The Tisch with Rabbi Michael Knopf

What God wants from us is not always so clear. In Deuteronomy chapter 10, Moses tries to break it down. Join Rabbi Knopf as he unpacks this powerful text.

Rabbi Michael Knopf explains how lessons from the Torah and Jewish law can help us eat better and live longer, healthier lives.

Moses is a complex man, an imperfect leader, and someone who stumbles into relationship with God. In this session with Rabbi Knopf, we study the story of Moses’ encounter with God at the Burning Bush, and unlock the lessons that experience has for our lives.

The patriarch Jacob is one of the most relatable psychologically complex characters in the Bible. In this session with Rabbi Knopf, we study two dark nights of Jacob’s life, and unlock the lessons those experiences have for our lives.

We Jews don’t usually study the opening chapter of Genesis in depth, but when we do, as in this session with Rabbi Knopf, we can find a text with significant moral demands and that is surprisingly harmonious with modern biology and physics.

Join the conversation, as Rabbi Knopf’s students ask him their most burning Jewish questions, ranging from Rabbi Knopf’s journey to the rabbinate to the future of the conservative movement and beyond.

“What’s the point of Judaism?” How many of us have asked this question? Turns out, Jews have been asking them for a long time. Join Rabbi Knopf as he and his students study and discuss “Sefer Ha-Hinukh / The Book of Education.” Written anonymously in the mid-13th century, this radical book offers rationales for every commandment in the Torah.

This week: an open discussion about why Judaism matters, incorporating insights from Rabbi Elliot Dorff’s “For the Love of God and People“.

“What’s the point of Judaism?” How many of us have asked this question? Turns out, Jews have been asking them for a long time. Join Rabbi Knopf as he and his students study and discuss “Sefer Ha-Hinukh / The Book of Education.” Written anonymously in the mid-13th century, this radical book offers rationales for every commandment in the Torah.

This week: an open discussion about why Judaism matters.

The erstwhile Sage Elisha ben Abuyah rejected Judaism and was shunned by his fellow rabbis. They refused even to acknowledge his name, calling him “The Other” instead. What might this ancient heretic have to teach us today?

Join Rabbi Knopf to study Elisha’s saga in the Babylonian Talmud, which yields timeless and crucial lessons about failure, friendship, and forgiveness.

For centuries, we have been taught that God is unchanging, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and simultaneously good. That God turns out to be philosophically impossible and distinctly un-Jewish, at least from the Bible’s and Rabbis’ points of view. But there is no need to despair, because most of us don’t really believe in that God, anyway, though we think we are supposed to.

Join Rabbi Knopf to explore a different way of understanding God called Process Theology, and rekindle your relationship with the God you already know and love.