Mechon Hadar Online Learning

The "Stripping" of the Egyptians. Three times the Book of Exodus tells us that as the Israelites were departing Egypt, they "plundered" the Egyptians. Bible scholar Brevard Childs notes that “few passages have provoked such an obvious embarrassment both to Jewish and Christian expositors as this one.” And yet unease with the surface meaning of the text has enabled interpreters to uncover deeper and deeper layers of meaning within it. The result has been a stunning array of exegetical and ethical-religious insights.

Where do our religious and civic identities meet—and clash—in prayer? How does participating in a democracy change what it means to pray for the government, now that we as individuals and communities are supposed to have control over it? We will take up these questions, and others, by engaging a series of traditional Jewish legal and theological positions stretching from the Babylonian Exile to medieval Europe into 19th and 20th century American Jewish liturgy. All sources will be available in both Hebrew and English.

Join us as we explore the essence of the kaddish, moving on an interpretive journey that has implications for all prayers we read. Along the way we will encounter the hidden biblical characters who stand behind the kaddish, and discover the meaning these characters can provide to our own prayer life. Recorded live at the annual Dr. Eddie Scharfman Memorial Lecture.

The conviction that human beings have the freedom—and the responsibility—to choose how we will act lies at the very heart of Jewish theology and spirituality. Not surprisingly, then, commentators both traditional and modern have often found the idea of God hardening Pharaoh's heart—so central to the book of Exodus—deeply disturbing. How could God rob Pharaoh of his freedom, they wonder, and then punish him for his deeds? Shai Held analyzes Maimonides' response to this question and whether it has support in the biblical text.

How does the person who composed a prayer affect our understanding and relationship to it? In the case of the prayer Avinu Malkeinu, how does the relationship between Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues affect our understanding of what the prayer is about? Elie Kaunfer investigates the sources behind the prayer. Recorded live at the Singing Communities Intensive 2014.

Crowdsourcing is a "popular web 2.0 buzzword" following the principle that if two heads are better than one, then surely a million heads are better than two. Through a close reading of two versions of the same story about Hillel the Elder one year when Pesach fell on shabbat, Avi Killip explores crowdsourcing in the Talmud and the Tosefta and, through this comparison, arrives at two very different models of leadership with applications to the Jewish world of today: do we want leaders that we can trust to make the right decision, or do we want to appoint leaders that trust us?

Everyone thinks they know the story of the Exodus. Quietly, subtly, Rabbinic tradition casts the story of Exodus in a dramatic new light. The clash between Moses and Pharaoh is not just a struggle between the Israelite slaves and their Egyptian lords, nor is it just a battle between God and Pharaoh: it is also a war between gratitude and ingratitude. A narrative of subjugation and deliverance becomes a tale of gratitude and ingratitude.

An honest and searching conversation about two of the greatest and most influential Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Rabbis Shai Held and Yehudah Mirsky discuss the writings and teachings of these two Jewish giants and ask how they might have responded to one another, criticized one another, and learned from one another. A conversation about figures from the past whose lives and teaching still resonate deeply and widely in the present.

We will discover what makes Rachel such an interesting character, how she is embedded in and affects her family, and how she is presented and imagined throughout the Bible and Jewish thought. Recorded live at the Global Day of Jewish Learning 2014.

How do we respond when someone we care about is violated? Genesis portrays both Jacob and his sons responding in ways that are, ultimately, totally inappropriate. The Torah’s account of their reactions prods us to imagine how we might respond in the face of such disorienting and infuriating brutality.

If God made us who we are, then shouldn't God shoulder some of the blame for our sins? In this class we'll engage this question through a Hasidic approach to teshuvah and forgiveness. We will explore the theological advantages and disadvantages of shifting blame from ourselves to God, or conversely, shifting blame from God to ourselves.

Over the course of three interactive discussions, we will explore questions around how we maintain our integrity around observance even as we build community with those who do not share all of our practices or interpretations of Torah. Can we only trust people who practice just like us? Do we presume that those who do not adhere to a prohibition themselves are also likely to lead others astray? These questions lie at the heart of navigating our world of varied Jewish practice. We will begin to get a window into some of the ways rabbinic sources have tackled these challenges.

Sometimes the line between heroism and cruelty can be difficult to discern. Faced with severe famine, Joseph shows himself to be a skilled and effective administrator; with great foresight and planning, he repeatedly brings the Egyptians back from the brink of starvation. Joseph is obviously an adept manager, but he is also seemingly a ruthless one: He saves the Egyptians but, as we shall see, he also enslaves them. In so doing, he runs afoul of the Torah's vision of how an ideal society should function.

Elie Kaunfer explores the literary appraoch to Jewish liturgy using the case study of the first paragraph of the Amidah. Our prayers quote or reference biblical sources all the time. By comparing the text of the prayer to the sources it draws from, you can unlock new meanings for the prayer book. Why do we say "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"? Wouldn't it be more efficient to say "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"? Why do we call God "great, mighty, and awesome"? Why not more adjectives? Why those? What do they mean? These questions and more will be explored in this online shiur.

Over the course of three interactive discussions, we will explore questions around how we maintain our integrity around observance even as we build community with those who do not share all of our practices or interpretations of Torah. Through a practical case study we will explore a medieval model for culinary coexistence among Jews who have fierce disputes over what is permitted and what is forbidden according to the Torah. These provocative discussions provide useful guidance for how to build community around food in the contemporary Jewish world.