Mishnah and Tosefta

Course Description: This course is for students with a lower-level background in rabbinic sources who are looking to radically improve their capacity to read and understand those sources for themselves. Students will learn to unpack the highly compressed literary and legal texts of the Tannaitic period.  We will aim to furnish students with the skills to become competent readers of Mishnah and Tosephta and to see the philosophical and religious issues at play behind the highly technical language of these texts. Later in the year we will begin to see how the meaning of those sources evolved when they were interpreted in light of the different concerns, genres and approaches of the later rabbis, the Amoraim. In the fall semester we will learn Masechet B’rachot chapter 6 which deals with blessings on food, sacred eating and the danger of desire.

Advanced Talmud

Course Description: This course is designed to strengthen students’ analytical abilities in Talmudic discourse. In the first semester, we will study sugyot from the first chapter of Tractate Bava Batra; in the second semester, we will turn to selected sugyot from Tractate Hagigah. Alongside close textual analysis, we will explore key methodological questions related to the Talmud, including: Under what circumstances did the Talmud become the dominant source of authority in halakhic (Jewish legal) discourse? Why have so many commentaries been written on the Talmud, and what differentiates them? What pedagogical challenges arise in the teaching of Talmud? What role did the Talmud play in the Jewish-Christian-Muslim polemical dialogue?

Tanakh

Course Description: Our subject this semester is the First Book of Samuel, which chronicles the rise of the kingship in Israel, focusing on the reigns of Saul and David. Many famous stories in the Hebrew Bible are found in these pages, including the capture of the Ark by the Philistines and the battle of David and Goliath. We will read the entire book in translation, but devote most of our energy to analyzing particular verses in the original Hebrew. Special attention will be given to historical, geographical and material aspects of the text.

Talmud

Course Description: This course is for students with a stronger background in rabbinic sources who are looking to become independent readers of, and meaning-makers within those sources. We will focus on pinpointing the philosophical, psychological, and religious issues at play in these sources and ask how they can be used as a prism through which to understand our modern world. This year we will learn selected sugiot that deal with rabbinic hermeneutics, pluralism and argument.

Survey of Jewish History

Course Description: What is the difference between a Hebrew, an Israelite, a Jew and an Israeli? How did Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrahim become separate Jewish streams? The objective of this survey course is to develop a better macro-understanding of the long timeline of Jewish history from the Bronze Age to the present, in order to strengthen the backbone of your Yeshiva studies. Each class will contain a combination of lecture and discussion of relevant historical texts.

The Laws of Shabbat and Yom Tov

Course Description: In this course, we will learn the intricate Toraitic and Rabbinic laws concerning Shabbat & Yom Tov. Examples of sanctifying the Shabbat include the complex edicts of preparing for and honoring the Shabbat, accepting its holiness, kiddush & seudot (meals) and havdalah. We will have an overview of the traditional 39 melakhot (forbidden types of “work”) and focus on a few such as bishul (cooking) and carrying. Vis-à-vis Yom Tov the focus will be how it differs from Shabbat, particularly regarding these last two categories (transferring fire and carrying) as well as other unique features.

Our constant guide will be the famous Mishna Berurah (Yisrael Meir Kagan) commentary on the Orekh Hayyim (“Way of Life”) section of the Shulhan Arukh as well as additional source sheets outlining the process of halakhic development grounded in the Talmud through the commentaries of the medieval period and the best-known codes of Jewish law and responsa literature. While studying the traditional texts, we will constantly be widening our halakhic perspective and discussing the relevance to our personal and communal lives as Jews in the 21st century.

Livui Ruchani

Course Description: This course will focus on the practical skills required to engage in Rabbinic pastoral care. Emphasis will be placed on listening skills and students will engage in weekly exercises to develop their abilities. We will probe the halachic, anthropological and practical elements of the Jewish life cycle including birth, bar/bat mitsvah, marriage and divorce, sickness, death and mourning, and explore the role of the rabbi as sensitive mediator of the cycle of life. Where possible, students will have an opportunity to accompany rabbis and observe these life-cycle events first hand.

How to Read the Zohar

Course Description: Since its mysterious appearance almost a thousand years ago, the Zohar has emerged as one of the most powerful forces in Jewish tradition. The Zohar’s radical hermeneutics, its passionate and often erotic religious intensity, and its mystical formulation of Judaism’s fundamental ideas, have riveted many of Israel’s greatest sages (while appalling others!). This course seeks to open the gates of the Zohar by systematically learning how to learn it. We will begin at Bereshit, the beginning of the text, in the original Aramaic and in translation. Using academic tools and spiritual practices such as chanting and visualization, we will learn to think like the Zohar, and to understand the way it cultivates an encounter with elohut (divinity) through studying Jewish sources.

Community Sicha

Course Description: The purpose of our weekly sicha (conversation) at the yeshiva is to provide an on-going community-wide space for focused reflection on the meaning of our shared and evolving communal religious practice. Each sicha involves a brief (20-25 minute) presentation followed by an open discussion. Sichot will often be presented in short series to allow complex themes to be dealt with in depth.

Mysticism Through the Calendar

Course Description: What are the unique lessons and opportunities of each day, week and month in our calendar? How can we improve who we are and what we do, by attuning to the characteristics assigned by our tradition to each unit of time? In this course we will explore conversations and texts spanning the millennia of Jewish wisdom, with a particular focus on mystical teachings, and also practices emerging from them, which will support our growth as human beings and as Jews.

Hebrew Conversation

Course Description: Hebrew speakers of all skill levels are welcome to join together for an informal conversation in Modern Israeli Hebrew. Each week we will read a short text and discuss it in Hebrew. This is a great opportunity to exercise your Hebrew muscles in a friendly, non-intimidating setting.

Halakhah

Course Description: The laws of Shabbat are based on three major concepts: 1) Preserving Shabbat as a day of rest, free from weekday activities, especially work; 2) The prohibition of “creating,” derived from the story of creation; 3) The laws of muktzeh, which reflect a hesitation to handle tools and objects fashioned by human beings. In this shiur, we will explore how these principles manifest themselves in particular melakhot, forbidden labors, especially in the prohibition of cooking, building, tying knots, laundering, asking a non-Jew to work, and several other core issues. Throughout, we will study early primary sources and at times conclude with relevant modern teshuvot.

Tefillah & the Abudraham

Course Description: For a large proportion of Jews in the diaspora, public tefillah/prayer is a primary mode of Jewish activity and identification. For many, however, the complex traditional liturgy of rabbinic Judaism, developed over centuries, proves impenetrable and difficult; access to the rabbis’ elaborate network of verbal disciplines and practices remains frustratingly elusive. In this course we will explore the development, structure and details of these core practices and experiment with using them. We will see how the precise details of rabbinic liturgy were carved out of biblical texts and rabbinic philosophy and we will think in general about how fixed, repetitive verbal patterns might (have a useful) impact on our inner and outer lives.