

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.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 22, 2025 • 9min
R. Tali Adler on Parashat Vayeilekh: Recreating Sinai
The generation that will enter the Land of Israel never heard God’s voice at Sinai. They never experienced the earth shattering voice, the terror, the awe. In place of memory, all they have is a story.

Sep 17, 2025 • 6min
R. Tali Adler on Parashat Nitzavim: The Long Goodbye
When Moshe gathers the generation of the desert together to enter them into the covenant once again, he knows that it is his last chance to teach the people how to live according to the Torah—and, crucially, how to live without him.

Sep 15, 2025 • 42min
R. Tali Adler: When Teshuvah Is or Should Be Impossible
Are some things unforgivable? Is Teshuvah always an option? What would it mean if the road to repentance were blocked? In this class we will explore questions of whether we ever lose the opportunity to do Teshuvah and what it might look like to repent from a place where we are unsure of the possibility of forgiveness. Recorded in Elul 2023. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/AdlerTeshuvahImpossiblePart12023.pdf

Sep 10, 2025 • 7min
R. Tali Adler on Parashat Ki Tavo: No Final Chapter
We’ve made it.That seems to be the promise of bikkurim, the first fruits gift to God.

Sep 8, 2025 • 1h
R. Dena Weiss: The Mechanics of Mercy: How Does Forgiveness Actually Work?
The liturgy of the High Holiday season is replete with promises about God's forgiveness but is less specific about how God forgives. In her lecture, R. Dena Weiss explores how forgiveness works, and asks if there are any strategies that we can adopt to make us more forgivable and forgiving. This lecture was delivered in memory of Rabbi Jonathan D. Levine z"l in 2024.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HHDLecture2024WeissHowForgivenessWorks.pdf

Sep 3, 2025 • 7min
R. Tali Adler on Ki Teitzei: Living in the Double Exposure
I was eight years old in Basel, Switzerland the day I learned about the way places have layers. It was a chilly, autumn shabbos, and my father and I were on a walk by the river. My father pointed out different sights as we walked: there is the house where his elementary school friend lived. There is the gate they walked through to get to school, there is the shop run by the woman rumored to be a witch. And there, he said, pointing to a small, shady area, is the place where they burned the Jews in the 14th century.

Sep 1, 2025 • 35min
R. Shai Held: Biblical Theology in a Time of Climate Emergency Part 3
What can the Bible teach us about navigating our way through a time of climate emergency? In this series, R. Shai Held explores three key biblical texts that offer differing (but perhaps complementary) approaches to understanding our place in this divinely created and much-more-than-human world. Recorded in Winter 2025.Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldClimateChange2025Part3.pdf

Aug 27, 2025 • 8min
R. Tali Adler on Parashat Shoftim: Even So
What do you do when you feel—or when you know—that because of your actions, you are entirely alone in the world?

Aug 25, 2025 • 9min
R. Micha'el Rosenberg on Rosh Chodesh Elul: Teshuvah: Light or Salvation?
Thinking about our own transgressions and repentance is hard, and so it makes sense that we often latch on to metaphors to help us think about these ideas. Perhaps the strangest metaphor I know of appears in the Zohar.

Aug 20, 2025 • 7min
R. Tali Adler on Parashat Re'eih: Mourning as Children of God
There is something about our relationship with God that holds us back from unbridled grief.