Underneath the Underneath

In Parshat B’shalach, the Israelites find themselves caught between liberation and terror — having just left Egypt, only to be pursued, frightened, and unsure whether freedom was a mistake. In this episode of Underneath the Underneath, we explore the fragile space where prayer turns into protest, where faith wavers under pressure, and where crying out to God coexists with anger, doubt, and complai...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, Yocheved Sidof enters Parashat Va’era through a single question: What has to shift inside us to become a vessel for redemption? Drawing on Moshe’s struggle, Pharaoh’s resistance, and the somatic reality of exile as kotzer ruach (short breath), she maps five inner gateways that help move us from constriction toward liberation. This episode explores speaking...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, we enter the quiet, charged space of constriction. Teaching on Parashat Vayechi alongside the fast of Asarah b’Tevet, Yocheved explores what it means to bless before outcome, clarity, or redemption. Drawing on the Torah’s portrayal of Yaakov blessing his sons in Egypt — at the very beginning of exile — we explore five portals of blessing: blessing through...

This week’s Underneath the Underneath enters the moment of Vayigash — when Yehuda draws near. Through a luminous teaching from the Baal Shem Tov, we explore a radically Hasidic approach to suffering, prayer, and presence: not fixing, not explaining, not bypassing — but approaching. What does it mean to come close without an agenda? To praise not as flattery, but as a state of consciousness? To rec...

This week’s Underneath the Underneath is a quiet, tender holding of a charged moment. As Chanukah begins — a festival devoted to light made public — we sit inside Parashat Miketz, where Yosef emerges from prison into power, visibility, and recognition… while still hidden in plain sight. In the wake of the terror attack at Bondi Beach, this class does not rush toward meaning or resolution. Instead,...

This class is dedicated to Mushka (Silman) Glanstein, of blessed memory — a bright soul whose light will continue to ripple on for eternity. חי׳ מושקא בת שמעון אברהם This week’s session of Underneath the Underneath unfolds inside a living convergence: Parashat Vayeshev, where Yosef descends into the pit and into prison, and Yud Tes Kislev, the liberation of the Alter Rebbe and the opening of the w...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, we meet Yaakov alone in the night — the place where every soul eventually finds itself. There, in the dark, he wrestles with the angel of Esav, the unintegrated shadow that has followed him since birth. From that struggle emerges something utterly new: a limp, a blessing, and the name Yisrael — the identity earned not by escaping difficulty, but by staying...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, Yocheved Sidof enters the raw, tender terrain of becoming through the story of Yaakov’s flight from home. Between Be’er Sheva and Haran, between certainty and unraveling, Yaakov dreams of a ladder — and sees angels ascend and descend, yet cannot see himself. Through the Izhbitzer’s teaching of the three names of the soul, the Me’or Einayim’s insight on the...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath on Parshat Toldot, Yocheved Sidof returns from two weeks in Israel carrying a raw wisdom: the world is asking us to hold more than one truth at a time. Through the story of Rivka’s pregnancy—vayitrotzetzu, lama zeh anochi, lidrosh, shnei goyim b’vitnech—she reveals a four-step map of inner work rooted in the body’s own knowing. From Nova to an old-age home,...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, Yocheved walks with Avraham into the tender mystery of Lech Lecha — the call to leave what we know and step toward what we cannot yet see. What happens when the familiar stories fall away — when the ground of certainty dissolves beneath our feet, and all that’s left is the quiet pulse of trust? Through personal reflection, ancestral memory, and living Tora...

Between Bereishit and Noach, the Torah pauses for a breath —a verse of divine heartbreak: “And God regretted that He had made man on the earth.” In this week’s session of Underneath the Ubderneath, Yocheved teaches from the seam between creation and re-creation — between the flood of loss and the rainbow of return. In the shadow of October 7th, as the world still trembles with grief and release, s...

In this session, we entered Elul through the lens of Parshat Ki Tavo and Moshe’s words: “God did not give you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear until this day.” Together, we explored the shift from Sinai’s black-and-white revelation to the subtle, nuanced knowledge that lives in the heart — Lev La’daat. Drawing on the Sfat Emet, we traced how true knowing is not a peak moment of clari...

