Ta Shma

Where does Avinu Malkeinu come from, why do we say it on Rosh Hashanah, and what does it mean to call God “Our Father, Our King?” Rabbi Elie Kaunfer considers these questions in his lecture, which was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

In Parashat Ki Tavo, Moshe instructs the people to do an extensive ceremony when they come to a specific mountain after they enter the land. Many aspects of this ceremony are reminiscent of Sinai. A mountain, words of Torah written on stones, building an altar and offering sacrifices. It looks like a reenactment of entering into a covenant with God at Sinai and all of the obligations entailed by berit. But why is there a need to reenact Sinai? Wasn’t that one-time event powerful enough on its own to solidify entry into covenant for all future generations?

Rabbi Elie Kaufner explores the themes and intertextual references in Unetaneh Tokef. This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

Exercising leadership means taking responsibility. At the end of last week’s parashah, Shoftim, elders of a town closest to an unsolved murder proclaim they bear no responsibility for the murder and ask for atonement. Yet the Talmud learns from this ceremony of disclaiming guilt that leaders nonetheless bear responsibility—for example, to provide proper accompaniment as travelers leave their city. Blood of the heifer drips down their hands as they claim they have no blood on their hands.

Rabbi Aviva Richman examines the idea of God as King in the Musaf Amidah for Rosh Hashana. This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

Parashat Shoftim deals with the structures and nature of leadership. Early in the parashah, one passage explains that someone who has a hard question should go to the centralized leadership to ask, and then must obey the answer, on penalty of death. The point seems to be about reinforcing the power and authority of central religious leadership. But in the arc of ongoing interpretation, these verses become a provocative jumping off point to reflect on the nature of the encounter between an individual’s religious question and religious experts. It becomes possible to find in them a voice for the importance of asking our questions, not primarily to ensure obedience but because our questions have an important role to play in the unfolding of Torah itself.

Parashat Re’eh speaks of “desire” multiple times. From a religious perspective, we often think of desire in terms of how we may control it, or even completely suppress it. But actually religious life without desire is flat and one-dimensional. Ultimately, the richness and depth of our religious experience hinges on appreciating, valuing, and even cultivating desire. In Parashat Re’eh, we can trace an approach that embraces human craving and desire as a powerful mechanism to fully live a life of mitzvot, meaning and integrity.

In Halakhic Man, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik suggests that teshuvah - usually translated as “repentance” - is not to be narrowly defined as turning from sin. Rather, teshuvah prompts us to reconsider all our habits and routines, including those that are not necessarily sinful. Doing teshuvah is really an expression of our capacity for self-creation and identifying and realizing our own potential. The goal is to attain our individuality, autonomy, uniqueness and freedom As we move through the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (“Ten Days of Repentance”), we will explore Soloveitchik’s approach and grapple with what we are called to do during this important period.

Note: this Devar Torah relates to difficult subject matter, including loss and pregnancy loss.In Parashat Eikev, we are instructed to “walk in all of God’s ways,” but how is that possible for mortals? R. Yitz Greenberg has taught prolifically about being like God through a zealous commitment to the “triumph of life,” even when that is a challenging commitment to hold. Building upon his teachings, we can focus on an embrace of life that also involves integrating loss. Instead of loss as an obstacle that we try to defy, we can understand our capacity to hold loss as exercising a divine capacity we have, part of what it means to be created in the image of God.

In Parashat Va'Ethanan, Moshe beseeches God. He doesn’t get his request. Interestingly, the sages peg this moment of prayer as the entryway to explore the meanings of prayer more widely, jumping off from the word va'ethanan to list ten kinds of prayer connected to different verbs and different figures in the Torah. Taking Moshe’s unanswered prayer as the lens, we are invited into an exploration of what prayer is, entirely detached from the question of whether prayer is answered.