Elie Kaunfer. A Close Reading of the Haggadah Narrative. Recorded in March 2013. At its core, the Haggadah is a story about the formation of the Jewish people. How one tells this story has great significance for how we think of ourselves as Jews and as freed people. This class will examine the different approaches to telling the story that are embedded in the Haggadah. By looking at some ancient versions of the Haggadah discovered in the Cairo Genizah, we will explore the basic question of how we tell our story on Passover.

Recorded live in April 2016. Listen as Hadar faculty members Elie Kaunfer, Dena Weiss, Aviva Richman, Shai Held, and Avi Killip explore the deeper meanings and wisdom found in the pages of the Haggadah.

Ethan Tucker. We often imagine that Pesach is a celebration of our exodus from slavery into freedom. But the Torah actually emphasizes that leaving Egypt was a process of going from one form of slavery to another. Challenge your notions of the purpose of freedom as we mine Rabbinic sources for insight. Recorded in March 2015.

Dena Weiss. Given at Schechter Westchester Yom Iyyun 2014.

Dena Weiss. Parashiyot Terumah and Tetzaveh contain the instructions for how to build the mishkan. They teach us how to assemble its furnishings, fashion its tools, and construct the garments that the priests wear inside it. In this week’s parashiyot, VaYakhel and Pekudei, we see the actual construction, meet the volunteers, and watch with satisfaction as the mishkan comes together. Looking at how the mishkan was built can give us insight into what it takes to build our own tabernacles, our own small worlds. It offers us guidance about what it takes to actualize and concretize our intentions, to move from the merely theoretical to the practical and the possible.