Mechon Hadar Online Learning

In Parashat Nitzavim Moshe’s grand oratory comes to a close, and in Parashat VaYelekh he turns to the process of writing the Torah down.  The parashah records two distinct acts of writing, in two very different styles: a book and a poem.

To prepare ourselves for the approaching Days of Awe, we'll engage in two sets of reflections. In this second part, we'll consider some of the very different ways that Rabbis Abraham Isaac Kook and Joseph Solveitchik conceptualize teshuvah and ask whether and how they can each challenge us to grow as Jews and as human beings. Recorded on Hadar's Virtual Beit Midrash, Elul 2024. Source sheet:https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldTeshuvahPart22024.pdf

In Parashat Ki Tavo, Moshe and the elders of Israel command the people, on the day they arrive into Land, to set up twelve large stones, and “to write on them all the words of this Torah” (Deuteronomy 27:3).  Moshe then repeats this charge a few verses later, but this time adds extra emphasis with an unusual verb.

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

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?

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. 

The Talmud Yerushalmi tells a distressing and perplexing tale about a cowherd who goes off in search of the newborn baby messiah on the day the Temple was destroyed. We will read this story, with its enigmatic ending, and try to understand what its authors are trying to tell us about how we should respond in the face of destruction. Recorded on Tisha B'Av 2022. *Content warning: Please note that this class will discuss the potentially violent death of a young child. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RosenbergTishaBAv2022.pdf

Moshe has an anger problem.  He is usually able to keep it under control.  By nature, he is a quiet man, a brooder.  He carries out his duties faithfully—as both a mouthpiece of God and a defender of the people.  But the tension between these two roles pulls at him constantly, keeps him agitated.  Sometimes the pressure gets too high… and he explodes.

Since October 7, the word "Amalek" has often been invoked in regard to the Israel-Hames War. Is that an appropriate analogy? By looking at ancient responses to biblical verses about Amalek, including those that express discomfort, we can learn these verses anew, revisit the foundational ideas that underlie the verses, and  shed light on present realities. Recorded at the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive, March 2024. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RYI2024HochsteinAmalek.pdf

For my mother’s 75th birthday, we surprised her by taking her to visit her mother’s childhood home.  I knew my grandmother had grown up in Los Angeles, but I didn’t know exactly where, and there were no living relatives whom I could ask.  So I did what anyone seeking information does these days: I Googled my grandmother’s name, hoping something would pop up. That modern technology led me to an ancient one: the census.  I found online copies of the first two censuses taken in my grandmother’s lifetime, one when she was 4½ and the next one when she was 15.  The second one was the jackpot: I found an address.But I also noticed that something had changed between the two records.  There was one fewer member of the house.  My grandmother’s father was no longer listed.  He hadn’t died—I could Google that information too—he was simply gone.  This confirmed a family story I’d overheard but never spoken about with my grandmother: that her father had run out on the family when she was 11 and she had never spoken to him

Tomorrow, we arrive at the second of the four annual fasts commemorating the destruction of the Temple.  According to the Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:6), 17 Tammuz marks the end of the offering of the tamid, the daily sacrifice, as well as the breaching of the city walls.  Until this point, despite the siege, the routine of Temple life had continued with the tamid as the daily offering before God.  But from this point forward, as a result of the siege, there were no longer lambs left to bring to the altar and the tamid went unoffered.  This break in Temple life, along with the breaching of the Temple walls, must have been heartbreaking for those living in Jerusalem.

Balak, King of Moab, has been made uneasy by Israel’s recent string of victories over enemy nations, and has begun to worry that he will be the next to fall before them.  He decides to seek the advantage with a preemptive strike, hoping to weaken the Israelite forces before they have a chance to advance against him.  His first plan of attack, however, is not military, but magical: he will hire Bilaam, a local prophet, to curse Israel, and thus doom them to defeat.  Bilaam seems open to the task and, after several stops and starts—including an incident with a talking donkey—he heads out to perform the curse.  But when he opens his mouth to unleash the curse, the spirit of God takes over and, instead of cursing Israel, he blesses them. 

Halakhic works are often a dizzying compendium of multiple perspectives on a given issue, often making it difficult to determine how to behave in a given situation. In this lecture, R. Ethan Tucker argues this is a feature rather than a bug. Critical values that are meant to guide our lives are rarely fully manifest in any given time, place, or situation. It is our job to discern the wisdom of each voice and allow that wisdom to make a claim on us, rather than submitting ourselves to one path. Recorded at the Halakhah Intensive, May 2024.

There is probably no more playful instance of wordplay in all the Torah than the nehash nehoshet, the copper snake described in Parashat Hukkat.  With its string of repeated consonants, it sounds like it could be another of Dr Seuss’ whimsical creations, living in the same strange zoo with “the Cat in the Hat,” “Yertle the Turtle,” and “the Fox in Socks.” Yet the nehash nehoshet appears in the midst of a story that is anything but whimsical.  In chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers, the Children of Israel have once again questioned the decision to leave Egypt.  God, once again outraged by their ingratitude, sends a den of deadly snakes to attack.  The people ask Moshe to pray on their behalf, he does, and God responds with a strange solution.