Beit Midrash Har'el Podcast

📥 Free Shavuot Reader With All of Rav Hefter's Essays: A great companion for the holiday and a wonderful conversation starter over a long Yom Tov meal. www.studyharel.org/shavuot-reader 📋 Episode Description What if the revelation at Sinai was deliberately incomplete — and that incompleteness is the whole point? In the finale of the Beit Midrash Har'El Sefirat HaOmer series, Rav Herzl He...

What is it that makes a beam of sunlight breaking through storm clouds so arresting? Photographers have a name for it: God beams . And according to Rav Herzl Hefter, Kabbalists have a name for it too: Hod . Episode 6 of the Beit Midrash Har'El Sefirat HaOmer series arrives just in time for Lag BaOmer with a deep and surprisingly beautiful exploration of the two Sefirot at the heart of this wee...

What if the Exodus wasn't just a historical event — but a birth? In Episode 5 of the Beit Midrash Har'El Sefirat HaOmer series, Rav Herzl Hefter unfolds one of the most vivid and unexpected readings of the Omer period you'll ever encounter. The seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuot, he argues, are not simply a countdown to the giving of the Torah. They are a period of tum'ah and t...

Episode 4 of the Beit Midrash Har'el Sefirat HaOmer series is the most grounded and accessible yet. Responding to listener feedback, host Alan Imar and Rav Hefter set out to bring the conversation down to earth: What are the Sefirot? What's the difference between Kabbalah and Hasidut? And how does any of this actually connect to our lives? Rav Hefter answers by walking through the Ten Sefi...

This is the raw, unedited bonus companion to Episode 3 of the Beit Midrash Har'el Sefirat HaOmer series — released because the conversation ran long and every moment was too good to cut. Source Sheet: https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/718535?lang=bi In this bonus episode, Rav Herzl Hefter and host Alan Imar go deeper into two extraordinary threads that the main episode introduced: the radical anth...

What does it mean to say God is merciful? What does it mean to say Abraham is Hesed? And what does any of this have to do with counting the Omer? In Episode 3 of the Beit Midrash Har'el Sefirat HaOmer series, host Alan Imar and Rosh Beit Midrash Rav Herzl Hefter open the door to Jewish mysticism. Rav Hefter starts with a surprising entry point: Maimonides (Rambam). By looking at how the Rambam...

In the second episode of our seven-part series on Sefirat HaOmer, we continue our discussion from the first episode: What does it mean to count the Omer — and why does this period of the Jewish calendar feel so charged and uncertain? Rav Herzl Hefter and Alan Imar explore the deeper significance of Sefirat HaOmer, unpacking why the stories we tell about hazardous transitions aren't merely hist...

In the inaugural episode of our seven-part series on the Sefirat HaOmer, first-year student Alan Imar and Rav Herzl Hefter, founder of Beit Midrash Har’el, discuss the meaning and message behind the omer, providing a timely message for a world—and a nation—currently standing in a place of profound transition. Highlights: The Paradox of the Omer: Why did a period originally celebrated as a "se...