All Episodes
Displaying 31 - 60 of 120 in total
Seduction and Sacrifice: From the Purim Story to the Responsa Literature
There have been tragic instances where Jewish women felt compelled to take drastic measures to save the lives of their fellow Jews. When rabbis were presented with the...
Scrolls, Scribes, and Shortcuts: An Incomplete Megilah in the Cairo Geniza
Today, we explore enigmatic Megilahs, where the absence of the text eclipses the written word. We’ll learn that this peculiar phenomenon is just a fragment of a larger...
Lost Scrolls, Lost Souls: A Spanish Jew’s Plea to Rediscover Tanach | Favorite Episodes
Tunisian Jews used to refer to Tanach with a very odd name, and few understood why. Fortunately, illuminated medieval Jewish manuscripts can help solve this mystery. T...
The Scandalous History of Aleinu
When we examine medieval manuscripts that feature Aleinu, we uncover intriguing instances of censorship within this ancient prayer. What motivated these textual altera...
The Meaning of Dreaming: Talmudic Perspectives | Favorite Episodes
Favorite Episodes Are our dreams significant? Do they have predictive value? Should we pay heed to their warnings? The Talmud seems to offer contradictory teachings o...
Rambam’s Menorah: Insights from Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts | Favorite Episodes
Click here to view the class PowerPoint slides. Favorite Episodes | Initially released in July 2023. We are all acquainted with the renowned depiction of the menorah c...
Between Ashkenaz and Sefard: Medieval Women, Biblical Dena, and the Public Square | Favorite Episodes
Favorite Episodes | Initially released in December 2022. We can learn about the public presence of women in a given society by examining how various rabbis understood ...
In the Dungeons of the Inquisition
In this episode, we explore the intriguing narrative of a Jew named Shlomo, also known as Fillipo, who found himself ensnared by the Inquisition in Venice during the 1...
The Heartless Chicken
We examine the tale of the heartless chicken that ignited lively discussion among rabbinic authorities in the year 1709. We introduce the pivotal figures in this intri...
The Puzzle of Peshat: Rashbam’s Controversial Commentary
In 1158, Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra found himself disturbed by a provocative dream, which ultimately inspired him to author a treatise concerning the proper start time of...
The History of Kol Nidrei
Kol Nidrei has been associated with controversy since its inception, and we’re here to delve deep into its intriguing story. We’ll unravel the criticisms it faced, the...
The History and Evolution of the Chabad Machzor
What is the story behind the Chabad Machzor? In the first part of this class, we find ourselves comparing two sacred machzorim. The current Chabad Machzor is open befo...
Troubling Tales: The Rebbe’s Approach to Controversial Stories
The Lubavitcher Rebbe raised an interesting question on the renowned tale of Rabbi Amnon and Unesaneh Tokef. We’ll show that this comment was just the tip of the icebe...
The Politics of Divorce: King Henry’s Wives and the Italian Rabbis
Delve into the riveting saga of King Henry VIII’s marital turmoil as he sought to dissolve his marriage in order to marry a second queen. We’ll discover the intriguing...
Dancing with History: The 15th of Av and Its Legacy in Renaissance Jewry
This class delves into the story of Jews during the 1500s who were drawn to the Renaissance and embraced immodest dancing. They sought justification in the ancient cus...
Rambam’s Menorah: Insights from Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts
We are all acquainted with the renowned depiction of the menorah created by the Rambam. In this class, we dig into the story of this image. Where did it come from? Can...
The Controversial Haskamah
Starting in the 1870s, a visionary Jerusalem rabbi was consumed by the idea of resurrecting the ancient mitzvah of guarding the site of the Beis Hamikdash. But his fer...
Techeles: A Tangled Tale
During the late 1880s, an audacious endeavor was set forth by the Radziner Rebbe, aimed at renewing the ancient legacy of techeles through his arduous quest to redisco...
The Missing Section in the Shulchan Aruch
It’s truly astonishing: the Shulchan Aruch, the most important work of Jewish law, doesn’t codify the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael and many of its related laws, including...
Banned and Burned: The 1232 Controversy Surrounding Rambam’s Works
In today’s episode, we turn our attention to the dispute over the Rambam’s works that took place in Europe in 1232. The controversy revolved around Rambam’s Moreh Nevu...
Remembering and Forgetting: The History of Chof Sivan | Replay
This day has a sad history of persecution, but also an interesting tendency to be taken seriously at first, only to peter out after some time. Remembering and Forgett...
In the Wake of Shabtai Tzvi’s Betrayal
In the summer of 1666, Shabtai Tzvi’s conversion to Islam shattered hopes and dreams, leaving Jewish communities grappling with the aftermath of a false redeemer. One ...
Women and the Study of Talmud
Over the past century, significant changes have occurred in the area of women’s Torah education, but a vibrant and ongoing debate about this subject persists. By explo...
The Lion and the Snake: Tensions Over Artistic Expression in the Medieval Sanctuary
Step back in time as we delve into a fascinating story about the Jewish communities of Cologne and Mayence around the period of the First Crusade. We will learn of an ...
Rashba’s Rebuttal: Defending Judaism in Medieval Barcelona
Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderes (Rashba) took a maximalist position about the eternality of mitzvos, arguing that none of them could ever be suspended, not even in the era of ...
Censoring Rambam’s Mishneh Torah in Czarist Russia
In 1850, an unusual edition of Rambam’s Mishneh Torah was published in czarist Russia. A perusal of this work reveals that it was censored in a peculiar and unpreceden...
The Fate of the Marranos
In 1636, the Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam was embroiled in a heated debate over the fate of their converso relatives residing as Christians in Spain and Por...
First Edition: The Rebbe’s References to the 1485 Soncino Haggadah
In his commentary on the Haggadah, the Lubavitcher Rebbe referenced many different sources from the vast library of Judaism, but three of them stand out from a bibliog...
Vanished Hero: Exploring the Absence of Moshe in the Haggadah
Join us for an in-depth discussion exploring the enigmatic absence of Moshe’s name from the Haggadah text. While his name does appear once in the text, this fact alone...
The King’s Prayer: A Controversial Statement by a 19th-Century Rabbi
In today’s episode, we will step back in time to explore the controversy that erupted when a famous rabbi made a controversial statement about Dovid Hamelech and the r...
