The Tefilah Podcast

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 10 minutes Synopsis: This evening (10/18/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we began with a quick review of why we say Tehilim - what we're trying to get out of it, and how it works. Next, we reviewed the perek, our questions, and the basic pshat of the individual pesukim. After that, I introduced my theory of t...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 33 minutes Synopsis: This evening (10/11/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, I decided not to return to the perek we were learning before Yom ha'Kippurim and instead revisit a perek which (sadly) is relevant at the present time, when Israel is at war. Our shiur was cut short by the introductory topic we took up, but we...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 25 minutes Synopsis: This evening (10/11/23), prior to our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, I decided to take up a topic I felt I needed to address. Earlier today I had a VERY brief discussion with a fellow Jewish educator about how we've been handling our students' questions about horrific terrorist attacks on our people i...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 2 minutes Synopsis: This evening (9/20/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we began working on a VERY difficult perek - one that was made more difficult by the fact that I wasn't able to prepare it ahead of time. I'm not gonna lie: unless you plan on participating in this shiur next time, or unless you REALL...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 4 minutes Synopsis: This evening (9/13/23), in our  Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we continued our REDUX analysis of Tehilim 27 as explained by R' Elia di Nola. After reviewing our updated translation and the questions, we focused on the two main themes which R' Elia presents in his introduction and we attempted t...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 11 minutes Synopsis: Last night (9/9/23), at 11:30pm - roughly an hour and a half before the first night of selichos for us Ashkenazim - I gave over one of my favorite short shiur write-ups from L'Mikdach u'l'Michroz b'Mishneh Torah le'ha'Ramba (a.k.a. The Kuntress). The shiur delves into the na...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 10 minutes Synopsis: This evening (9/6/23), in our first Wednesday night Tehilim shiur of the 2023-2024 season, we decided to revisit the same perek we learned in Elul of last year - this time, through one of my new favorite commentators whose name nobody will have heard of: R' Elia di Nola, student of the Sforno. Becau...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length of audio: 47 minutes Synopsis: Have you been what I'll be up to this coming year?  Have you heard me allude to a MAJOR update that I said I'd announce about my professional life in the near future? Are you aware of one of these updates, but not the other? Well, if none of this interests you, then by all means, feel free to...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 7 minutes Synopsis: This evening (6/7/23), in our last Wednesday night Tehilim shiur of the season, we attempted to "land the plane" for Tehilim 15, despite the vision-obscuring wildfire smoke. (To be honest, I'm not even sure whether I'm speaking in metaphor anymore!) Instead of continuing in the Radak,...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 3 minutes Synopsis: This evening (5/31/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we continued learning Chapter 15 - but since it's been two full weeks, we (read: I) forgot everything! We began by reviewing, then outlining two approaches - the Meiri and the Radak - and then "voting" on the Radak. We began lear...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 14 minutes Synopsis: This evening (5/17/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we began learning the exceedingly short Chapter 15 (yeah, we skipped 14 for now), which was a VERY different kind of perek! After translating the pesukim and raising all the questions, we sketched some basic approaches and then took a survey o...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (5/10/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we explained the main idea and practical application of the shiur - and oh what an idea it was! Not only that, but this shiur represented a level-up in our learning of Tehilim, and a new methodological concept which my chavrusa dubbed: "the Evolution of the Supplicant.&quot...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (5/3/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we began a new perek - one which is short and sweet! Well, 73% of it is negative, but I can assure you that the ideas are sweet! Tonight we translated the perek, raised all the questions, began developing an approach, and read through one of the meforshim. Next week we'll at...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (4/26/23), in our Wednesday night Tehilim shiur, we continued our analysis of the difficult chapter 12. Despite our best efforts, my chavrusa and I were unable to come up with our own understanding of the perek based on our go-to meforshim. We did, however, appreciate the Malbim's approach. I came to shiur tonight prepare...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (4/19/23), in our Wednesday night shiur, we returned to Sefer Tehilim! Since I'm giving a few other shiurim on lashon ha'ra, I decided it would be apropos to learn "the lashon ha'ra perek." This enigmatic, Mishleic, difficult-to-translate chapter proved to be quite the challenge, but I think we've...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 14 minutes Synopsis: This evening (3/29/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, we "landed the plane" (as it were). The goal was to make this the last shiur in our current series on Shema Koleinu, no matter what. Because this was also our last shiur before Pesach, I decided to start and end with a Pesach-related...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 7 minutes Synopsis: This evening (3/22/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, we began by reviewing the key insight from last time, which is about the "basic" level of davening and how Hashem responds. We then tackled the intimidating topic of "advanced tefilah" and how Hashem responds to THAT. We ans...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 10 minutes Synopsis: This evening (3/15/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, I began by announcing that I've decided to stop giving a tefilah shiur because I'm out of my depth, and that we're going to go back to Tehilim after Pesach. I thought the shiur would be a disaster, but instead, I feel like we go...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 6 minutes Synopsis: This evening (3/8/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, we might have bitten off more than we could chew. Our goal was to understand the opening phrase in Shema Koleinu. To do this, we analyzed Shemos 2:23-25 with Sforno's commentary AND the recently published alternative Sforno commentary on Al...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 9 minutes Synopsis: This evening (3/1/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, we took another break from our analysis of Shema Koleinu to answer a question based on our understanding of tefilah that we've been developing: if the essence of tefilah is in the mental preparation, why do we actually need to daven? Why ca...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 9 minutes Synopsis: At the beginning of this month we commenced our analysis of Shema Koleinu and set up a bunch of questions. We then spent the last two weeks leveling up our understanding of how tefilah works based on the Sefer ha'Ikkarim. This evening (2/22/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, we returned to Sh...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (2/15/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, I promised to address two revolutionary ideas. The first was a further development of the idea we learned from the Sefer ha'Ikkarim last time but didn't get a chance to refine. The second was an insight from a friend (Rabbi Trachtman, based on the Rambam) that radicall...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (2/8/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, I found myself in a bit of a quandary about how to proceed. On the one hand, we started a new topic last week and left off with a bunch of questions. On the other hand, I knew that some of our regulars wouldn't be here tonight. I decided to compromise by continuing with the...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! This evening (2/1/23), in our Wednesday night Tefilah shiur, we began a multi-part shiur which began with two questions submitted by my talmidim. We began by raising the questions, doing a quick but comprehensive review of what tefilah is and how it works, then using that review to answer SOME of the questions. We then delved into the text...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 30 Synopsis: This morning (1/12/22), in lieu of Mishlei, we set out to do a Q&A, but ended up discussing a tefilah-related question and learning tefilah commentaries to find the answer. For that reason, I'm treating this as a separate tefilah shiur. We didn't attempt to understand EVERY phrase in these two berachos, b...