Ta Shma
Bringing you recent lectures, classes, and programs from the Hadar Institute, Ta Shma is where you get to listen in on the beit midrash. Come and listen on the go, at home, or wherever you are. Hosted by Rabbi Avi Killip of the Hadar Institute.
Episodes
In Israel, Shemini Atzeret-Simhat Torah feels like the busiest day of the year. So many prayers; so many different atmospheres. Year after year, juggling back and forth from the joy of celebrating the completion of the annual Torah cycle with singing, dancing, and endless Torah readings, to the more somber parts of the holiday—Yizkor; the prayer for rain—leaves me exhausted and a little dizzy, almost wishing...
R. Simlai taught: Torah—its beginning is kindness and its end is kindness.
Its beginning is kindness—as it is written, “God made leather garments for Adam and his wife and dressed them” (Genesis 3:21) And its end is kindness—as it is written, “[God] buried [Moshe] in the valley” (Deuteronomy 34:6), (from Tractate Sotah 14a).
Dear Friends, with the end of the year, we also complete another cyc...
Explore the role that language plays in our personal, religious, and spiritual lives, by challenging assumptions about core areas of speech like prayer (is it supposed to be effective?) gossip (is it really bad?), and telling the truth (is it necessary?). Recorded in Summer 2026.
Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WeissLanguageLensPart52026.pdf
“I will hide My face from them” (Deuteronomy 32:20)—so declares the Holy Blessed One in Parashat Ha’azinu. This is one of the most painful and jarring statements in the Bible. It describes a deep rift in the relationship between God and Israel: a dynamic of hiding, withdrawal, and a sealed face. This is called in Jewish theology and tradition hester panim, the hiding of God’s face.
Explore the role that language plays in our personal, religious, and spiritual lives, by challenging assumptions about core areas of speech like prayer (is it supposed to be effective?) gossip (is it really bad?), and telling the truth (is it necessary?). Recorded in Summer 2026.
Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WeissLanguageLensPart42026.pdf
At this time of year, as the High Holidays approach, we are used to thinking about our own personal responsibility. In the Yom Kippur Vidui, we worry not only about our sins that we are aware of, but even those that “are not revealed to us,” rather known to God alone. But the verse that introduces the concept of revealed or hidden sins is about not personal, but national responsibility. Since the evil ...
Explore the role that language plays in our personal, religious, and spiritual lives, by challenging assumptions about core areas of speech like prayer (is it supposed to be effective?) gossip (is it really bad?), and telling the truth (is it necessary?). Recorded in Summer 2026.
Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WeissLanguageLensPart32026.pdf
Our parashah describes a ceremony known as vidui ma’aser. The word vidui here from the root י.ד.ה. probably means something like “declaration of thanks” (like the prayer Modim), but can be also literally translated as “confession,” like the vidui familiar to us from our High Holiday liturgy. What at first seems like an idyllic description of a perfect covenant in our land turns, through a r...
Explore the role that language plays in our personal, religious, and spiritual lives, by challenging assumptions about core areas of speech like prayer (is it supposed to be effective?) gossip (is it really bad?), and telling the truth (is it necessary?). Recorded in Summer 2026.
Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WeissLanguageLensPart22026.pdf
One of the most emotionally charged and provocative legal passages is found in our parashah: the case of the rebellious son.
Explore the role that language plays in our personal, religious, and spiritual lives, by challenging assumptions about core areas of speech like prayer (is it supposed to be effective?) gossip (is it really bad?), and telling the truth (is it necessary?). Recorded in Summer 2026.
Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WeissLanguageLensPart12026.pdf
The preoccupation with the question of who goes to war is not new. It is a question that meets us, Israeli society, in our day-to-day lives. There is an acute sense here of exhaustion of military forces, alongside awareness of the high price that those who serve and their families pay, accompanied by political tension surrounding the issue of military service, all of which grow day by day—and even fuel one another. ...
The month of Elul marks the beginning of a process that leads us toward the Yamim Noraim, the days of awe. Yet in another sense, even at the beginning of Elul, we are already mid-process. Going back to at least medieval France, the sequence of haftarot we read in the synagogue on Shabbat from the 17th of Tammuz until Yom Kippur were understood as representing a long process split into three periods.
In Parashat Re’eih, the Torah warns against a uniquely insidious threat: the mesit or inciter. In Hebrew, this act of enticing or manipulating another person toward harm is known as hasatah, “incitement.” The discourse of incitement is one of the most central and sensitive topics in social and political interaction in Israel. The term hasatah is used by the Israeli public both as a formal legal d...
This class explores the powerful stories of the prophet Elijah, asking what they reveal about prophecy, leadership, and religious zeal. As Elijah performs miracles and confronts the people of Israel, the narrative raises difficult questions about certainty and compassion. Recorded at Hadar's Tanakh Intensive, Winter 2026.
Two intertwined themes are explored in Parashat Eikev: memory and human agency. What is the connection between these ideas? And how do they work together in our brit, our partnership with God?
How might we maintain hope during a time when it seems to many of us that all hope is gone? One biblical idea is that, although God is frequently disappointed, God also refuses to give up. (What) can we learn from that? This class turns to Tanakh, to midrash, and to medieval Jewish thought to help think more deeply about hope and hopelessness—and about what we can hold onto in dark times. Recorded at Hadar's Rabbinic Yeshiva ...
Our parashah describes a deeply charged moment—a moment where the Israelites are at risk of forgetting the Holy Blessed One. Surprisingly, this danger does not stem from lack or deprivation, but rather from a reality of abundance and tranquility that awaits them after conquering the Land.
At least in the plain sense of Lamentations 4, the destruction of Jerusalem is not presented as the execution of a carefully designed plan. It is a moment of unleashed fury.
Parashat Devarim is always read on the Shabbat preceding Tisha B’Av, the week in which we read Megillat Eikhah (the Book of Lamentations). This creates a triple echo of a single word within our tradition: eikhah (which can mean both “alas” and “how”). The first is the one read on Tisha B’Av, the very eikhah that opens the scroll and gives it its name: “Alas (eikhah)! Lonel...
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