Classes by Mordechai Dinerman

Today we pick up where we left off: it's just before Rosh Hashanah 1904, and Rabbi Akiva Yosef Shlesinger's plan to sound the shofar on Shabbos looks promising.

Today we find out what actually happened that Rosh Hashanah and why, and how the conversation carried on through the following year, up to Rosh Hashanah 1905, which was also on Shabbos.

And finally, we’ll reach the last scene of the story: the conversation l...

As Jews prepared for Rosh Hashanah 1904, Rabbi Akiva Yosef Shlesinger took up his pen and wrote to a rabbinic journal in Hungary, laying out why he believed the shofar should be sounded on Shabbos despite the rabbinic ban. In this class, we examine his account of the attempt leading up to Rosh Hashanah 1882, and then again leading up to Rosh Hashanah 1904. We'll trace the steps he took, the halachic and extra-halachic reasoning beh...

A man wrote to the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Rebbe of Chabad, about fears he couldn’t shake in matters of health and money.

What came back was a long letter working through Torah sources to explain how fear takes hold and how to loosen its grip.

This class takes this remarkable letter line by line, setting the scene, tracing the sources, and drawing out what it asks of us today.

Click here for the handout

A Chas...

HaRav Levi Yitzchak Schneerson spent his final years in exile in Kazakhstan, banished there by the Soviets for his work strengthening Jewish life across the Soviet Union.

Soon after arriving there in 1940, he wrote a brief account of his imprisonment.

It reads like no ordinary memoir: each line is a kabbalistic commentary on his own life, shaped by a deep belief in personal divine providence.

Gathering to honor his yahrzeit on the ...

In 1612, Avraham Portaleone of Mantua published a landmark work of encyclopedic proportions covering all things Beis Hamikdash.

Reading through four of his discussions, we meet a man working under far-from-ideal conditions.

His sefer turns out to be part of a larger story about the struggles of Jewish printing and book possession in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.

The Rabbi-Doctor Who Wrote a Sefer on the Beis Hamikdash w...

In 1790, Moses Seixas of Newport, Rhode Island, and Manuel Josephson of Philadelphia corresponded, with Josephson composing what effectively amounts to a halachic teshuvah. Josephson raised concerns about the conduct of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, arguing that elements of the service were not being properly observed. The exchange provides an important window into the religious commitments and halachic awareness of early America...

Whether Jews may enter Har Habayis largely depends on whether we know where the Beis Hamikdash stood.

A common assumption is that we don’t know for sure, but that assumption has a history.

This class traces the story of this uncertainty, primarily through the accounts of Jewish travelers who visited Eretz Yisrael and recorded what they saw and heard.

This is the third installment in a series about going up onto Har ...

The bar mitzvah ceremony didn’t always look the way it does today. In fact, for much of Jewish history, it barely looked like anything at all.

In this episode, we investigate: When did a ceremony first appear? What did it look like? When did bar mitzvah boys start receiving an aliya? Leining? Leading davening? A derasha?

We’ll trace its evolution among Ashkenazi Jews from the eleventh century through the seventeenth cen...

In the spring of 1096, crusading armies swept through the Jewish communities of the Rhineland, leaving devastation in their wake.

This class traces how those events gave rise to rituals of memory.

In the community of Worms, fast days were proclaimed on the 23rd of Iyar and Rosh Chodesh Sivan, accompanied by elaborate mourning customs.

We’ll see how in 1716, when Rosh Chodesh Sivan fell on a Friday, rabbinic authorities clashe...

In the late 1920s, a Jerusalem rabbi cited an obscure passage describing a certain Rabbi Moshe’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land, including what appeared to be a visit to the Temple Mount itself. He seized on it as proof that going there was halachically permitted.

This sparked a fierce debate over the passage: Was it even credible? Who exactly was this Rabbi Moshe? Did the text actually refer to the Temple Mount? And if a great ...

Mechiras chametz is today a standard part of observing Pesach. But how did this practice come to be, and how has it evolved over the centuries?

In this class, we analyze the relevant sources in Ashkenazic and Sefardic texts, revealing two distinct approaches to this topic. We’ll then find how the more the sale was refined to accommodate the seller, the more complications it introduced, requiring a series of complex adjustment...

There’s a well-known story about Sir Moses Montefiore going up onto Har Habayis during one of his seven legendary trips to Eretz Yisrael.

But once you begin looking into it, you quickly discover that there are several versions of the story, each one telling it a bit differently: when he went up, why he did it, how he did it, and what the rabbinic community’s reaction was.

As we’ll see, a great deal depends on who ...

The Mishneh Torah printed in Venice in the 1570s was the product of a broad and deliberate program of censorship. Beyond removing the handful of references to the Christian founder, which we discussed in the prior class, the censors altered many other words and phrases. In some places, entire laws disappear; in others, the language is carefully adjusted to soften its force. In this class, we trace the principles that guided the cen...

The class follows the paper trail in Rabbi Yosef Caro’s Kesef Mishneh to reconstruct how and when this major commentary actually came into being. After examining its printing history and the author’s stated purpose, the discussion turns to a key flashpoint: whether Kesef Mishneh represents Rabbi Yosef Caro’s final halachic word. We work through the evidence—internal cross-references, page...

Today, we explore Jewish life during Prohibition, when the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages were banned in the United States. While the U.S. government granted religious exceptions for wine, both the Reform and Conservative movements distanced themselves from this loophole, endorsing the use of grape juice instead. One contemporary posek passionately rejected grape juice, and we’ll examine the central arg...

This class takes us inside the Jewish wine economy of earlier centuries. We will see communities enforcing price ceilings, outlawing seller collusion, and appointing assessors to protect community members from being overcharged. In some places, the system became so aggressively strict: monopoly-style selling rights, blind tastings, barrels sealed by wine assessors, community-owned measuring jugs, and stiff fines for anyone who trie...

In the mid-1860s, a wave of rabbinic correspondence swept across central and eastern Europe as leading rabbis grappled with a vexing dilemma: how to respond to an antisemitic trial that touched directly on core points of Jewish theology. This case pitted antisemites against Jews, and within the Jewish community, enlightened progressives against traditionalists. Navigating this reality proved deeply contentious.

Isaiah 53 on Trial: ...