Mechon Hadar Online Learning

We’ve made it.That seems to be the promise of bikkurim, the first fruits gift to God. 

The liturgy of the High Holiday season is replete with promises about God's forgiveness but is less specific about how God forgives. In her lecture, R. Dena Weiss explores how forgiveness works, and asks if there are any strategies that we can adopt to make us more forgivable and forgiving. This lecture was delivered in memory of Rabbi Jonathan D. Levine z"l in 2024.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HHDLecture2024WeissHowForgivenessWorks.pdf

I was eight years old in Basel, Switzerland the day I learned about the way places have layers.  It was a chilly, autumn shabbos, and my father and I were on a walk by the river.  My father pointed out different sights as we walked: there is the house where his elementary school friend lived.  There is the gate they walked through to get to school, there is the shop run by the woman rumored to be a witch.  And there, he said, pointing to a small, shady area, is the place where they burned the Jews in the 14th century.

What can the Bible teach us about navigating our way through a time of climate emergency?  In this series, R. Shai Held explores three key biblical texts that offer differing (but perhaps complementary) approaches to understanding our place in this divinely created and much-more-than-human world. Recorded in Winter 2025.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldClimateChange2025Part3.pdf

What do you do when you feel—or when you know—that because of your actions, you are entirely alone in the world?

Thinking about our own transgressions and repentance is hard, and so it makes sense that we often latch on to metaphors to help us think about these ideas.  Perhaps the strangest metaphor I know of appears in the Zohar. 

There is something about our relationship with God that holds us back from unbridled grief.

What can the Bible teach us about navigating our way through a time of climate emergency?  In this series, R. Shai Held explores three key biblical texts that offer differing (but perhaps complementary) approaches to understanding our place in this divinely created and much-more-than-human world. Recorded in Winter 2025.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldClimateChange2025Part2.pdf

Of course the Jews thought that they would starve when they left Egypt.In Moshe’s retelling of the story of the mann (manna), that is deliberate.  There is something about the mann that is inextricably linked to hunger—or, at least, our fear of it.

What can the Bible teach us about navigating our way through a time of climate emergency?  In this series, R. Shai Held explores three key biblical texts that offer differing (but perhaps complementary) approaches to understanding our place in this divinely created and much-more-than-human world. Recorded in Winter 2025.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldClimateChange2025Part1.pdf

There is no such thing, for a Jew, as loving God without loving human beings as well.Our love for God is bound up with our love for others: for the parents who taught us His name, and the grandparents who taught them.  For the children we raise to know Him.  For every ancestor, too far back for us to remember their names, who remembered God’s covenant with our people and dedicated their lives to transmitting that memory.

In this episode of What Gives?, The Jewish Philanthropy Podcast, JFN CEO Andrés Spokoiny welcomes Rabbi Shai Held to discuss the claim that love is Judaism’s central value. Together, they confront common misconceptions about the "God of the Old Testament," reflect on theology in the shadow of October 7, and consider how Jewish philanthropy can help nurture a more compassionate and spiritually engaged community. Held makes the case for a Judaism rooted in justice, mercy, and human dignity—and why that vision is so necessary at this moment in which we are living.

The danger, when the two tribes decide to stay on the other side of the Jordan, is not just that we might become two peoples: it is that we may develop two Torahs.  

One of the poetic laments we recite on Tisha b’Av is the poem that begins Eish tukad bekirbi (“A fire shall burn within me”). An acrostic, each stanza of the poem juxtaposes something glorious that occurred during the Exodus from Egypt, with something equally ignoble from our exile from Jerusalem.

Moshe’s real concern, when Reuven and Gad ask to remain on their side of the Jordan, is the way that distance can split families apart.  

Both Talmuds record that Rabbi, one of the last leading sages of the Tannaim, tried to abolish Tisha B'Av. Why would someone want to abolish this fast day? Through this surprising example and its aftermath, this class explores the role of myth and history in the Jewish calendar. Recorded on Tisha B'Av 2024. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/Tabick9AvEternal2024.pdf

Daughters of fathers are different from sons. Daughters, as they grow, do not take on their father’s image.  A daughter’s voice will not deepen into her father’s baritone.  Her jaw will not sharpen to resemble his, and, in all likelihood, she will not reach his height.  Rarely will anyone ever be startled when they encounter her on the street after her father’s death, thinking for a moment, because of their resemblance, that they are seeing a ghost.

The Talmud is notoriously complex, and its stories are no exception. In this class, we will learn strategies for how to understand these texts such as structural analysis, to explore the narrative flow and construction; interiority, to uncover the unstated emotions and motivations of the sages; and contextual analysis, to place each story within the broader tapestry of Talmudic and rabbinic literature. Through these and other tools, we’ll gain a richer understanding of the inner worlds of the sages, the ethical questions they grappled with, and how these tales continue to speak powerfully to our lives today. Recorded in Winter 2025. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/PassowReadingRabbis2025Part3.pdf

The moment when Bilaam can’t see the angel is familiar to us—too familiar for comfort.We’ve seen this scene before: a hidden angel, an unusual occurrence, the word of God.  We’ve seen it all at the burning bush (sneh), the moment when Moshe, our greatest prophet, receives his first mission: speech.

There shouldn’t be much ambiguity about why 17 Tammuz is a fast day; the Mishnah relates five tragic events that took place on this date.