Mechon Hadar Online Learning

In this week’s parashah, we meet a character who teaches us a lesson in morality, and also ends up in the first blessing of the Amidah, one of our most important prayers. Surprisingly, this character, Malki-Zedek, is not part of the Jewish people! Yet Malki-Zedek teaches Avram - and, in turn, all of us - how to avoid moral pitfalls.

What happens when we try to pray, but we just can’t make it work? Is there any hope, or any strategies, for those of us who can’t always reach the heights of connection with God in every moment of prayer? A particular interpretation to a strange phrase in this week’s parashah offers us some guidance.

From the beginning of the Torah, humans have a fraught relationship with knowledge. The essence of da’at—knowledge—in Adam’s world is the tree of knowledge (עץ הדעת) of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). Adam is instructed to eat of all the trees, but not from the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:17). When the snake speaks to the woman about the tree, he claims that once they eat of this tree, they will be like God, “knowing good and bad”—יודעי טוב ורע (Genesis 3:5).

We repent in order to go back to the way that things were, to repair what has broken, and to retrieve what we have lost. We often think of teshuvah as a type of reset button that enables us to erase the past, emerging healed and forgiven. But what if this understanding is erroneous? What if teshuvah does not change what we hope it will change and fix what we need it to fix? This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

The High Holidays are a murky time of transition. How can we balance the need to both take stock of our past and look forward to the future? In this lecture, Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg considers different visions of teshuvah to guide us through this important part of the calendar. This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

Parashat Nitzavim falls in the thick of the season of teshuvah in the calendar. This is no coincidence—it is the primary source in the Torah for the concept of teshuvah. Although we will sin and face the consequences of our failures, Nitzavim teaches that we can find our way back to a life of blessing.

Where does Avinu Malkeinu come from, why do we say it on Rosh Hashanah, and what does it mean to call God “Our Father, Our King?” Rabbi Elie Kaunfer considers these questions in his lecture, which was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

In Parashat Ki Tavo, Moshe instructs the people to do an extensive ceremony when they come to a specific mountain after they enter the land. Many aspects of this ceremony are reminiscent of Sinai. A mountain, words of Torah written on stones, building an altar and offering sacrifices. It looks like a reenactment of entering into a covenant with God at Sinai and all of the obligations entailed by berit. But why is there a need to reenact Sinai? Wasn’t that one-time event powerful enough on its own to solidify entry into covenant for all future generations?

Rabbi Elie Kaufner explores the themes and intertextual references in Unetaneh Tokef. This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

Exercising leadership means taking responsibility. At the end of last week’s parashah, Shoftim, elders of a town closest to an unsolved murder proclaim they bear no responsibility for the murder and ask for atonement. Yet the Talmud learns from this ceremony of disclaiming guilt that leaders nonetheless bear responsibility—for example, to provide proper accompaniment as travelers leave their city. Blood of the heifer drips down their hands as they claim they have no blood on their hands.

Rabbi Aviva Richman examines the idea of God as King in the Musaf Amidah for Rosh Hashana. This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

Parashat Shoftim deals with the structures and nature of leadership. Early in the parashah, one passage explains that someone who has a hard question should go to the centralized leadership to ask, and then must obey the answer, on penalty of death. The point seems to be about reinforcing the power and authority of central religious leadership. But in the arc of ongoing interpretation, these verses become a provocative jumping off point to reflect on the nature of the encounter between an individual’s religious question and religious experts. It becomes possible to find in them a voice for the importance of asking our questions, not primarily to ensure obedience but because our questions have an important role to play in the unfolding of Torah itself.

Parashat Re’eh speaks of “desire” multiple times. From a religious perspective, we often think of desire in terms of how we may control it, or even completely suppress it. But actually religious life without desire is flat and one-dimensional. Ultimately, the richness and depth of our religious experience hinges on appreciating, valuing, and even cultivating desire. In Parashat Re’eh, we can trace an approach that embraces human craving and desire as a powerful mechanism to fully live a life of mitzvot, meaning and integrity.

In Halakhic Man, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik suggests that teshuvah - usually translated as “repentance” - is not to be narrowly defined as turning from sin. Rather, teshuvah prompts us to reconsider all our habits and routines, including those that are not necessarily sinful. Doing teshuvah is really an expression of our capacity for self-creation and identifying and realizing our own potential. The goal is to attain our individuality, autonomy, uniqueness and freedom As we move through the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (“Ten Days of Repentance”), we will explore Soloveitchik’s approach and grapple with what we are called to do during this important period.

Note: this Devar Torah relates to difficult subject matter, including loss and pregnancy loss.In Parashat Eikev, we are instructed to “walk in all of God’s ways,” but how is that possible for mortals? R. Yitz Greenberg has taught prolifically about being like God through a zealous commitment to the “triumph of life,” even when that is a challenging commitment to hold. Building upon his teachings, we can focus on an embrace of life that also involves integrating loss. Instead of loss as an obstacle that we try to defy, we can understand our capacity to hold loss as exercising a divine capacity we have, part of what it means to be created in the image of God.

In Parashat Va'Ethanan, Moshe beseeches God. He doesn’t get his request. Interestingly, the sages peg this moment of prayer as the entryway to explore the meanings of prayer more widely, jumping off from the word va'ethanan to list ten kinds of prayer connected to different verbs and different figures in the Torah. Taking Moshe’s unanswered prayer as the lens, we are invited into an exploration of what prayer is, entirely detached from the question of whether prayer is answered.

In Parashat Devarim, Moshe gives an account of Torah, reframing the journey in the desert for the next generation that will enter the land. Some commentaries find not so subtle subtexts in Moshe’s introductory remarks that create a bleak picture of Israel’s propensity to sin. Parashat Devarim always falls before Tisha b’Av, and this motif of rebuke aligns with a day that brings failures and destruction to the forefront of our minds. But taken in context, as the beginning of Moshe’s final speech to the people, an emphasis on sin is a depressing frame for a recapitulation of Torah. Perhaps the focus on rebuke is meant to motivate the people to be more careful in their actions. Even so, some interpretations veer away from a theology that constantly points a finger at our failures. Instead, we encounter a sense of God who takes responsibility to proactively steer humanity towards success.

Proverbs teaches that "life and death are in the hands of the tongue." Rabbi Aviva Richman explores the power of words and how we can use speech to heal, rather than harm others. This lecture was originally delivered in January 2022 as the Dr. Eddie Scharfman Memorial Lecture.

In Parashat Masei, Moshe receives detailed instructions about setting up cities of refuge. Unlike other mitzvot introduced as being relevant to when the people enter the land, Moshe can actually fulfill this mitzvah, at least in part. He makes sure to set aside three cities on the east side of the Jordan river before he dies. This may seem tragic, a desperate grasp for a taste of entering the land when the full experience is entirely shut off. Instead, we can see his efforts as a climax of his life’s work, a moment when his heart sang because he so deeply appreciated the meaning and importance of refuge.

In the final part of this lecture series, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg speaks with Rabbi Tali Adler about how we can maximize the potential for life in our everyday actions. This lecture was originally recorded in Winter 2022 as part of a series in partnership with Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC.