The Shehehiyanu Blessing and Tu BiShvat

By Rabbi Mordechai Silverstein

Shehehiyanu and Tu BiShvat Sourcesheet (pdf with Hebrew)
Shehehiyanu and Tu BiShvat E-shiur (pdf of this page with Hebrew)

Life is filled with special moments which, to our detriment, we take for granted. Our lives would be better if we would learn to appreciate the blessings it has to offer. Yerushalmi Kiddushin 4:12 (66b) teaches us that it is wrong to neglect even the simplest of life’s blessings:

“Rabbi Hezkiah, Rabbi Kohen in the name of Rav: In the future a person will give an accounting for everything that his eyes saw and he did not eat. Rabbi [E]liezer took this teaching seriously. He saved his coins so that he might eat of everything once a year.”

Hanukkah: It’s Greek to Them – The Apocrypha in the Eyes of the Sages

This edition of the Conservative Yeshiva’s E-Shiur is made possible by a generous grant from Temple Zion Israelite Center, Miami, Florida.

By Rabbi Hillel Hayyim Lavery-Yisraeli

Hanukkah Source Sheet – It’s Greek to Them (pdf)
Hanukkah – It’s Greek to Them (pdf, printable version of this webpage)

Sources of the Hanukkah Story
Today Hanukkah is perhaps the best-known Jewish holiday throughout the world. However, despite its popularity, Hanukkah is the holiday with the least textual basis. The story of Hanukkah does not appear in the Tanakh. And while there is a Talmudic tractate named for the one-day festival of Purim (“Massekhet Megillah”), only a few pages of the Babylonian Talmud (B. Shabbat 21b-23a) are devoted to Hanukkah, including one small paragraph describing the historical event, and a few pages dealing with the laws of lighting Hanukkah candles.

Zohar on the Holidays of Tishrei

By Dr. Shaiya Rothberg, Teacher in Bible and Jewish Thought

Zohar on the Holidays of Tishrei Sourcesheet
Zohar on the Holidays of Tishrei E-shiur

Jewish life constitutes a mosaic of ritual, law and narrative. Our most sacred text, the Five Books of Moses, weaves these elements into the holy story around which we build our lives as Jews and from which we derive the precepts of Jewish law and religion. The holidays of Tishrei are all rooted in that story of creation, covenant, slavery and redemption. This rootedness involves not only the legal codes that God reveals to Moses at different stages of the narrative, but also the sacred plot itself: Our sages discovered connections between Rosh Hashanah and the creation of the world. Sukkot is explicitly associated in the Torah with the Exodus. And the sages calculate Yom Kippur as the very day on which God fully forgave His People Israel for the sin of the Golden Calf.

Slichot: The 13 Attributes (Midot) – God Teaches Us how to Ask for Divine Forgiveness

By Vered Hollander Goldfarb of the Bible faculty and Rabbi Gail Diamond, Associate Director

Slichot 13 Midot Sourcesheet (pdf)
Slichot 13 Midot E-shiur (pdf)

The section known as “God’s 13 Attributes (midot)”, from Exodus 34:6-7, forms the heart of the Slichot (Forgiveness) prayers of the High Holiday season. Along with Birkhat Kohanim and Kriat Shma, it, as Torah verse, is amongst the oldest texts in Jewish liturgy, but unlike the priestly blessing, it was not originally meant as prayer. Its development into this role is fascinating historically and spiritually.

High Holidays: The Third of Tishrei – For Whom to Fast?

By R. Shlomo Zacharow

As we rush back to our daily routines following the majestic two day Rosh Hashanah, it is easy to overlook the third day of Tishrei, Tzom Gedaliah, a minor fast. When the First Temple was destroyed, in 586 BCE, a remnant of Jews was left in the land, and the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah ben Ahikam to rule over them. Radical segments of the Jewish population viewed him as a Babylonian puppet and collaborator, and a Jew killed him, removing the last vestige of Jewish sovereignty in theland ofIsrael.

Hanukkah: The Miracle of Freedom

By Shaiya Rothberg, PhD, Instructor in Bible and Philosophy

The Maccabees rose up against their oppressors, attained freedom, and reinstated the Temple’s holy service. There was oil for only one day but miraculously it provided eight days of light.

This story contradicts a strictly rational world view. You might think I’m referring to the miracle of the oil. But the truly irrational element in the Hanukah story is freedom. There is a very compelling contemporary philosophic and scientific argument that freedom doesn’t exist. The argument says that everything we think and feel is encoded in the material processes happening in our brains. And these material processes mechanistically follow the laws of nature. Freedom makes no sense. However, we may reasonably object: even while the logic of that argument is solid, here, inside my head, I experience myself as free, whether that makes sense or not! But how can it both be true that freedom can’t exist, because matter – including our bodies and brains – simply follows the mechanistic laws of nature, and that freedom does exist, as in our subjective experience?

