Ta Shma

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 litera...

To be a Jew is to believe in impossible dreams. To be a Jew is to believe that slaves can become free. It is to believe that the senselessness of this world can be disrupted by divine words that break through the barrier between heaven and earth.  It is trust, even on our darkest days, that we are part of God’s dream.

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 litera...

The tragedy of Moshe’s final conversation with his father-in-law are the words that he leaves unsaid.

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the wor...

There are moments in life where things have gone so wrong that we cannot see a way forward.  That may be what has happened to the woman who chooses to drink the sotah waters.

To be a Jew is, when we are lucky, to feel the memory of Sinai in our bones.  We strive to feel as if we have experienced both the slavery and liberation of Egypt first hand, as if we ourselves saw God’s miracles.  

What did we hear at Sinai?  What does God want us to hear?

When it comes to the enslavement of Jews, God gives us two imperatives. First, strive to be like God. Failing that, resist the temptation to become like the Egyptians.

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the wor...

What makes Lag Ba’Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, special?  Why has this day become an oasis of relief, and even celebration, amidst the generally mournful period between Pesah and Shavuot?  The Talmud tells us simply that one year, R. Akiva’s 24,000 students all died between Pesah and Shavuot; a post-talmudic tradition asserts that the plague that felled them came to an end specifically on the 33...

Parashat Emor features two types of ritual buildings: the first, the mishkan (tabernacle), later transformed into the beit ha-mikdash (Temple); and the second, a sukkah .   We encounter the mikdash this week, mostly in the form of limits on who may serve in it and how they must conduct themselves.  Those who may serve there are not allowed to engage with the world as other Jews are: kohanim (pries...

When you stop to think about it, Pesah Sheini is a very strange holiday, with a motivation that would be incomprehensible for almost any other festival.  As we read in Bemidbar 9, some people were ritually impure on the 14th of Nisan—the eve of Pesah—and therefore unable to perform the foundational mitzvah of slaughtering and eating a paschal offering.  They ask for a second chance, and God grants...

Yom Kippur, depending on who tells its story, is animated by one of two central wounds.

The Talmud teaches us that God is a God of truth who it would seem values honesty. Yet, what does that mean for all of our questions and doubts? Is there a limit to how honest we can be and are there situations in which another value trumps honesty for the sake of something greater? This class, which is part 1 of a 3 part series, will turn to Talmud, midrash, and poetry to explore intellectual hon...

Each of us was brought into this world by someone who allowed their body to become home to a stranger.  This is what mothers do before we meet our children: watch, sometimes in wonder, and sometimes in grief, as the bodies which were once ours alone grow, bend, ache, and change in ways that make us unrecognizable to ourselves.  Feel our ribs widen, our bodies force themselves apart, to create room...

Although it eventually won out, it was not always obvious that “Hatikvah” would be the Israeli national anthem.  There were other competitors, and various critiques of the poem written by Naphtali Hertz Imber.  Among those critiques was a voice from at least some religious Zionists who thought the work too secular to reflect the religious import of the new state.  Some advocated instead for Psalm...

Vayikra is a book that is concerned with the holy and the profane; the pure and the impure.  Nearly every mitzvah in Vayikra contains these categories.  The Jewish people are told that they are to be kadosh because God is kadosh .  In Vayikra, it is the holy that is the primary pathway to God.  The mishkan (tabernacle), the center of holiness on earth, is the pathway for that connection.

It shouldn’t be possible to say such a thing, but I have spent most of my life taking the Holocaust for granted.  My father of blessed memory was a child survivor; my mother, she should live a long life, is herself the child of survivors.  I have no memory of learning about the Holocaust, no recollection of a parent telling me what it was, of what happened there.  It is as if my brain came into th...

The burnt ashes of the korbanot (sacrifices), piled on the altar, represent the intermingled prayers and dreams, experiences and regrets, of the Jewish people.

We are doing a lot of prep work this week.  We are cleaning our homes, kashering pots and cutlery, making sure we’ve got everything on our Seder shopping lists.

The unspoken drive towards human sacrifice lurks in the background of Sefer Vayikra.  

The first Pesah was a leil shimurim, a night of watching, a night of fear and uncertainty.  Amid darkness and screams, the fate of the Israelites hung in the balance, with hopes of redemption and freedom in their hearts. They were asked to believe in a God they didn't know and to set out on a journey with no destination in sight. Amazingly, they trusted in God and they followed Moshe out of E...

Human beings love to make idols of our dead.   Desperate to keep our lost loved ones within reach, we create forms that we can cling to in their stead.  We name buildings and mark park benches; install portraits and keep voicenotes on our phones.  We believe, somewhere in our hearts, that if we can create the right form, capture the right image, wear the right talisman—his scarf, her watch—then th...

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the wor...