According to Rashi, the defining feature of the people of Israel at the moment of receiving the Torah is complete unity.

What do we do when our leaders—or our most sacred texts—repeatedly disappoint us? We live in a world that continues to struggle with how to live out a sexual ethics of mutual dignity. In this series, R. Aviva Richman confronts moments of disappointment related to sexual ethics in Talmud and explores how to inherit this part of Torah in ways that invite honesty and growth. Recorded In Winter 2026.

Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/WinterLectureSeries2026RichmanSexualEthicsPart1.pdf

“God spoke to Moshe in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after their departure from the land of Egypt, saying” (Numbers 1:1). This verse opens the Book of Bemidbar and initiates God’s speech to the Israelites during these years of routine wandering.

For many of us, confronting death raises urgent questions of faith, doubt, and the meaning and purpose of our lives. Yet we live in a culture that avoids talking about death, let alone the existential challenges it raises. Physician and ethicist Lydia Dugdale, author of The Lost Art of Dying, joins Rabbi Shai Held to draw on ancient and contemporary wisdom about mortality and meaning. Recorded in Fall 2025. This conversation is part of the Faith WithHeld series, generously sponsored by the Schiller family.

Want the full Q&A? Catch the video version here: https://youtu.be/i1ktCH7ISoE

The Book of Leviticus, and Parashat BeHukkotai that brings it to a close, makes a clear and recurring claim: reality is not an act of fate, but the outcome of human choice and behavior.

According to a midrashic tradition, the counting of the Omer (that may have seemed to be nothing but a calendrical counting of the days from Pesah to Shavuot) expresses the anticipation of the Israelites for the giving of the Torah. The biblical commandment, however, appears in an agricultural context.

In Parashat Emor, we encounter the story of the blasphemer. This blasphemer undermines, degrades, and treats with levity the very foundation of the religious system—the root of faith and the bedrock of the world. Yet various midrashim, in their characteristic fashion, are not satisfied with a dry, factual account.

When the unthinkable happens, what remains of faith? Journalist Sarah Wildman, who lost her young daughter, joins Rabbi Shai Held in a searching conversation about grief, love, and the struggle to go on. They will probe how mourning collides with meaning-making, and how faith might fracture, endure, or be remade in the wake of devastating loss. Recorded in Fall 2025.
This conversation is part of the Faith WithHeld series, generously sponsored by the Schiller family.

Want the full Q&A? Catch the video version here: https://youtu.be/YNZb_AkS7Ec