Hanukkah: Public or Private Observance?

By Rabbi Hillel C. Lavery-Yisraeli

CY Hanukkah Public or Private Observance E-shiur Sourcesheet (pdf)
CY Hanukkah Public or Private Observance E-shiur (pdf, printable version of this webpage)

Hanukkah is often celebrated as the holiday of “religious freedom.” More accurately, it is a holiday celebrating our ability to practice Judaism unhindered, without pressure or influence to do otherwise. At the time, in the second century BCE, many Jews attempted to combine their ancient Jewish practices with newly popular Hellenistic ones; the Maccabees sought to put an end to this.

Will the Real Hanukkah Please Stand Up?

By Shoshana Cohen, Instructor in Bible and Jewish Law

According to popular Jewish tradition on the 25^th of Kislev the Maccabees defeated the evil Greeks and rededicated the defiled temple. Hanukkah celebrates not only the military victory but also a spiritual one, of good over evil, of light over darkness.

Several non-Rabbinic sources (I&II Maccabees and Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews) tell the Hanukkah story in much greater detail, and more significantly, indicate that the story did not end on 25 Kislev. In fact, immediately following the rededication that day, the Greeks recapturedJerusalemand were not defeated for good until 13 Adar, when the head of their leader, Nikanor, was cut off and displayed at the gates of the city. According to these accounts our Hanukkah was just a stage along the rather circuitous route to victory and independence.

Hanukkah: Byamim HaHem u’Bzman HaZeh – the Test of Time

Rabbi Shmuel Lewis, PhD, Rosh Yeshiva

The Talmud relates the famous story of the pitcher of oil that miraculously burned for eight days and the mitzvah instituted by the Sages to light Hanukkah candles for eight nights. When we perform this mitzvah we use the standard blessing formula – asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu (“who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us”) – as if this mitzvah were a Torah obligation transmitted through Moses to the children of Israel. The Talmud asks where God commanded us to light Hanukkah candles (Bavli Shabbat 23a).

Tu BiShvat – How Green is our Judaism?

By Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb, Yeshiva Director

This E-Shiur is made possible by a generous grant from Temple Zion Israelite Center, Miami, Florida. It is dedicated to the memory of the 44 people who lost their lives in the Carmel Forest fire.

CY Tu Bishvat SOURCE SHEET (pdf)
CY Tu Bishvat E-Shiur (pdf)

The 15^thof the month of Shvat, Tu BiShvat, has enjoyed a real growth in popularity in recent generations. It is probably “celebrated” on a wider scale today than ever before. Jews all over the world, many totally secular, will eat a variety of fruits and nuts, 15 if possible, or even take part in Tu BiShvat Seders. Every Jewish child in Israel has a Tu BiShvat program at school. The Jewish National Fund arranges for tens of thousands of saplings to be planted in Tu BiShvat activities every year.

Purim: Esther and Joseph – Two Models of Exilic Jews

By Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

Esther and Joseph E-Shiur Sourcesheet (pdf)
Esther and Joseph E-Shiur (pdf)

The story of Esther presents a situation previously unknown in the biblical period. Never before had an independent community of Jews existed, willingly, outside the Land of Israel, at the time that there was a formal Jewish community there. What sources could such a community draw on to give its existence a positive and legitimate image? Not surprisingly, the Megilah story shows many similarities to the story of Joseph, the catalyst of the events that led to the first exile, in Egypt.

Passover: Seder Learning Activity

Going from Observer to Participant – A Rest Stop on the Exodus from Egypt

By Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb, Conservative Yeshiva Director

The Torah tells us that Am Yisrael left Egypt in a rush (“b’chipazon”, Deut 16:3). One way Lel HaSeder recalls the Exodus is that it, too, is often rushed. This is a short text study which can provide a pause en route, “food for thought,” to stimulate deeper engagement with the Haggadah than the typically hurried recitation allows. It can be done in pairs (chevruta style) or by all together. 3-5 minutes, then “back to the journey.”

Going from Observer to Participant (pdf)

Passover: Rich Matzah, Poor Matzah

By Dr. Josh Kulp, Senior Talmud Instructor

Rich Matzah, Poor Matzah E-Shiur Sourcesheet
Rich Matzah, Poor Matzah E-Shiur for Printing

Since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. the central symbol of the seder is clearly the matzah. Indeed already in the Torah, the festival is called “The Festival of Matzot.” What then exactly is matzah? What does it signify? In this shiur we will explore what the Rabbis understood matzah to be and how that shaped the halakhot that defined what type of matzah one can use at the seder to fulfill the biblical commandment to eat matzah on the first night of Pesah.

