Ta Shma

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the world by subduing the chaotic forces that threaten life; the notion that a concern for justice is what makes a god "qualified" to be one; and the question of what kind of character those who seek to live in God's presence must have. Recorded in Fall 2023. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldShirimMonday2023.pdf

There is a script for mothers of sick children. There are imperatives: do everything.  Seek a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth.  Learn to sleep sitting up.  Show up to doctors appointments prepared with a binder the size of a local phonebook.  Ask every question, pursue every option.And never, ever give up.

The psalms attached liturgically to each day of the week are often mumbled over quickly, without much attention to their meaning. In this series, we'll engage in careful literary-theological readings of these psalms, looking at how various midrashim interpret the psalms, and bring new meaning to this part of our daily prayers. Key themes explored will include the idea that God creates the world by subduing the chaotic forces that threaten life; the notion that a concern for justice is what makes a god "qualified" to be one; and the question of what kind of character those who seek to live in God's presence must have. Recorded in Fall 2023. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/HeldShirimSunday2023.pdf

It’s possible that if things had been different, if things had gone as planned, that Yishmael, Avraham’s half-Egyptian son of a slave, might have been our ancestor instead of Yitzhak.

Last week Hadar celebrated the arrival of a newly commissioned and completed Sefer Torah, which was generously donated by the Schiller family in memory of Martin Schiller z”l. Rabbi Ethan Tucker’s address, focusing on the important and timeless elements of Torah scrolls, speaks directly to Hadar’s core values, while honoring the memory of Martin Schiller. Recorded in October 2024. Transcript and source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/TuckerHakhnasatSeferTorah2024.pdf

We ask the wrong questions about the story of the Flood.We ask how God could do such a thing. We ask how a God who is good could destroy a world. We ask how a just God could ignore the difference between perpetrator and victim in His zeal to wipe the world clean. We ask how a loving God could abandon His creation.The right question, for anyone who knows the names Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Babi Yar is not how God could have done such a thing. The right question for those who remember is how it is that God has never been compelled to do it again.

Dr. Devora Steinmetz joins Rabbanit Leah Sarna in conversation around the release of Dr. Steinmetz’s book Why Rain Comes From Above: Explorations in Religious Imagination (Hadar Press, 2024) They discuss the book and explore how imaginative engagement with religious texts and practices might transform our relationship to the world around us. Recorded in March 2024. Learn more and order the book at: https://hadar.org/torah-tefillah/books/why-rain-comes-above

Human beings don’t have to be told that we are living outside of paradise.  It’s not just the fact that the world is not perfect: it’s that deep inside many of us, we feel a longing for a place that might be.  Within each of us there is a longing for a home we have never fully found.Midrashically, this human experience of exile begins almost immediately, on the eighth day of creation, immediately after the first Shabbat.

We tend to think of Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah, which conclude the somber and at times terrifying High Holiday season, as a time of tremendous joy. This year, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ brutal attack and the terrible war that followed, the exultation we associate with these days will be impossibly incongruous with how many of us will feel.  How are we supposed to live with these complicated feelings on this holiday?  A closer look at the holiday’s practices offers some direction, suggesting a much more complicated emotional landscape than pure, unadulterated joy. In some ways, Shemini Atzeret/Simhat Torah is as much about existential fear as it is about celebration.

The first verse in the Torah I ever learned by heart comes from its final parashah.  When my brother and I would go visit our father in New York for the summer, he would try to figure out things for us to do during the day, and one year—I must have been about ten or eleven—he sent us to this Chabad day camp for a week.  We were not observant during the rest of the year at my mom’s house, so my father probably thought it would be good training for us, maybe fill in some gaps.  The thing I remember most vividly from that week is that every morning, all the campers would stand outside on the grass in a big formation and chant together: Torah!  Tzivah!  Lanu!  Moshe!  Morashah!  Kehilas!  Ya’akov!