahead.  In retrospect, each of the Divrei Torah I’ve written this year can be read in light of the events of October 7th.  Each holiday celebrated, every encounter with Torah is refracted through the lens of the last eleven months.  If there has been a theme that has tied all of this Torah together it is: How do we observe and mourn and celebrate our holy days in light of a continually unfolding tragedy that plagues our people and the people in Gaza?  Or, perhaps: Is Torah equipped to help us make sense of such devastation and what meaning can we glean from Torah in this period of violence and loss?

Belief is core to the religious experience yet many don't quite believe with conviction or don't know what it means to say that they do. In this session, we'll turn to the Torah of Rebbe Nachman as well as a modern midrash by Rivka Lubitch to unpack what's at the center of belief. What do we mean when we say that we believe, who gets to call themselves a believer, and can we find new definitions of faith that allow us to expand the circle of belief? Recorded at the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive, March 2024. 

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RYI2024StrausbergBelievers.pdf

Of all the anthropomorphic images used to describe God in the Torah, one of the most richly developed is “the hand of God.” The image appears for the first time in the Book of Exodus, and then is reworked and nuanced in various ways throughout the rest of that book. Here in the Book of Deuteronomy, in Parashat Eikev, Moshe will draw on several of those earlier images in order to frame a new religious message for the people about to cross over into the Land.

In this session, we will look at one of the most controversial - and censored - prayers in our tradition: Aleinu. How are we meant to understand the lines in these prayers? Who are the enemies and how might we relate to those concepts today? Who censored the prayers - and how? This class will explore all these questions through various textual traditions of these prayers. Recorded at the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive, March 2024. 

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RYI2024KaunferAleinu.pdf

The opening of Parashat Va’Ethanan can serve both as a warning to us all, not to seek more power or privilege than is our due—but also as a reminder to honor our life’s accomplishments, and even to acknowledge, every one of us, our own greatness.  

Beresheit Rabbah (3:7) teaches that God created and destroyed many worlds before finally allowing this world, our world, to stand. This midrash is teaching us three things. First, destruction and loss are a part of the fabric of our very existence. There is no avoiding it; there is only wrestling and reconciling and accepting it. Second, the midrash contains in it a promise or a hope that even after each destruction, a new world is created. After loss, there is rebirth. After the destruction of one world, there is the creation of the next.  

As we head into the Book of Deuteronomy, we will quickly notice that something has changed. The style of narration is different than we have seen in the Torah so far. This book will consist mostly of Moshe’s own words. The first five verses set the stage for Moshe’s great final oratory. What follows for the next 33 chapters is Moshe retelling the story of the journey so far, Moshe rebuking the people, Moshe adding new laws, Moshe reciting poetry, and Moshe giving blessings.