Passover: Cleaning Out Hametz

By Rabbi Shmuel Lewis, Rosh Yeshiva

The prohibition of hametz is unique – even to own a small amount is to transgress, and it is forbidden to all Jews to have any benefit from hametz that was Jewish-owned during Pesach. The Torah itself annuls all Jewish ownership of hametz on Pesach: the only halakhic meaning of a Jew keeping it in his possession is that he thereby transgresses the prohibition of not retaining it. This has given rise to many symbolic interpretations – hametz is the yetzer hara, for instance, which we must eliminate entirely to become true servants of G-d.

Passover: Peshat and Derash on the Haggadah

By Dr. Josh Kulp, Talmud Instructor

Since I began writing historical commentary on the Haggadah (The Schechter Haggadah), word has gotten around that I am “the Haggadah guy,” and people have begun to approach me for my evaluation of their understanding of particular points in the Haggadah and Seder. Occasionally these are creative readings of certain texts, at other times they are discussions of the structure of the Seder. My first reaction to most of these suggestions is to flinch, for they are rarely correct representations of the original texts and customs of the Haggadah. They are usually creative, the person who suggested them has put a lot of thought into them, but nevertheless, they are historically inaccurate.

Passover: Freedom – a Gift and a Task

Jews are commanded in two mitsvot concerning recalling the exodus from Egypt. We are commanded to mention it every day, and we are commanded to recount the story on the night of the fifteenth of Nisan. For the daily mitsvah, a mere mention to oneself is sufficient; for the night of the seder one is supposed to tell the story in detail to someone else, and to recite special praise (Hallel) at its conclusion. Hence the shape of the seder – the story is told in response to the four questions and concludes with Hallel. Peoples of many traditions celebrate the day they gained freedom, but not many include in their celebrations communal consideration of what it means to be free. Fulfillment of the mitsvah to recount the exodus on the fifteenth of Nisan requires some description of the condition of the Israelites prior to acquiring their freedom. We are called upon to recall what servitude is like, its hardships and despair. After we have told each other the story in this way, we sing G-d’s praises (see Mishnah Pesachim 10:4-5).

Passover: Revolutionary Moments in the History of Pesah

By Dr. Joshua Kulp, Talmud Instructor

The Pesah Seder is full of threes and fours. In this brief article I would like to deal with a “five”—what I term the fivefold history of the celebration of Pesah. Dividing the Jewish celebration of Pesah into five historical periods provides us with an overall perspective of the history of the holiday, where it came from and where it is now.

The earliest stage is clearly the Temple-period. During this period Jews came to the Templein Jerusalemto celebrate the holiday with a sacrifice. The sacrifice might have been accompanied by wine, song and celebration, but we don’t know of any formal “seder” or “haggadah” that occurred during this period. We also know very little of how Pesah was celebrated at that time by Jews outside theTemple.

Passover: Birkhat HaChama

By Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb, CY Director

On Wednesday, April 8, 2009, the Jewish world celebrated not only Leil HaSeder, but also Birkhat HaChama (the Blessing of the Sun). This ritual is done every 28 years, to mark the return of the sun and the earth to their original alignment (time and day) as it was at Creation. The spring of Year 5769 marks the 206th completion of this solar cycle and the start of the 207th.

Shavuot and Creation

In the beginning, the spirit of Elokim hovered in the darkness over the deep. There was no light and no life. God was alone.

Then He made light; and then a great tent, separating the waters and exposing dry land. He brought forth grasses and trees, hung luminaries in the sky, called out fish and birds and animals and human beings. By the end of day seven, Elokim, who a week before hovered in that lifeless darkness, now beheld a tremendous world-tent; a palace of light and color and movement and life. What was He seeking?

Shavuot: The Day of the Giving of the Torah?

By Rabbi Hillel Hayyim Lavery-Yisraeli

CY Shavuot E-shiur Sourcesheet 2011 (pdf)
Shavuot 2011 E-shiur (pdf)

Originally, our Jewish calendar did not have a fixed number of days in each month. Each month had 29 or 30 days, depending on when witnesses spotted the new moon and reported this to the Sanhedrin (High Court). Around three hundred years after the destruction of the second Templeand the accompanying exile, Hillel II (4^th century CE, Eretz Yisra’el) instituted a fixed calendar which we use until this day. The year has an average of 354 days, with the months alternating in length: Nisan has 30 days, Iyyar 29, Sivan 30, and so on. (Heshvan and Kislev sometimes have 30 and sometimes 29. These are set in such a way to prevent certain festival difficulties. For instance, according to our calendar system, Yom Kippur will never fall on Friday. We ensure these by altering the length of Heshvan and/or Kislev).

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