Mechon Hadar Online Learning

The tragedy of Moshe’s final conversation with his father-in-law are the words that he leaves unsaid.

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the world by subduing the chaotic forces that threaten life; the notion that a concern for justice is what makes a god "qualified" to be one; and the question of what kind of character those who seek to live in God's presence must have. Recorded in Fall 2023. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldShirimShabbat2023.pdf

There are moments in life where things have gone so wrong that we cannot see a way forward. That may be what has happened to the woman who chooses to drink the sotah waters.

To be a Jew is, when we are lucky, to feel the memory of Sinai in our bones.  We strive to feel as if we have experienced both the slavery and liberation of Egypt first hand, as if we ourselves saw God’s miracles.  

What did we hear at Sinai?  What does God want us to hear?

When it comes to the enslavement of Jews, God gives us two imperatives. First, strive to be like God. Failing that, resist the temptation to become like the Egyptians.

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the world by subduing the chaotic forces that threaten life; the notion that a concern for justice is what makes a god "qualified" to be one; and the question of what kind of character those who seek to live in God's presence must have. Recorded in Fall 2023. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldShirimFriday2023.pdf

What makes Lag Ba’Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, special?  Why has this day become an oasis of relief, and even celebration, amidst the generally mournful period between Pesah and Shavuot?  The Talmud tells us simply that one year, R. Akiva’s 24,000 students all died between Pesah and Shavuot; a post-talmudic tradition asserts that the plague that felled them came to an end specifically on the 33rd day of the Omer.  Something about this day ended the catastrophe that befell these second-century sages.

Parashat Emor features two types of ritual buildings: the first, the mishkan (tabernacle), later transformed into the beit ha-mikdash (Temple); and the second, a sukkah.  We encounter the mikdash this week, mostly in the form of limits on who may serve in it and how they must conduct themselves.  Those who may serve there are not allowed to engage with the world as other Jews are: kohanim (priests) are not permitted any contact with the dead, except for their closest relatives.  The Kohen Gadol may not even become impure through contact with the dead for his closest relatives—even his mother, even his father.

When you stop to think about it, Pesah Sheini is a very strange holiday, with a motivation that would be incomprehensible for almost any other festival.  As we read in Bemidbar 9, some people were ritually impure on the 14th of Nisan—the eve of Pesah—and therefore unable to perform the foundational mitzvah of slaughtering and eating a paschal offering.  They ask for a second chance, and God grants it: On the 14th of the following month, Iyyar, they may slaughter their lamb.

Yom Kippur, depending on who tells its story, is animated by one of two central wounds.

The Talmud teaches us that God is a God of truth who it would seem values honesty. Yet, what does that mean for all of our questions and doubts? Is there a limit to how honest we can be and are there situations in which another value trumps honesty for the sake of something greater? This class, which is part 1 of a 3 part series, will turn to Talmud, midrash, and poetry to explore intellectual honesty, accuracy in language, and the role of questions in our relationships with God. Recorded in Winter 2025.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/StrausbergGodOfTruthPart12025.pdf

Each of us was brought into this world by someone who allowed their body to become home to a stranger. This is what mothers do before we meet our children: watch, sometimes in wonder, and sometimes in grief, as the bodies which were once ours alone grow, bend, ache, and change in ways that make us unrecognizable to ourselves.  Feel our ribs widen, our bodies force themselves apart, to create room for new life.  Bind ourselves to a person whose face we have never seen.

Although it eventually won out, it was not always obvious that “Hatikvah” would be the Israeli national anthem.  There were other competitors, and various critiques of the poem written by Naphtali Hertz Imber.  Among those critiques was a voice from at least some religious Zionists who thought the work too secular to reflect the religious import of the new state.  Some advocated instead for Psalm 126 (often known as Shir ha-Ma’alot), as the national anthem.

Vayikra is a book that is concerned with the holy and the profane; the pure and the impure.  Nearly every mitzvah in Vayikra contains these categories.  The Jewish people are told that they are to be kadosh because God is kadosh.  In Vayikra, it is the holy that is the primary pathway to God.  The mishkan (tabernacle), the center of holiness on earth, is the pathway for that connection.

It shouldn’t be possible to say such a thing, but I have spent most of my life taking the Holocaust for granted.  My father of blessed memory was a child survivor; my mother, she should live a long life, is herself the child of survivors.  I have no memory of learning about the Holocaust, no recollection of a parent telling me what it was, of what happened there.  It is as if my brain came into the world pre-seared with this knowledge, my father’s screaming nightmares a “normal” part of my childhood, the stories of death and survival, hope and desolation simply the narrative landscape in which I grew up. For me, there has never been a world without the Holocaust.  There has consequently never been a time in which I could think about God and my relationship with God in which the unspeakable was not an assumption of the conversation.

The burnt ashes of the korbanot (sacrifices), piled on the altar, represent the intermingled prayers and dreams, experiences and regrets, of the Jewish people.

We are doing a lot of prep work this week.  We are cleaning our homes, kashering pots and cutlery, making sure we’ve got everything on our Seder shopping lists.

The unspoken drive towards human sacrifice lurks in the background of Sefer Vayikra.  

The first Pesah was a leil shimurim, a night of watching, a night of fear and uncertainty.  Amid darkness and screams, the fate of the Israelites hung in the balance, with hopes of redemption and freedom in their hearts. They were asked to believe in a God they didn't know and to set out on a journey with no destination in sight. Amazingly, they trusted in God and they followed Moshe out of Egypt. What does it mean to believe today in a moment of great uncertainty and doubt?  What is the source of faith and in what must one have faith to believe?  This lecture was delivered in memory of Jerome L. Stern z"l in April 2024.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/SternPesahLecture2024StrausbergChildrenBelievers.pdf