Can anything new possibly be said about the opening chapters of the Torah? In this class, R. Shai Held makes use of literary analysis of seemingly familiar texts to explore the radical idea that Parashat Bereishit is inviting us to see the world, in all its beauty and heartbreak, through God’s own eyes. Recorded in Spring 2025.

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RYI2025HeldNewInterpretationCreationFlood.pdf

Parashat Noah invites us to reflect on the relationship between society and the individual. The introduction of its main character raises a central question: What is our role when we live within a corrupt society? How should we conduct ourselves when leaders are not guided by the values we hold dear, and when many individuals disagree with us about what is good, just, and right?

Two children are fighting in the playground. Called into the principal’s office, each insists: “It all started when he hit me back.”

This familiar joke captures something deeply human: our tendency to avoid responsibility by blaming others.

The draw of theatre in the age of movies is that each experience is unique.

While the script's words and stage directions remain the same night after night, the unique alchemy of the actors and audience gathered in that particular configuration at that particular moment in time, does not. When we linger in our seats after the final encore, delaying our exit into the glaring reality of the world, it is because something in us senses that this particular magic will never happen again. If we were to return to see the play again the next night it would not be the same, and neither would we. Every time a curtain falls on stage, the particular piece of art that was that play, that night, with that audience as it is that night, shatters.

Homeless in life, Moshe is fated to remain without a home even in death.

That, perhaps, is the most difficult part of God’s decree: not that Moshe must die, a fate that all human beings share. Not that he must die outside of the land: Ya’akov and Yosef also died far from Israel.

What is most difficult about Moshe’s death is that, even in death, he cannot go home.

The generation that will enter the Land of Israel never heard God’s voice at Sinai. They never experienced the earth shattering voice, the terror, the awe. In place of memory, all they have is a story.

When Moshe gathers the generation of the desert together to enter them into the covenant once again, he knows that it is his last chance to teach the people how to live according to the Torah—and, crucially, how to live without him.

Are some things unforgivable? Is Teshuvah always an option? What would it mean if the road to repentance were blocked? In this class we will explore questions of whether we ever lose the opportunity to do Teshuvah and what it might look like to repent from a place where we are unsure of the possibility of forgiveness. Recorded in Elul 2023.

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/AdlerTeshuvahImpossiblePart12023.pdf