World of Medrash

This shiur is Koheles with Rashi, but it's not quite the World of Medrash. I thought it was worth including anyway.

A look at a unique moment in history

Based on Gemaras and Rashi, and grounded in the philosophical issues raised in Rambam's Hilchos Teshuva.

This shiur is based on the Gemara Sanhedrin 107a, which deals with a medrash of how Dovid asked to be tested and then sinned.

About how to relate to a King (as not a replacement of God)

Why does Rashi say that Hashem told Yehoshua not to kill all of Amalek in the first war? What was the purpose of leaving evil around?

Two different shiurs somewhat connected

This episode draws parallels between midrashei aggadah and halacha to explain and justify the idea of the World of Medrash and Rashi's role in it. Many of us grew up hearing midrashim as colorful additions to the stories of the Torah. As adults, we often wonder what to do with them. Are they meant to be literal? Are they always metaphorical? Why do some midrashim feel fantastical while others seem...

There is a puzzling line in the Torah that most people skim right over. Before the flood, the psukim say that “all flesh had corrupted its ways.” Rashi explains this includes the animals. They were mating across species. That raises a difficult question. How can animals, who do not have bechirah, become corrupt in a moral sense? And what does it mean that they were punished along with mankind? In...

The Torah gives us long lists of ages and lifespans, but every so often a detail appears that seems completely out of place. One of the most striking is Noach’s age when he finally has children. Almost every earlier figure becomes a parent in the range of sixty to one hundred. Then suddenly Noach reaches five hundred before he has his first child. It feels too strange to ignore, yet the Torah give...

This is the fourth shiur in the Gan Eden series

This is the third shiur in the Gan Eden series

The second shiur in the Gan Eden series that began with "Adam And Chava's Sin Of Removing the Clothes"

There is a detail in the opening chapters of Bereishit that almost everyone reads without noticing how strange it really is. The Torah says Adam and Chava were naked and not embarrassed. Later, after the sin, the Torah says God made them clothes. So why does Rashi insist that the clothing actually belonged to an earlier story? Why would God create garments of honor for Adam and Chava before they e...

A continuation of the prior shiur

10 shiurs in 1. Actually, in 2.

A spin-off of Aharon's Egel and the Civil War

One of the strangest machlokot in Chazal revolves around a very simple question. How did Korach actually die? The pesukim seem clear that the earth swallowed him, yet the Gemara quotes Rabbi Yochanan saying he was not swallowed, not burned, and instead died in the plague the next day. How can that be? And why would a major opinion insist on something that seems to contradict the plain text? In thi...

Most people know Korach as the ringleader of a rebellion. The Torah presents him as jealous, ambitious, and determined to undermine Moshe. But then the Midrash says something that changes the entire picture. It claims Korach had ruach hakodesh. How could Korach, of all people, be described as a navi? And where in the psukim could Chazal possibly see that? In this episode I explore the hidden clues...

There is a moment in Parashat Chukat that feels familiar on the surface, yet the more you look at it, the stranger it becomes. Miriam dies, the water disappears, and Bnei Yisrael complain. That much we know. But then Rashi says something puzzling. The rock that supplied water for forty years suddenly rolled away and hid among the other rocks. Why would a rock run away? How were Moshe and Aharon ex...

What went wrong when Miriam died

Why did Moriam die at the end of the 40 years?

About the sin of the meraglim

Parshas Eikev

Mostly Rashi