Ta Shma

It’s only in the moment when Moshe once again commands the Jewish people to keep Shabbat that we know they are truly forgiven.

Prague at the turn of the 17th century was the site of a critical period in the development of pre-modern Jewish thought. The great rabbis of that city developed a unique theology, synthesizing the rational philosophical tradition that shaped religious thought in the Middle Ages with the growing influence of Kabbalah. In doing so, they created a new kind of religious language - one that set the st...

The Jews have every reason to believe Moshe will never come back. We’ve seen this play before, the last time with a father and son: a three day journey into the wilderness for sacrifice (the story that Moshe tells Pharaoh) at some unknown place, which turns out to be a mountain.  We know this story, but the last time we saw it told, the main characters were Avraham and Yitzhak

Purim is a holiday of costumes, putting on masks, and presenting ourselves to the world in unusual ways.  It makes sense, then, that this holiday most often falls, as it does this year, in the week after Parashat Tetzaveh, a parashah largely about the costuming for the priests in the Temple.  The fact that the Torah tells us so much about the garments the kohanim must wear cuts against an all-too-...

Tetzaveh is a parashah of absence. While Moshe has been a constant presence since the beginning of Shemot, in Tetzaveh, Moshe’s name is not mentioned a single time.

Prague at the turn of the 17th century was the site of a critical period in the development of pre-modern Jewish thought. The great rabbis of that city developed a unique theology, synthesizing the rational philosophical tradition that shaped religious thought in the Middle Ages with the growing influence of Kabbalah. In doing so, they created a new kind of religious language - one that set the st...

If you are lucky, you will live to see your parents begin to need you in the way you once needed them. You will feel it most in the small things: lifting a cup of water to your mother’s lips; adjusting the light your father can sleep. Laying a hand on his forehead. And you will be desperately sad, but also lucky, because each time you do these things, you will remember that they once, so many time...

Prague at the turn of the 17th century was the site of a critical period in the development of pre-modern Jewish thought. The great rabbis of that city developed a unique theology, synthesizing the rational philosophical tradition that shaped religious thought in the Middle Ages with the growing influence of Kabbalah. In doing so, they created a new kind of religious language - one that set the st...

Mishpatim, after the narrative path we’ve experienced so far in Shemot, can feel dizzying.   Until now, Shemot has seemed like a straightforward story: slavery, Exodus, and revelation.  It is a narrative that unfolds in a basically clear order, with a clear str¡ucture.  It is a story that can be read, if not precisely like any other book, at least in much the same way.  

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...

It’s only when Yitro, who knew Moshe before he became a leader, comes to meet him that we learn how lost Moshe has become.

Tu Bishvat has become a day on which many Jews express gratitude for the earth and its bounty.  In this sense, it is closely connected to the practice of reciting blessings over food before we eat.  How do we experience, when we eat fully formed produce, the miraculous intricacy that produced it?  How do we go from the mundane act of eating to a deep sense of appreciation?

The Exodus from Egypt is, in one way of telling it, a ghost story. This is not the usual genre we assign to the tale.  We describe it as a story of liberation.  The emotions we associate with it are a mixture of triumph, joy, and awe.  But stories are created, in part, by where we choose to begin and end them, and the Exodus is a story with many beginnings.

In a time of abounding artificial intelligence, we will attempt to define what makes intelligence "non" artificial. Our jumping-off point will be the Hebrew word da'at , which is prominently used in Jewish law to assert the importance of mental awareness, intention, and consent. As we excavate the many meanings of da'at , we will ask: What are the characteristics of our minds a...

Whose story do we tell on the Seder night? The answer, at first, seems obvious: the story we tell is our own, the story of our deliverance from slavery to freedom. It is the core story of our people. It is the grand drama of Jewish history in which we are still enmeshed today. But this week’s parashah offers another interpretation, one in which it is God, not (only) ourselves, at the center of the...

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...

After Pharaoh's first refusal, after the Jewish people's burden increases because of his words, Moshe can't imagine redemption.

One of the most memorable and impactful lines of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is his invocation of the prophet Amos (5:24): “…No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream .”  Dr. King introduces the words of the prophet to close a section with the repeated refrain “We cannot...

Women’s wombs lie at the heart of the Exodus.

The narrative of Hannah in Tanakh paints the picture of a yearning journey through prayer as dynamic expression - one of varied posture, volume, intensity, and presence. Rabbis Miriam-Simma and Deobrah Sacks Mintz explore rabbinic sources, punctuated by learning and singing together a newly composed Nigun Hannah, to dig into the prayers of our own hearts. Recorded at Hadar's Manger Winter Lea...

It is easy to forget that the end of Bereishit is a surprise ending. So used to the fact that all twelve sons and their descendants are included in the Jewish nation, we forget that that wasn’t always necessarily part of the plan, that the inclusion of all children is something new and unexpected.

As he approaches the man that he thinks is the viceroy, entrapped in the massive lie that Yosef has arranged, Yehudah begins to tell the truth. It has been a long road to this moment.  For so long, the brothers have been committed to a lie, the vision of their family as they wished it was, in which their father loved all of them, in which there was no favorite—most beloved wife and her favorite, m...

Asarah b’Tevet (10th Tevet) commemorates the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem in the lead-up to the destruction of the First Temple, a blockade that lasted at least 18 months.  Unlike the related fasts of 17th Tammuz or Tishah B’Av, each of which memorializes a concentrated event (the breaching of the walls; the actual destruction of the Temple), 10th Tevet marks the beginning of a lengthy peri...

Growing up as the only Jew in my class in Iowa, I got lots of practice telling the story of Hanukkah.  The story of the oil that was only enough for one night but which, miraculously, lasted for eight, as I learned it and retold it every December in a classroom full of Christmas decorations, is the most familiar in all of American Judaism. In recent years, this telling of the tale is often critici...

By the time Yosef reaches Egypt, he is one of a long list of lost children in the Abrahamic family. It’s a family that has always been made up of insiders and outsiders, those who stay and those who are exiled.