Ta Shma

Animals often play a symbolic role in literature, sometimes as personified characters themselves, and sometimes through their frequent association with a human character. In Parashat Hayyei Sarah, wherever Rebecca goes, camels seem to follow her—and we begin to understand they have something to do with her.  They will function as the vehicle for finding her and then bringing her back to the land of Canaan, and they will even serve as the key figures in determining whether she is the right partner for Isaac and the next matriarch in the covenant. 

In the second part of this special series, we check in with Rabbi Avital Hochstein, President of Hadar in Israel, to hear about life in Israel, Tefillah, and Torah this week. 

What, if anything, can we say in the wake of the Shoah? In this series, we'll explore the main currents of post-Holocaust Jewish theology through thinkers like Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Yitz Greenberg, Emil Fackenheim, and Melissa Raphael; and we'll investigate how philosophers of religion grapple with the problem of evil. But rather than just analyze their thought, we'll also ask what Jewish theology in the present moment can and should say - and can't and shouldn't say - about grappling with God in the wake of the Shoah.

This lecture was recorded as part of Hadar's 2023 Fall Lecture Series.

In our society, everything - from commercials products to political ideas - is constantly being scrutinized. What is gained and what is lost in such a critical world? To answer this question, he Ma'or VaShemesh goes all the way back to the beginning - to the Garden of Eden.

"Ki Anu Amecha" and "Nigun Hisva'adus" from RAZA Kapelya (2023) by Chana Raskin. Produced by Joey Weisenberg and Chana Raskin for Hadar’s Rising Song Records.

The Talmud (in Yevamot 49b) tells us that Moses’ prophetic powers were exceptional because he saw “באספקלריא המאירה - through a clear looking glass.”  How, then, do we account for ambiguity in the Torah?  When we encounter a passage whose meaning is obscure, do we presume some failure in our own understanding?  Or is it possible that the Torah of Moses is sometimes deliberately ambiguous?

Avital Hochstein is a rabbi, a Jerusalemite, a mother of two soldiers currently serving in the IDF, and President of Hadar in Israel.

In this episode of Ta Shma, we hear directly from R. Avital and Hadar's beit midrash in Jerusalem. What parts of Torah can we reach for? How can we pray and what can we pray for? What does ritual and communal life look like in the shadow of this tragedy?  

Moral licensing is our tendency to excuse our own bad behavior based on prior good behavior. While the Ma’or VaShemesh did not use the language of modern behavioral psychology, he did suggest a paradoxical way to avoid this kind of self-justification: doing  teshuvah both before and after learning Torah and performing mitzvot.

"Ki Anu Amecha," "Ah Shtarker Bistu," and "Nigun Hisva'adus" from RAZA Kapelya (2023) by Chana Raskin. Produced by Joey Weisenberg and Chana Raskin for Hadar’s Rising Song Records.

Our practice of cycling through the Torah over and over again, year after year, creates a unique  reading experience.  After we have been through enough times, we begin to hear echoes not only from what has come before, but from what will come after.  Here in this first chapter of Abraham’s story those echoes are particularly loud.  We hear them not only in recurring images and themes, but also in familiar words and phrases that seem to be laid out here and there like little clues, prompting us to follow along.

Taking a vow is a serious halakhic undertaking, and Rabbinic law warns us against taking them hastily. But even if a voew is ultimately annulled, it's possible that for the vow - the words we saw when we feel the most desperate - to be part of a broader process of growth and change. The Ma'or Va'Shemesh explains.

"Ki Anu Amecha," "Ah Shtarker Bistu," and "Nigun Hisva'adus" from RAZA Kapelya (2023) by Chana Raskin. Produced by Joey Weisenberg and Chana Raskin for Hadar’s Rising Song Records.

God wants us to serve Him with excitement and joy, which is reflected in the lighting of the the Menorah. The Ma’or VaShemesh reads the lighting of this lamp on the part of Kohen Gadol as analogous to the igniting of religious fervor that can often happen when people are in the presence of great religious teachers and inspirational spiritual leaders. Like the flame which achieves independence from the spark that ignites it and then draws from its own fuel to keep the light burning, so too, people need to draw from their own internal resources to maintain excitement and to be internally motivated to keep on growing.

"Ki Anu Amecha," "Klimovitcher Nigun," and "Nigun Hisva'adus" from RAZA Kapelya (2023) by Chana Raskin. Produced by Joey Weisenberg and Chana Raskin for Hadar’s Rising Song Records.