Ever wanted to know the answer to some deep and challenging questions in halakhah (Jewish law)? Join R. Avi Killip interviewing R. Ethan Tucker with questions sent in by Yeshivat Hadar alumni and others on all sorts of details of Jewish law. This is a joint project between the Center for Jewish Law and Values and Jewish Public Media.

Dena Weiss. In celebration of 10 Years of Mechon Hadar, the extended Hadar community will be learning all of Pirkei Avot together at a pace of 3-5 mishnayot a week, concluding with a Siyyum Celebration on March 2, 2017. Each podcast includes the full text, a translation with explanations, and a short Dvar Torah inspired by that week's mishnayot.

Jason Rubenstein. For the last millennium it has been generally assumed that when confronted with questions like “why be Jewish” or “why observe the Torah”, the type of answer will be found in some account of the Torah’s origin and uniqueness. In other words, the answers to our existential questions about Jewishness are to be found in a theory of revelation: Since these are God’s words, I/we live this way. If we only had the right theory, the right kind of account of the Torah’s origins, then our choices, our way of life, would be justified. From close analysis of Rabbinic texts and the Rambam's eighth principle of faith, Jason Rubenstein suggests that the primary motivation for living a life of Torah can, and should, be love, not belief; a relationship with the Torah, not an intellectual claim that it was revealed by God at a certain time and place.

Ethan Tucker. Today, we live in a Jewish world that is commonly bifurcated into the observant and the non-observant, the halakhic and the non-halakhic, a world in which perhaps the greatest spiritual deficits that we face are those of trust and respect. Most rabbis engaged with halakhah don’t trust the average contemporary Jew, seeing emptiness, worthlessness, laziness, and a lack of commitment. And most contemporary Jews don’t deeply value and engage the halakhic tradition they have inherited and, whether for reasons of ignorance or ideology. This was not always so. How did we take leave of that world, where rabbinic figures felt responsible for the wider Jewish community, who trusted and respected the people as a part of the halakhic conversation, and end up in our present moment? And is there any way for us to get back to that world of trust and respect?

Ever wanted to know the answer to some deep and challenging questions in halakhah (Jewish law)? Join R. Avi Killip interviewing R. Ethan Tucker with questions sent in by Yeshivat Hadar alumni and others on all sorts of details of Jewish law. This is a joint project between the Center for Jewish Law and Values and Jewish Public Media.

Dena Weiss, Elie Kaunfer. In celebration of 10 Years of Mechon Hadar, the extended Hadar community will be learning all of Pirkei Avot together at a pace of 3-5 mishnayot a week, concluding with a Siyyum Celebration on March 2, 2017. Each podcast includes the full text, a translation with explanations, and a short Dvar Torah inspired by that week's mishnayot.

Ethan Tucker. For many contemporary Jews, the Torah can sometimes seem a weighty system of expectations that do not align with a more general discourse of pursuing the good and doing what is right. This can easily slide into a feeling that the Torah is “empty,” a set of authoritarian commands that operate independently of the moral and religious instincts we otherwise use to navigate life and strive towards righteousness. This is an untenable state of affairs, both philosophically and practically. Addressing it is one of the most urgent challenges of the day, both for our leaders and educators, as well as for each and every Jew aiming to build a lasting commitment to God and to the Torah.

Dena Weiss. In celebration of 10 Years of Mechon Hadar, the extended Hadar community will be learning all of Pirkei Avot together at a pace of 3-5 mishnayot a week, concluding with a Siyyum Celebration on March 2, 2017. Each podcast includes the full text, a translation with explanations, and a short Dvar Torah inspired by that week's mishnayot.

Aviva Richman. On Yom Kippur it is traditional to light a yahrtzheit candle to honor the memory of relatives who have passed away. These candles did not always come from the kosher aisle of the supermarket. Crafting the candle for the dead was a deeply symbolic ritual. The ritual has essentially disappeared, but we need not lose its significance: The origins of the Yom Kippur yahrtzheit candle in oft ignored women's rituals have a lot to teach us about how to approach prayer and teshuvah.

Ethan Tucker. Too often discussion about the mehitzah (the boundary that separates the sexes in many Jewish prayer spaces) is politically charged—the conversation becomes about movements rather than about values. This class cuts straight to the values behind the three models of sex separation we see in modern Jewish communities: (a) absolute sex separation in all parts of life; (b) denying that sex separation has a place in any part of life; and (c) maintaining sex separation in public prayer spaces but not others. What underpins each of these three positions? And how can we turn the discussion away from politics and back to the principles and values that underly them?