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PODCAST

Ta Shma

Hadar Institute

Bringing you recent lectures, classes, and programs from the Hadar Institute, Ta Shma is where you get to listen in on the beit midrash. Come and listen on the go, at home, or wherever you are. Hosted by Rabbi Avi Killip of the Hadar Institute.

religion & spirituality judaism

All Episodes

9:28

R. Micha'el Rosenberg on Simhat Torah: Joy and Trembling

Ta Shma ·

2024/10/21

We tend to think of Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah, which conclude the somber and at times terrifying High Holiday season, as a time of tremendous joy. This year, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ brutal attack and the terrible war that followed, the exultation we associate with these days will be impossibly incongruous with how many of us will feel. How are we supposed to live with these complicated feelings on this holiday? A closer look at the holiday’s practices offers s...

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10:06

R. David Kasher on Parashat VeZot HaBerakhah: A...

Ta Shma ·

2024/10/14

The first verse in the Torah I ever learned by heart comes from its final parashah. When my brother and I would go visit our father in New York for the summer, he would try to figure out things for us to do during the day, and one year—I must have been about ten or eleven—he sent us to this Chabad day camp for a week. We were not observant during the rest of the year at my mom’s house, so my father probably thought it would be good training for us, maybe fill in some gaps. T...

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50:37

R. Shai Held: The God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of...

Ta Shma ·

2024/10/09

It is one of the last acceptable prejudices in American culture: the God of the "Old Testament" is a God of vengeance, focused on strict justice rather than mercy, given to anger rather than love. This perception is as mistaken as it is widespread. In this lecture, we'll encounter a series of biblical texts that make the stunning claim that what makes God unique, what makes God God, is God's unfathomable capacity for love, mercy, and forgiveness. We'll explore the common complaint that a God ...

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37:48

R. Avi Strausberg: Midrashim of Destruction

Ta Shma ·

2024/10/07

In its time, the destruction of the Temple, habayit (the house), brought with it tremendous violence, loss and suffering. In this session, we'll turn to new midrashim written post-October 7th by Dr. Nurit Hirschfeld-Skupinsky, a professor of Midrash in Israel. In these midrashim she understands the destruction of one kind of bayit, the Temple, as a kind of a destruction of another kind of bayit, the house and families whose lives were shattered on and after October 7th. Based on traditional m...

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11:08

R. David Kasher on Parashat Ha'azinu: The Poetry of...

Ta Shma ·

2024/10/02

Last week, we discussed the significance of the poem that God tells Moshe to write down in Parashat VaYelekh, "Now, write for yourselves this poem and teach it to the Children of Israel" (Deuteronomy 31:19). Most of the classic Medieval commentators (Rashi, Ramban, Rabbeinu Behaye, Abarbanel, and others) understand “this” to be a reference to the poem that makes up most of this week’s parashah, Ha’azinu. Yet the Talmud (in Nedarim 38a) considers another possible meaning of the phrase “this po...

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7:40

R. David Kasher on Parashat Nitzavim-Vayelekh: The...

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/25

In Parashat Nitzavim Moshe’s grand oratory comes to a close, and in Parashat VaYelekh he turns to the process of writing the Torah down. The parashah records two distinct acts of writing, in two very different styles: a book and a poem.

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45:22

R. Shai Held: Teshuvah and Transformation Part 2

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/23

To prepare ourselves for the approaching Days of Awe, we'll engage in two sets of reflections. In this second part, we'll consider some of the very different ways that Rabbis Abraham Isaac Kook and Joseph Solveitchik conceptualize teshuvah and ask whether and how they can each challenge us to grow as Jews and as human beings. Recorded on Hadar's Virtual Beit Midrash, Elul 2024. Source sheet:https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldTeshuvahPart22024.pdf

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7:32

R. David Kasher on Parashat Ki Tavo: Wellsprings of...

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/19

In Parashat Ki Tavo, Moshe and the elders of Israel command the people, on the day they arrive into Land, to set up twelve large stones, and “to write on them all the words of this Torah” (Deuteronomy 27:3). Moshe then repeats this charge a few verses later, but this time adds extra emphasis with an unusual verb.

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36:06

R. Shai Held: Teshuvah and Transformation Part 1

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/16

To prepare ourselves for the approaching Days of Awe, we'll engage in two sets of reflections. In this first part, we'll explore some key passages on teshuvah from Maimonides', paying special attention to how he creatively reads Talmudic sources to make the spiritual-ethical-educational points he thinks are important for us. Recorded on Hadar's Virtual Beit Midrash, Elul 2024. Source sheet:https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldTeshuvahPart12024

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14:48

R. David Kasher on Parashat Ki Teitzei: A Life in Pieces

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/11

The rules of inheritance are just another law in Deuteronomy’s massive catalog of laws, but something in the way it’s written sounds like a fragment from some lost legend. It somehow breaks the heart to hear them. A hated wife, in the shadow of a beloved one. A husband’s unfair disregard. And the poor child who was innocently born into disfavor. It reads like a story.