In this session of Underneath the Underneath, we open Parshat Ki Teitzei with its raw beginning: “When you go out to war…” War here is not only a battlefield but a mindset — the inevitable rumble with our struggles, shadows, and longings. Together we explore how the Torah guides us to meet desire (the captive woman), loss (returning what was lost), and hardness of heart (Amalek) with compassion an...

In this session of Underneath the Underneath, we step into Elul through the parsha of Shoftim. What does it mean to place judges at our gates at the very moment we’re invited to return? Together we trace the arc from shattered gates and grief, through Tu B’Av’s love, into the gates of Elul—where the narrow places can soften into fields of compassion. Drawing on a teaching from Kedushat Levi, we ex...

In this session of Underneath the Underneath, our 101st gathering, we explore the movement from scattered personal altars to the collective house of presence. What does it mean to serve ‘in every place you see,’ and what shifts when we are called to bring our flame only to ‘the place that God will choose’? Along the way, we touch the holy rub between autonomy and belonging, and uncover the blessin...

In this episode of Underneath the Underneath, mystical currents and sacred texts converge around Parshat Eikev to ask: What is the nature of our relationship with the Divine? Drawing on a teaching from the Baal Shem Tov and the verse from Psalms — Hashem Tzilcha, “God is your shadow” — we explore the mirroring between human and Heaven, and how every movement below awakens a movement above. Through...

In this week’s episode of Underneath the Underneath on Parshat Vaetchanan, we step into the space after Tisha B’Av—the aftermath of grief—and ask: What is comfort, really? We meet Moshe on the mountain, retelling his impassioned prayer and God’s response: Rav lach—“enough.” Through this sacred moment, we explore three layers of prayer, Rav Kook’s radical view of suffering, and how real comfort doe...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, we enter the month of Av — a time when the Torah invites us into the depth of loss, not to avoid it, but to be transformed by it. Drawing from classical and contemporary sources — the Talmud, Psalms, the Piaseczner Rebbe, Francis Weller — we explore grief not as weakness, but as gateway. What if the tears themselves are a kind of prayer? What if the ruins...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, we enter the territory of vows — the inner narratives, soul contracts, and unconscious promises that shape our lives. We explore the Torah’s invitation to practice hatarat nedarim — the loosening of vows — and how, through awareness and presence, old bindings can begin to soften. Rooted in the word matir (to untie), this is the spiritual art of becoming un...

In this week’s session of Underneath the Underneath, we enter the quiet ache of Parshat Pinchas — a portion filled with transition, legacy, and the tender moment where Moshe sees the Land he cannot enter, calls for new leadership, and blesses Yehoshua. Drawing on a mystical teaching from the Sfat Emet, we explore Moshe as the masculine Sun, Yehoshua as feminine Moon what it means to pass the torch...

In this live transmission of Underneath the Underneath, we meet an unexpected guide: Bilam’s female donkey. Through her mysterious three stops along the way and Bilam’s reaction to her, we uncover a profound map for attuning to embodied wisdom, nervous system healing, and the sacred art of halting before collapse. This class explores how the donkey’s three stops mirror the stages of nervous system...

In this week’s episode of Underneath the Underneath, we explore Parshat Chukat as a mystical map of healing. Drawing from the figures of Moshe, Miriam, the Waters, the Snake, and the Staff, we uncover four archetypes of the healing journey: the guide, the midwife, the shadow, and the witness. We ask what it means to feel another without getting enmeshed. We touch the grief that arises when the wel...

In this week’s Underneath the Underneath, we meet the mystery of Korach—not just as rebellion, but as collapse. What does it mean to be swallowed by the earth and not die, but disappear? What if becoming means letting old identities fall away in the dark, trusting that something in us is still ripening? We journey from the belly of the void to the blossoming of the staff—a sacred pause between amb...

What if the very thing you long for is also the thing you fear? In this week’s session of Underneath the Underneath, we journey into the Torah portion of Sh’lach, exploring the mystical dimensions of longing, readiness, and the ache of the fruit—the vision that overwhelms the vessel. Through Hasidic and Kabbalistic sources, we ask: What happens when the promise appears too early, too bright, too c...

Not all distance is exile. Sometimes it is the voice of the soul, aching its way back in. In this episode of Underneath the Underneath, we enter this weeks Torah portion and the field of Pesach Sheni, the “Second Passover”—a sacred doorway opened not by perfect timing, but by honest yearning. We explore the mystical function of restoration, the difference between complaint and desire, and the prof...