Ta Shma

My mother tongue was no tongue at all, but a pair of hands.  My parents were both deaf, so my first language was American Sign Language.  I didn’t think much about it at the time; when you’re a kid, your parents are just your parents and your life is just your life.  It is only in retrospect that I have come to appreciate how profoundly the experience of growing up in a Deaf family, and spending my early years signing as well as speaking, has shaped my relationship to language in general. So when I came upon a deaf character in the Torah, of course I took notice.  To be more precise: the character is in the Torah, but his deafness we learn from a wild story in the Talmud.  How the Talmud arrived at that connection is a wild story of its own.

R. Avi Killip and R. Avital Hochstein introduce Dr. Tsivia Frank Wygoda, a new member of Hadar's team in Israel who supports independent minyanim in Be'er Sheva and southern Israel. They reflect on how war pushes us to think in terms of black and white binaries, and yet, the reality - politically, morally, and emotionally - is such more  more complex. Are there limits on what we are allowed to feel and how we can express these feelings?

In Parashat Mikeitz, a time of great crisis brings people together from across the world, desperate for help. Their savior will be a young Hebrew prisoner with the rare ability to speak “לכל עם ועם כלשונו - to every nation in its own language.” Although the narrative of the Torah is written in Hebrew, its characters are not always speaking Hebrew themselves. What does this tell us about Joseph's ability to interpret dreams and its greater significance? 

We are all plagued by fears and anxieties, both rational and irrational, founded and unfounded.  Often, when we are afraid, we keep our fears to ourselves, letting our inner voices run wild as we play our worst fear on loops.  What if I am sick?  What if I am not good enough?  What if we can’t make it work?  Maybe we don’t want to share our fears because fear can be mixed with other complicated emotions like guilt and shame, anger and doubt.  Perhaps the story of Hanukkah is teaching us that, even and especially in moments of fear, there is strength in being in the experience of that fear together, and sharing that vulnerability with one another.

R. Avi and R. Avital talk about the tumultuous week of the ceasefire and returned captives. What are the values that animate the conversation about who should be the priority to bring home? How can we even put relative values on people? And how can we live out our values and imagine a better world in tough times?

Certain unique landscapes in the Torah carry a strong association with a particular kind of experience.  A garden reminds us of innocence (Genesis 2:25).  A mountain is a place of revelation (Genesis 22:14, Exodus 19:20).  At a well, one might find love (Genesis 24:11-13, 29:9-11, Exodus 2:15-21). A far more common landscape in the Torah is the field.  The field is not usually where the main action takes place.  We take it for granted as a background setting, where work happens, or through which travelers pass.  So when we come upon Yosef wandering through a field in Parashat VaYeishev, we may not make much of it.  According to a midrashically-styled reading by the Keli Yakar, however, a deeper understanding of the field is precisely what might have saved Yosef from all the disaster that will follow.  

R. Avital Hochstein and R. Elazar Symon take the opportunity - belatedly - of Thanksgiving to talk about what they're thankful for and the difficult but necessary role of thankfulness in tefillah

The Torah often employs a “bookending” technique, using similar words or phrases in both the first and last verses of the parashah, in order to create a thematic frame for the action in the middle.  Parashat Vayishlah’s bookends are especially pronounced, in that its first and last verses each end with the same word: “אדום - Edom.” What is the significance of this bookend and what can it teach us about the relationship between Ya'akov and Esav?

What, if anything, can we say in the wake of the Shoah? In this series, we'll explore the main currents of post-Holocaust Jewish theology through thinkers like Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Yitz Greenberg, Emil Fackenheim, and Melissa Raphael; and we'll investigate how philosophers of religion grapple with the problem of evil. But rather than just analyze their thought, we'll also ask what Jewish theology in the present moment can and should say - and can't and shouldn't say - about grappling with God in the wake of the Shoah.This lecture was recorded as part of Hadar's 2023 Fall Lecture Series.

It can be hard to say thank you. I know, for myself, sometimes after abandoning the kitchen at night to a sinkful of dishes and a couch covered in clothes waiting to be folded, I wake up in the morning to a clean sink and folded clothes, and I find myself so grateful to my wife’s midnight work. Obviously, I should say thank you and I owe her more than just a thank you. Yet it’s hard for me. There can be something awkward about gratitude. There is something uncomfortable about admitting that you are indebted to someone else.  Because, in truth, I feel not only gratitude, but guilt that she did this work while I slept.