Mechon Hadar Online Learning

“Ya’akov was very afraid and distressed.” He takes many different precautions in order to avoid a violent reunion with his brother, with potentially severe consequences. At the same time, in our parashah Ya’akov receives a new name: Yisrael—a name he receives twice! The name, at its core, describes a person caught in conflict, and it is given to Ya’akov the first time in the midst of a struggle.

Are our primary responsibilities always to our own community? Or do Jews in the diaspora also have a religious obligation to contribute to the general social welfare - perhaps even to get involved in local politics? When Jews have political, social, or financial capital - how should we spend it? Rabbinic tradition offers no easy answers to these questions, but instead presents us with complex and nuanced attempts to balance universal ideals with practical communal concerns. Together we will review various approaches within this tradition - mishnaic, medieval, mystical and modern - and attempt to determine what it means to be both a member of the tribe and a citizen of the world. Recorded at the July Learning Seminar 2025. 

Throughout Parashat VaYeitzei, almost from their very first encounter, Lavan and Ya’akov are locked in conflict. But there is a rare moment of encounter—though a fraught one—where the verses describe a desire to bridge: “Come, then, let us make a covenant, you and I” (Genesis 31:44). What emerges is a covenant of separation—a covenant in which much of the content is devoted to how the two will live apart, not together.

Participating in and belonging to a Jewish community is rightly considered to be central to living a full and meaningful Jewish life. However, sometimes being enmeshed in community can present a challenge to exploring and pursuing our own personal goals and interests, both religious and non-religious. In this class, we'll explore a passage of the Ma'or vaShemesh, from the great Hassidic master R' Kalonymos Kalman Epstein, wherein he explores and defines the limitations of being in community and when a person must leave their peers to pursue their own path. Recorded in July Learning Seminar, 2025. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/JLS2025StrausbergIndependenceInterdependence.pdf

Our parashah offers an opportunity to encounter a typical human phenomenon—plurality —and contemplate its implications.  Specifically it brings us to ask: how do Ya’akov, Esav, and their offspring live with each other, as “two” from the womb?

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, also known as the Alei Shur, offers a powerful and inspiring — but often demanding — vision for what it takes to become a better human being. Before we can do any act of repentance, of teshuvah — we must first learn how to change and how to grow. Recorded in Summer 2025. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RobkinApprenticeMind2025.pdf

Rivkah receives a blessing from her family members before she sets out on her journey to marry Yitzhak: “O sister!  May you grow into thousands of myriads; may your descendants inherit the gates of their foes” (Genesis 24:60).  

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, also known as the Alei Shur, offers a powerful and inspiring — but often demanding — vision for what it takes to become a better human being. Before we can do any act of repentance, of teshuvah — we must first learn how to change and how to grow. Recorded in Summer 2025. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RobkinApprenticeMind2025.pdf

In this week’s parashah, Avraham argues with God over the divine decision to destroy Sodom completely.  Avraham and God agree that Sodom is wicked and that terrible things happen there.  So what, then, is the basis for Avraham’s plea?  Why does he resist God’s plan to punish and overturn Sodom?  What are Avraham’s arguments as he tries to stop the city’s total destruction?

The Talmud has often been subject to misrepresentation—viewed as esoteric or overly complex—yet it holds profound power as a centerpiece of Jewish tradition. How can Talmud and Talmud study anchor an approach to Judaism that speaks to the challenges  and dangers of our moment? How can its embrace of complexity, argument, and multivocality offer a model for living a thoughtful and principled Jewish life in our uncertain times? Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RichmanTalmudKickoff2025.pdf

Abraham is “our father” in many senses.  He is seen as the father of the Jewish people, the spiritual father of Judaism and of monotheistic faiths more broadly, and the father of the covenant with the one God.  Yet in our parashah, Abraham is introduced first and foremost as a son, a descendant who must decide whether to be traditional or innovative—whether to follow the path of his forebears or to become a revolutionary.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, also known as the Alei Shur, offers a powerful and inspiring — but often demanding — vision for what it takes to become a better human being. Before we can do any act of repentance, of teshuvah — we must first learn how to change and how to grow. Recorded in Summer 2025. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/RobkinApprenticeMind2025.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

We’ve made it.That seems to be the promise of bikkurim, the first fruits gift to God.