Mechon Hadar Online Learning

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.

Rav Dena explores a Hassidic teaching from the Me'or Einayim which discusses a dimension of physicality that we rarely pay attention to: given that taste is not necessary to sustain us, why is food delicious? More perplexingly, why does some food taste good to some, but not to others? What is the relationship between what is physically nutritious and what is spiritually nourishing? Recorded at the Winter Learning Seminar, 2024.

From the very beginning of Parashat Korah, the Torah places unusually strong emphasis on his lineage.  He is introduced not just with the standard patronym, but with three generations of ancestors, tracing him back to the tribal founder, Levi. A midrash in Bemidbar Rabbah picks up on this extended chain of forebears and suggests that it is there to alert us to the underlying motivation for Korah’s confrontation with Moshe.

The genre of midrash has a reputation for taking creative license. In midrash, we come across the wildest stories our Rabbis ever told, and it sometimes feels like they can say anything. Yet the midrashic method was guided by precise rules of interpretation as well as general norms of discourse. But who keeps track of the rules and who monitors the discourse? Can a midrashic interpretation ever be deemed beyond the limits? Recorded at the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive in March 2024.

The big story in Parashat Shelah is the story of the spies.  The people are nearing the Land of Canaan, and Moshe sends ahead men, one from each tribe, to cross the border, check things out, and then bring back a report.  So they head out for 40 days, return safely—and, at first, all seems well.  They confirm that the land, as promised, “flows with milk and honey” (Numbers 13:27).  But then the conversation turns.  They begin to spill out all kinds of fears: the cities are fortified, the people are gigantic, and the land… “devours its inhabitants” (Numbers 13:32).

Traditionally, the fabric of Jewish observance is composed of 613 mitzvot and many many more granular instructions. To some of us, these small details are a core piece of what it means for us to serve God, while for others of us these details seem like both an abstraction and a distraction. Does God really care about ounces and inches?! Recorded as the introduction to the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive in March 2024

Moshe’s unique status as the greatest prophet of Israel is challenged twice in this week’s parashah—but in neither case does Moshe himself seem to care.

What is Judaism ultimately about? What vision of the good life does it offer us, and why might that vision be especially crucial during these dark times? This discussion of Rabbi Shai Held's new book, Judaism is About Love, was held at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City on March 26, 2024, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, facilitated by Sandee Brawarsky.

Parashat Naso is thematically structured in the form of two “exterior” chapters and two “interior” chapters.  A careful study of this design can provide insight into the larger significance of “מחנה ישראל - the Camp of Israel.”

While I love learning Torah, I have a very poor memory for it.  More often than not, when I re-encounter a piece of Torah that I have surely learned before, it’s as if it’s for the first time.  Given on the one hand, my love for Torah and a genuine desire to learn Talmud and Midrash, Hasidut and Musar, and on the other, the inevitability that I will forget all of this Torah I learn, I find myself wondering on this Shavuot, what is the point?  What is the point of staying up late all night long learning Torah that I know at worst by next year’s time I will have already forgotten and, at best, will just become a shady shift-shaping memory of something I once learned?  Often I have the experience of feeling the shadows of Torah I once learned shimmering on the peripheries of my brain, so close and so far, unable to be recalled into concrete existence.

The five books of the Torah—like the 54 parshiyyot—are by tradition each named after their first significant word or phrase.  In the case of the fourth book, the name is taken from half of a semikhut (construct) phrase: “בְּמִדְבַּר סִינַי - in the Sinai Desert” (bemidbar Sinai).  The custom has developed to use just the first of the two words: bemidbar, meaning just: “in the Desert.”  That leaves us with a particularly evocative title, one that casts us out into a vast unknown, and vaguely suggests impending danger.

I am blessed to have three kids, aged 9, 6, and 2—this means a lot of first days of daycare and school.  These first days are always exciting for us and for them.  We know that they will make new friends, have new experiences, grow and learn in unimaginable ways.  Yet they are also days filled with trepidation; they set off for new and unknown experiences for which we can’t accompany them.  On each of these days, we tuck a family photo in their backpack in a safe place.  With this gesture, we are trying to say:  “Take this with you.  We will be with you whenever you need us.  We hope that that photo can be a source of love and strength and comfort throughout the day.”According to the Zohar, the rainbow from the story of the Flood tried to look after Moshe in the same manner that we try to look after our children.

One of Rashi’s comments in this week’s parashah highlights the rabbinic tradition of interpreting a feature of Hebrew script known as “אותיות חסירות ויתרות” (otiot haseirot v’yeteirot), “missing and extra letters.”  The Hebrew alphabet has no vowel letters, and in most Hebrew writing, the vowel notations (nekudot) are not included; we know how to pronounce words based on context and tradition.  But certain vowels are sometimes “carried” by a silent letter, either a vav (ו) or a yod (י).  In writing words with those vowels, common practice dictates whether they are written with the silent letter or not.  When the writing deviates from common practice, we get the phenomenon of “missing and extra letters,” known in Latin as “defective” and “plene scriptum.”  For our Rabbis, who presumed every letter in sacred scripture to have been carefully and intentionally selected, an extra or a missing letter was understood to be an encoded message, waiting to be deciphered.

When my dad died in my early 20s, I remember being wowed by the ways in which grief came in waves.  One minute, I was crying and couldn’t imagine ever moving through my sadness and several hours later, I was surprised to find myself laughing—actually able to laugh—within the first days of my dad’s death.  With confidence, I realized, this was the way it was going to be.  Each time that I cried and each time that I laughed, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.  The grief and the joy—they would keep coming in turns, like waves rolling in and out in their own time.