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47:31

R. Aviva Richman: The Power and Limits of Radical Hesed

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/09

What does it mean to think of hesed as the bedrock of Jewish practice? Rav Aviva explores this question through an essay by Rav Yitzhak Hutner, the author of Pahad Yitzhak, in which he argues that the most foundational attribute of the world is Hesed. Recorded at the Manger Winter Learning Seminar 2024. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/MWLS2024RichmanHesed.pdf

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9:38

R. Avi Strausberg on Rosh Chodesh Elul: What Does...

Ta Shma ·

2024/09/03

Back in Elul of 2023, when I began this year of writing Divrei Torah for the holidays, we didn’t know what devastation lay ahead. In retrospect, each of the Divrei Torah I’ve written this year can be read in light of the events of October 7th. Each holiday celebrated, every encounter with Torah is refracted through the lens of the last eleven months. If there has been a theme that has tied all of this Torah together it is: How do we observe and mourn and celebrate our holy d...

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44:44

R. Avi Strausberg: Expanding the Circle of Believers

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/26

Belief is core to the religious experience yet many don't quite believe with conviction or don't know what it means to say that they do. In this session, we'll turn to the Torah of Rebbe Nachman as well as a modern midrash by Rivka Lubitch to unpack what's at the center of belief. What do we mean when we say that we believe, who gets to call themselves a believer, and can we find new definitions of faith that allow us to expand the circle of belief? Recorded at the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive,...

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10:10

R. David Kasher on Parashat Eikev: The Hand of God

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/21

Of all the anthropomorphic images used to describe God in the Torah, one of the most richly developed is “the hand of God.” The image appears for the first time in the Book of Exodus, and then is reworked and nuanced in various ways throughout the rest of that book. Here in the Book of Deuteronomy, in Parashat Eikev, Moshe will draw on several of those earlier images in order to frame a new religious message for the people about to cross over into the Land.

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50:42

R. Elie Kaunfer: Praying Against Our Enemies in the...

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/19

In this session, we will look at one of the most controversial - and censored - prayers in our tradition: Aleinu. How are we meant to understand the lines in these prayers? Who are the enemies and how might we relate to those concepts today? Who censored the prayers - and how? This class will explore all these questions through various textual traditions of these prayers. Recorded at the Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive, March 2024. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_s...

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9:48

R. David Kasher on Parashat Va'Etchanan: Seeking...

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/15

The opening of Parashat Va’Ethanan can serve both as a warning to us all, not to seek more power or privilege than is our due—but also as a reminder to honor our life’s accomplishments, and even to acknowledge, every one of us, our own greatness.

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11:06

R. Avi Strausberg on Tisha B'Av: “Let it Not Totter...

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/12

Beresheit Rabbah (3:7) teaches that God created and destroyed many worlds before finally allowing this world, our world, to stand. This midrash is teaching us three things. First, destruction and loss are a part of the fabric of our very existence. There is no avoiding it; there is only wrestling and reconciling and accepting it. Second, the midrash contains in it a promise or a hope that even after each destruction, a new world is created. After loss, there is rebirth. After the destruction ...

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9:40

R. David Kasher on Parashat Devarim: Moshe the...

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/07

As we head into the Book of Deuteronomy, we will quickly notice that something has changed. The style of narration is different than we have seen in the Torah so far. This book will consist mostly of Moshe’s own words. The first five verses set the stage for Moshe’s great final oratory. What follows for the next 33 chapters is Moshe retelling the story of the journey so far, Moshe rebuking the people, Moshe adding new laws, Moshe reciting poetry, and Moshe giving blessings.

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48:10

R. Micha'el Rosenberg: On the Day the Messiah Was Born

Ta Shma ·

2024/08/05

The Talmud Yerushalmi tells a distressing and perplexing tale about a cowherd who goes off in search of the newborn baby messiah on the day the Temple was destroyed. We will read this story, with its enigmatic ending, and try to understand what its authors are trying to tell us about how we should respond in the face of destruction. Recorded on Tisha B'Av 2022. *Content warning: Please note that this class will discuss the potentially violent death of a young child. Source sheet: ht...

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15:26

R. David Kasher on Parashat Mattot-Mas'ei: Frothing...

Ta Shma ·

2024/07/31

Moshe has an anger problem. He is usually able to keep it under control. By nature, he is a quiet man, a brooder. He carries out his duties faithfully—as both a mouthpiece of God and a defender of the people. But the tension between these two roles pulls at him constantly, keeps him agitated. Sometimes the pressure gets too high… and he explodes.

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706 results

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