Ta Shma

Bilam’s prophecies are rich, dense, and enigmatic. One in particular was emphasised recently in 2025 when the war with Iran took its name from Bilam’s words: “a people like a lion” (am ke-lavi). What does this phrase mean? What kind of people are “like a lion”? What does this mean for our identity as Israel? And what use of power does Bilam’s analogy suggest?

This parashah focuses on the leadership and religious dispute that erupts between Korah and his assembly and Moshe and Aharon. Seemingly, the parashah rules in favor of one side—that of Moshe and Aharon—against Korah’s claim. It could easily be extrapolated from this drama that disputes are harmful, that they create violence and division, and that what God really wants for us is total unity behind our leadership. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_sou...

Parashat Shelah confronts us with a poignant question that touches our personal lives from time to time: How do we hold fast to a minority opinion? How can we align ourselves with Yehoshua and Calev, resisting the temptation to join the majority consensus of the spies?

Parashat BeHa’alotkha returns us to the story of Pesah—this time, in the second year after the Exodus from Egypt—and underscores the ways in which observing God’s mitzvot is a fundamentally communal project.

Our parashah describes one aspect of the unique relationship between the Holy Blessed One, and Moshe. The final verse of the parashah describes how the Holy One and Moshe would communicate in the mishkan (tabernacle).

What do we do when our leaders—or our most sacred texts—repeatedly disappoint us? We live in a world that continues to struggle with how to live out a sexual ethics of mutual dignity. In this series, R. Aviva Richman confronts moments of disappointment related to sexual ethics in Talmud and explores how to inherit this part of Torah in ways that invite honesty and growth. Recorded In Winter 2026. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WinterL...

For many of us, confronting death raises urgent questions of faith, doubt, and the meaning and purpose of our lives. Yet we live in a culture that avoids talking about death, let alone the existential challenges it raises. Physician and ethicist Lydia Dugdale, author of The Lost Art of Dying, joins Rabbi Shai Held to draw on ancient and contemporary wisdom about mortality and meaning. Recorded in Fall 2025. This conversation is part of the Faith WithHeld series, generously sponsored by the Sc...

According to a midrashic tradition, the counting of the Omer (that may have seemed to be nothing but a calendrical counting of the days from Pesah to Shavuot) expresses the anticipation of the Israelites for the giving of the Torah. The biblical commandment, however, appears in an agricultural context.

When the unthinkable happens, what remains of faith? Journalist Sarah Wildman, who lost her young daughter, joins Rabbi Shai Held in a searching conversation about grief, love, and the struggle to go on. They will probe how mourning collides with meaning-making, and how faith might fracture, endure, or be remade in the wake of devastating loss. Recorded in Fall 2025. This conversation is part of the Faith WithHeld series, generously sponsored by the Schiller family. Want the full Q&...

Dedicated in loving memory of my nephew, Yishai Elyakim Urbach, who fell in Gaza one year ago, a few weeks after setting out to build his own home. Tehillim 127:1 "Unless God builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." Human beings cannot truly build alone. What we build by ourselves, the psalmist suggests, cannot ultimately endure. And yet one of the most beloved songs sung in Israel on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut insists: “I built a house in the Land of Israel.” Human initiat...

When we think of the Holocaust, we can only be silent. We are incapacitated emotionally, morally, theologically. At times it seems that the countless museums and memorials, the ceremonies and journeys, the songs and the prayers, are but a desperate attempt to break free from the paralysis that grips us in its shadow. The Torah, too, knows such a moment when children are consumed by fire, and their surviving family is left with nothing but silence.

The stories transmitted in the Talmud and midrash present contemporary readers with a rich and delightful entry point into the Rabbinic worldview and mindset, offering moral insights and memorable lessons. At the book launch for How to Read a Talmudic Story, Dr. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein and R. Aviva Richman explore how these narratives illuminate rabbinic values, struggles, and creativity. Together, they consider not only how to read these stories, but what they continue to teach us today. ...

The exodus is nothing less than the "orienting event" of Jewish life. But Exodus memory also has another, much more painful side: amidst suffering and devastation, Jews remember the exodus and wonder why, if God redeemed us then, God does not do so now. In this lecture, R. Shai explores the double-edge of memory: exploring how it can sustain us in hope and how, sometimes, it can deepen our despair. This lecture was delivered in memory of Jerome L. Stern z"l in March 2026. Source sheet: https:...