Ta Shma

Questions of theology pervade efforts to facilitate cooperation and dialogue across religions.  We often search for what is common in order to build a sense of shared purpose across religious spaces that can look very different in practice.  In this lecture, R, Ethan Tucker looks at some of the laws surrounding Avodah Zarah - the rabbinic term for foreign or forbidden worship - and explores whether a claim of shared monotheism is sufficient to ground a sense of overlapping religious purpose. How far we might stretch the definition of monotheism in order to facilitate sharing social and religious space? This lecture was originally delivered at Hadar's Summer Learning Retreat in June 2022.

In this week’s parashah, we meet a character who teaches us a lesson in morality, and also ends up in the first blessing of the Amidah, one of our most important prayers. Surprisingly, this character, Malki-Zedek, is not part of the Jewish people! Yet Malki-Zedek teaches Avram - and, in turn, all of us - how to avoid moral pitfalls.

What happens when we try to pray, but we just can’t make it work? Is there any hope, or any strategies, for those of us who can’t always reach the heights of connection with God in every moment of prayer? A particular interpretation to a strange phrase in this week’s parashah offers us some guidance.

From the beginning of the Torah, humans have a fraught relationship with knowledge. The essence of da’at—knowledge—in Adam’s world is the tree of knowledge (עץ הדעת) of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). Adam is instructed to eat of all the trees, but not from the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:17). When the snake speaks to the woman about the tree, he claims that once they eat of this tree, they will be like God, “knowing good and bad”—יודעי טוב ורע (Genesis 3:5).

We repent in order to go back to the way that things were, to repair what has broken, and to retrieve what we have lost. We often think of teshuvah as a type of reset button that enables us to erase the past, emerging healed and forgiven. But what if this understanding is erroneous? What if teshuvah does not change what we hope it will change and fix what we need it to fix? This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

The High Holidays are a murky time of transition. How can we balance the need to both take stock of our past and look forward to the future? In this lecture, Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg considers different visions of teshuvah to guide us through this important part of the calendar. This lecture was originally recorded in Elul 2021.

Parashat Nitzavim falls in the thick of the season of teshuvah in the calendar. This is no coincidence—it is the primary source in the Torah for the concept of teshuvah. Although we will sin and face the consequences of our failures, Nitzavim teaches that we can find our way back to a life of blessing.

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.