Ta Shma

It is easy to forget that the end of Bereishit is a surprise ending.So used to the fact that all twelve sons and their descendants are included in the Jewish nation, we forget that that wasn’t always necessarily part of the plan, that the inclusion of all children is something new and unexpected.

As he approaches the man that he thinks is the viceroy, entrapped in the massive lie that Yosef has arranged, Yehudah begins to tell the truth.It has been a long road to this moment.  For so long, the brothers have been committed to a lie, the vision of their family as they wished it was, in which their father loved all of them, in which there was no favorite—most beloved wife and her favorite, most beloved sons—the family they tried desperately to create the day they sold Yosef, and that, as they saw Ya’akov cry for years over Rahel’s beloved son and refuse to be comforted, they must have understood they would never have.

Asarah b’Tevet (10th Tevet) commemorates the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem in the lead-up to the destruction of the First Temple, a blockade that lasted at least 18 months.  Unlike the related fasts of 17th Tammuz or Tishah B’Av, each of which memorializes a concentrated event (the breaching of the walls; the actual destruction of the Temple), 10th Tevet marks the beginning of a lengthy period of time.

Growing up as the only Jew in my class in Iowa, I got lots of practice telling the story of Hanukkah.  The story of the oil that was only enough for one night but which, miraculously, lasted for eight, as I learned it and retold it every December in a classroom full of Christmas decorations, is the most familiar in all of American Judaism.In recent years, this telling of the tale is often criticized.  The earliest depictions we have of Hanukkah, in 1 and 2 Maccabees (composed within a century of the Maccabean revolt), focus on a military victory.  A miracle on the battlefield is also the focus of our liturgical texts about Hanukkah; both the Al ha-Nissim insertion for the Amidah, and the ha-Neirot Hallalu recitation after candlelighting are fundamentally about “the wars that you performed for our ancestors in those days at this time.”

By the time Yosef reaches Egypt, he is one of a long list of lost children in the Abrahamic family. It’s a family that has always been made up of insiders and outsiders, those who stay and those who are exiled. 

Over the past year, Rabbis Yitz Greenberg and Shai Held each published major works in Jewish thought, The Triumph of Life and Judaism Is About Love, respectively.  In honor of the recent appearance of Rav Yitz's book, join Hadar for a freewheeling discussion between Rav Yitz and Rav Shai-- about Judaism's celebration of life, about its insistent focus on love, and about the relationship between those two ideas. Moderated by Hadar's Rabbi Tali Adler. Recorded in November 2024. 

In order to understand why Yehudah does not want Tamar to marry Shelah, his youngest son, after his first two sons die, we need to understand who Yehudah has become since Yosef's sale.

From the Talmud to the Rambam and into the modern period, Rabbinic tradition generally views anger negatively. Anger appears as a kind of weakness, a temptation, even as the root of idolatry. In his third and final lecture on righteous anger, R. Micha’el Rosenberg turns to Hasidic texts about managing anger to try and answer the question: how might we relieve the feeling, and perhaps even make it moral? Recorded in Fall 2024. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/FallLS2024RosenbergRighteousAngerPart3.pdf

What was Ya’akov doing the night he was left alone on the other side of the river, the night he wrestled with an angel? According to the Rashbam, Ya’akov was trying to run away.

From the Talmud to the Rambam and into the modern period, Rabbinic tradition generally views anger negatively. Anger appears as a kind of weakness, a temptation, even as the root of idolatry. But is rage always a bad thing? Can it be useful or morally sound? In this second of three lectures, Rav Micha’el takes us through a talmudic discussion about one who tears in a fit of rage on Shabbat. He asks: Are there times when anger can be moral even while it’s destructive? Recorded in Fall 2024. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/FallLS2024RosenbergRighteousAngerPart2.pdf