Rabba Sara Hurwitz on the Hasmonean menorah • Rabba Daniella Pressner on the increasing candles and individual potential • Maharat Rori Picker Neiss on begetting light in a dark time • Rabbanit Goldie Guy on gratitude in a mundane time • Rabba Yaffa Epstein on commitment and rededication

Continuing in the Shema series, Rabbi Jeffrey Fox addresses the blessings recited before the prayer itself. The debate features questions about the nature of these berachot as well as the role of reciting them in order of printing as opposed to chronology when a kohen has minimal time to prepare before serving God.

This week, Rabbi Wolkenfeld and Rabbanit Goldie share some of their different perspectives on the upcoming holiday of Hanukkah and its interaction with the natural world. The two debate whether the idea of a winter holiday celebrating nature’s cycles represents deeper ideas of gratitude or nearly idolatrous practice. Rabbi Wolkenfeld also speaks with Professor Avi Helfand, Professor of Law at the Caruso School of Law and an expert on religious law and religious liberty, about the recent Supreme Court decision barring certain restrictions on religious services in New York as well as the overall balance of religious freedom and public safety.

After a year of great darkness and disasters both natural and supernatural, Rabba Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez writes about the importance of lighting one’s own candle and sharing the spark.

Being a community leader and finding ways to use training from the workfield, the rabbinic texts and from a place of true compassion can be a difficult balance. Maharat graduates speak about the skills they gained through the yeshiva, and how they implemented these abilities into COVID-19 support programming.

The death of Rebecca is missing in the text until her burial site is recorded far after her passing. While two texts approach her death, the midrashim and piyyutim frame it to villainize Esau by implying that it was hidden to keep him away. Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz brings a novel text from the apocrypha, though, which offers a much more positive idea that Rebecca used the end of her life to restore the relationship between her sons. This idea is reflected in our own world today as we reflected on the lives of so many loved ones.

Having established that the structure of davening follows the talmudic debate around whether shema is read in bed or as time changes, Rabbi Jeffrey Fox offers a hassidic insight into Rav Amram Gaon’s explanation of the presence of parallel berachot in the morning and at night despite a break in davening.

Parashat Vayetze has no paragraph breaks or openings in the entire portion, showing the deeper meaning behind a chiastic structure. As Yaakov runs away and seeks out a house, he is forced to live the same events twice, proves Miriam Lorie, and finally succeeds in establishing a home of his own.

In this episode of The Straw Hat, Rabbanit Goldie Guy and Rabbi David Wolkenfeld cover the daf yomi siyyum celebration in which a community member presented about her work caring for the eiruv, the halakhot of making sushi without transgression prohibitions of building or grinding and how to approach a pandemic Thanksgiving with appropriate gratitude.

Having established that there is an Amoritic debate as to the correct order of shema and the amidah, the gemara continues to bring proofs for each perspective. However, as they are fundamentally opposed, it is up to Tosafot to make the first step in the halakhic process, and they cite Rav Amram. Rabbi Jeffrey Fox explains the logic behind each step and questions certain details which appear incongruous with the text.