Get E-Mail Updates!
Listen and Learn
Sample lessons from a variety of scholars, including our faculty, graduates and rabbis in our communities. More lessons will be added over time. Click on the player to listen now, or download the file to your computer, phone or tablet for later listening.
 |
Rabbi Rena Blumenthal, ’03: A Tale of Two Prophets
It look's like you don't have Adobe Flash Player installed. Get it now.
Right-click to download MP3 for later listening |
All communities need both political and inspirational leadership. But it is often difficult for one person to combine the two. Blumenthal uses the story of Moses in the book of Numbers to address the quandaries of rabbinical leadership and the spiritual significance of the Omer. This teaching is inspired by the writings of her father, Fred Blumenthal, z"l, and presented in his honor.
 |
Rabbi Lester Bronstein: A Hasidic Lens on Parshat Bo (Exodus 10:1 - 13:16)
It look's like you don't have Adobe Flash Player installed. Get it now.
Right-click to download MP3 for later listening |
Bronstein shows how some of the most astounding, provocative and informative Jewish messages available to modern-day Reconstructionists also exist in Hasidic Torah commentaries dating back as far as the 18th century. Though their language is highly poetic and mystical, three sample texts from renown teachers include concepts that also were central to Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan’s philosophy: God, peoplehood, and the responsibility to reconstruct and model the tradition in every era. According to Bronstein, the less intellectual language of Hasidic masters may entice young, contemporary Jews into connecting with ancient texts. This teaching also sheds light on the origins of the word haggadah and the Reconstructionist symbolism of the fourth child in the Passover seder.
Open the PDF file with text sources for this talk
 |
Elsie Stern, Ph.D.: Here, There and Everywhere—Three Views of Revelation for Shavuot
It look's like you don't have Adobe Flash Player installed. Get it now. |
In her inimitable fashion, Stern offers three radically different depictions of the revelation of God based on the three texts associated with Shavuot. In Exodus verses 19-20, the entire community makes a covenant and the the spoken word predominates. In Ezekiel 1, the text presents an elaborate, almost psychedelic vision of divinity through the experience of one man. And in the Book of Ruth, we encounter a deeply humanistic narrative of a God who is revealed in relationships of chesed (lovingkindness) and social systems designed to protect the disenfranchised.
