Ta Shma

In this week’s parashah, Avraham argues with God over the divine decision to destroy Sodom completely.  Avraham and God agree that Sodom is wicked and that terrible things happen there.  So what, then, is the basis for Avraham’s plea?  Why does he resist God’s plan to punish and overturn Sodom?  What are Avraham’s arguments as he tries to stop the city’s total destruction?

The Talmud has often been subject to misrepresentation—viewed as esoteric or overly complex—yet it holds profound power as a centerpiece of Jewish tradition. How can Talmud and Talmud study anchor an approach to Judaism that speaks to the challenges  and dangers of our moment? How can its embrace of complexity, argument, and multivocality offer a model for living a thoughtful and principled Jewish life in our uncertain times? Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RichmanTalmudKickoff2025.pdf

Abraham is “our father” in many senses.  He is seen as the father of the Jewish people, the spiritual father of Judaism and of monotheistic faiths more broadly, and the father of the covenant with the one God.  Yet in our parashah, Abraham is introduced first and foremost as a son, a descendant who must decide whether to be traditional or innovative—whether to follow the path of his forebears or to become a revolutionary.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, also known as the Alei Shur, offers a powerful and inspiring — but often demanding — vision for what it takes to become a better human being. Before we can do any act of repentance, of teshuvah — we must first learn how to change and how to grow. Recorded in Summer 2025. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RobkinApprenticeMind2025.pdf

Parashat Noah invites us to reflect on the relationship between society and the individual.  The introduction of its main character raises a central question: What is our role when we live within a corrupt society?  How should we conduct ourselves when leaders are not guided by the values we hold dear, and when many individuals disagree with us about what is good, just, and right?  

Two children are fighting in the playground.  Called into the principal’s office, each insists: “It all started when he hit me back.”This familiar joke captures something deeply human: our tendency to avoid responsibility by blaming others.

The draw of theatre in the age of movies is that each experience is unique. While the script's words and stage directions remain the same night after night, the unique alchemy of the actors and audience gathered in that particular configuration at that particular moment in time, does not. When we linger in our seats after the final encore, delaying our exit into the glaring reality of the world, it is because something in us senses that this particular magic will never happen again. If we were to return to see the play again the next night it would not be the same, and neither would we. Every time a curtain falls on stage, the particular piece of art that was that play, that night, with that audience as it is that night, shatters.

Homeless in life, Moshe is fated to remain without a home even in death.That, perhaps, is the most difficult part of God’s decree: not that Moshe must die, a fate that all human beings share.  Not that he must die outside of the land: Ya’akov and Yosef also died far from Israel.What is most difficult about Moshe’s death is that, even in death, he cannot go home. 

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.

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.