Mechon Hadar Online Learning

Prague at the turn of the 17th century was the site of a critical period in the development of pre-modern Jewish thought. The great rabbis of that city developed a unique theology, synthesizing the rational philosophical tradition that shaped religious thought in the Middle Ages with the growing influence of Kabbalah. In doing so, they created a new kind of religious language - one that set the stage for the emergence of Hasidism in the following century. This series will explore this unique period of Jewish thought through three of its greatest representatives: the Maharal, the Keli Yakar, and the Shelah. These thinkers  provide unique and surprising ways of thinking about the nature of God, the purpose of the mitzvot, and how literally to read our sacred scriptures.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WinterLectureSeries2025KasherGolemPart2.pdf

If you are lucky, you will live to see your parents begin to need you in the way you once needed them.You will feel it most in the small things: lifting a cup of water to your mother’s lips; adjusting the light your father can sleep. Laying a hand on his forehead.And you will be desperately sad, but also lucky, because each time you do these things, you will remember that they once, so many times, did them for you.  And you will know that you were, and are, loved.God, too, is a parent.  But God’s biggest tragedy, if one can say such a thing, is that God will never grow weak or old.  God will never need us to do for Him what He once did for us.

Prague at the turn of the 17th century was the site of a critical period in the development of pre-modern Jewish thought. The great rabbis of that city developed a unique theology, synthesizing the rational philosophical tradition that shaped religious thought in the Middle Ages with the growing influence of Kabbalah. In doing so, they created a new kind of religious language - one that set the stage for the emergence of Hasidism in the following century. This series will explore this unique period of Jewish thought through three of its greatest representatives: the Maharal, the Keli Yakar, and the Shelah. These thinkers  provide unique and surprising ways of thinking about the nature of God, the purpose of the mitzvot, and how literally to read our sacred scriptures.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WinterLectureSeries2025KasherGolemPart1.pdf

Mishpatim, after the narrative path we’ve experienced so far in Shemot, can feel dizzying.  Until now, Shemot has seemed like a straightforward story: slavery, Exodus, and revelation.  It is a narrative that unfolds in a basically clear order, with a clear str¡ucture.  It is a story that can be read, if not precisely like any other book, at least in much the same way.  

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/HeldShirimWednesday2023.pdf

It’s only when Yitro, who knew Moshe before he became a leader, comes to meet him that we learn how lost Moshe has become.

Tu Bishvat has become a day on which many Jews express gratitude for the earth and its bounty.  In this sense, it is closely connected to the practice of reciting blessings over food before we eat.  How do we experience, when we eat fully formed produce, the miraculous intricacy that produced it?  How do we go from the mundane act of eating to a deep sense of appreciation?

The Exodus from Egypt is, in one way of telling it, a ghost story.This is not the usual genre we assign to the tale.  We describe it as a story of liberation.  The emotions we associate with it are a mixture of triumph, joy, and awe.  But stories are created, in part, by where we choose to begin and end them, and the Exodus is a story with many beginnings.

In a time of abounding artificial intelligence, we will attempt to define what makes intelligence "non" artificial. Our jumping-off point will be the Hebrew word da'at, which is prominently used in Jewish law to assert the importance of mental awareness, intention, and consent. As we excavate the many meanings of da'at, we will ask: What are the characteristics of our minds and thoughts that are at the core of our very real identities? Which parts of our minds matter most to ensure the dignity of a sense of self and to build trust in interpersonal interactions?This lecture was delivered in memory of Dr. Eddie Scharfman z"l in January 2025.

Whose story do we tell on the Seder night?The answer, at first, seems obvious: the story we tell is our own, the story of our deliverance from slavery to freedom. It is the core story of our people. It is the grand drama of Jewish history in which we are still enmeshed today.But this week’s parashah offers another interpretation, one in which it is God, not (only) ourselves, at the center of the story. 

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/HeldShirimTuesday2023.pdf

After Pharaoh's first refusal, after the Jewish people's burden increases because of his words, Moshe can't imagine redemption.

One of the most memorable and impactful lines of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is his invocation of the prophet Amos (5:24): “…No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”  Dr. King introduces the words of the prophet to close a section with the repeated refrain “We cannot be satisfied.”  Each repetition of the phrase describes a different oppression that Black Americans face, reaching its climax with Dr. King’s charge that protest against injustice cannot rest until justice and righteousness are as prevalent and unambiguous as the mighty waters.

Women’s wombs lie at the heart of the Exodus.

The narrative of Hannah in Tanakh paints the picture of a yearning journey through prayer as dynamic expression - one of varied posture, volume, intensity, and presence. Rabbis Miriam-Simma and Deobrah Sacks Mintz explore rabbinic sources, punctuated by learning and singing together a newly composed Nigun Hannah, to dig into the prayers of our own hearts. Recorded at Hadar's Manger Winter Learning Seminar, 2023. Source Sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/MWLS2023WalfishSacksMintzNigunHannah.pdf

It is easy to forget that the end of Bereishit is a surprise ending.So used to the fact that all twelve sons and their descendants are included in the Jewish nation, we forget that that wasn’t always necessarily part of the plan, that the inclusion of all children is something new and unexpected.

As he approaches the man that he thinks is the viceroy, entrapped in the massive lie that Yosef has arranged, Yehudah begins to tell the truth.It has been a long road to this moment.  For so long, the brothers have been committed to a lie, the vision of their family as they wished it was, in which their father loved all of them, in which there was no favorite—most beloved wife and her favorite, most beloved sons—the family they tried desperately to create the day they sold Yosef, and that, as they saw Ya’akov cry for years over Rahel’s beloved son and refuse to be comforted, they must have understood they would never have.

Asarah b’Tevet (10th Tevet) commemorates the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem in the lead-up to the destruction of the First Temple, a blockade that lasted at least 18 months.  Unlike the related fasts of 17th Tammuz or Tishah B’Av, each of which memorializes a concentrated event (the breaching of the walls; the actual destruction of the Temple), 10th Tevet marks the beginning of a lengthy period of time.

Growing up as the only Jew in my class in Iowa, I got lots of practice telling the story of Hanukkah.  The story of the oil that was only enough for one night but which, miraculously, lasted for eight, as I learned it and retold it every December in a classroom full of Christmas decorations, is the most familiar in all of American Judaism.In recent years, this telling of the tale is often criticized.  The earliest depictions we have of Hanukkah, in 1 and 2 Maccabees (composed within a century of the Maccabean revolt), focus on a military victory.  A miracle on the battlefield is also the focus of our liturgical texts about Hanukkah; both the Al ha-Nissim insertion for the Amidah, and the ha-Neirot Hallalu recitation after candlelighting are fundamentally about “the wars that you performed for our ancestors in those days at this time.”

By the time Yosef reaches Egypt, he is one of a long list of lost children in the Abrahamic family. It’s a family that has always been made up of insiders and outsiders, those who stay and those who are exiled.