58th century judaisms by Josh Weiner
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I dug into the sources and commentaries, trying to find out what a 'cherub' looks like.
A Torah exploration. Were the basics laws of justice given at Sinai, or after the crossing of the sea, or during slavery in Egypt, or to Noah, or to Adam, or even before creation itself?
What blessing could be appropriate for COVID vaccinations? Using a Talmudic text as a starting point, we look at some little-known blessings for medical procedures, at the correct response for a sneeze, the creation of sneezes, and the spirituality of the randomness of disease and healing. Prepare for confusion!
This is my God and I will anvehu (Exodus 15)
The Torah seems to be against mixing distinct things: meat and milk, holy and profane, and even grafting one kind of tree onto another. But why? The laws of grafted trees are extreme: some say the trees should be uprooted, others say that all of humanity needs to keep this particular Jewish law. It's true that nature is great as it is, but we're also here to change the world, not just be passive. Lots of questions arise!
Looking into the sources of the Jewish calendar, we find more confusion than clarity. Different rabbinic texts propose different shemita calculations, putting everything in doubt. This class looks at the confusion, and tries to find - not the truth, but what to learn from the process.
It's (supposedly) the shemita year this year, the Sabbatical year, when the land rests and debts are cancelled. The deeper we look at the laws of debt release, though, the more paradoxes and contradictions we find, until we (maybe) uncover the root of all laws - to cease to exist as law at all.
We go on a bizarre halachic excursion through the sources on Sukkah building - specifically exploring the seemingly strange law: the walls of a sukkah can be made out of a person, as long as they don't know it. Knowing and not-knowing seem to be intrinsic to what a sukkah is all about...
Rebbe Nachman brings a twist to the significance of Rosh Hashana: it's celebrating the creation of the world, of course, but that's something we do every moment. We just need to do it better. Turning raw potential into actuality, taking an idea and limiting it into words, acting in the world and sometimes messing it up - that's life itself.
On Rosh Hashana, Jews celebrate the creation of the world (or of humanity, or something else..) If so, Elul marks the time before creation. What does it mean to be before creation? Why is answering that question forbidden in Jewish law? We take a journey through a series of texts, touching the questions and almost answering them.
Looking at the month of Elul as part of the wider framework of "days of judgement". Our model is a surprising detail in religious taxation, the "tithing of beasts". As usual, the deeper we explore the more peculiar it becomes, giving lots of food for thought.
"All of Israel are children of kings". This principle is often invoked in the Talmud, and often rejected. We look at the various examples and try and figure out what and when we can see ourselves as royalty. This gives us food for thought as we enter the high holiday preparations, and start saying, audaciously, Avinu Malkeinu, "Our Father, Our King."
Looking at the legal definition of a 'shaliach' - an agent or messenger, we get a couple of principles which seem to extend much further, to the idea of what it is to be human at all.
Continuing the discussion on prayer as a focal point for understanding what it is to be human, we look at the category of speech, as expressed through laws on prayer and esoteric discussions about the status of a golem.
Rather than looking at the highest levels of mystical prayer, we try to explore what is it that differentiates a human prayer from a mechanical one. The idea of kavvanah, mental focus or attunement, seems to be key to understanding what it is to be human at all!
Rambam / Maimonides is almost unique in Jewish philosophy in the importance he gives to states of mind. His extreme position on the necessary mind-state during prayer is almost impossible to achieve. But he sees it as crucial to becoming fully human.
