Harvard Torah

This week, with Simchat Torah, we arrive at the ending and the beginning.

As we hear the poetic message Moses bequeaths to us in our Torah toward the end of our wilderness journey, Harvard Ph.D. student and scholar of Jewish art, history, and scribal tradition, Deborah B. Thompson, and Sonia Epstein '22 join the Harvard Torah conversation to explore how cherished verses, poems and songs and special letters can be touchstones and guiding stars on our travels. For a key to the biblical passages on which the song at the end of the podcast draws: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_V8uT7TtVpzNF1O9nSG1qKYIY4AgWS8s/view?usp=sharing To learn more about the scriptural letters Deborah studies, visit her blog: www.devorahlearnsmasorah.com

As we find our Torah telling the story of itself as a written Book, two scholars of scriptural literature join the Harvard Torah conversation – Professor Luis Manuel Girón-Negrón, whose current work on the 15th century Arragel Bible tells of remarkable communication and collaboration in Spain of that time in the production of a codex of scriptural translation and commentary incorporating Jewish and Christian traditions and ideas – and Theo Motzkin '19 who now studies the ancient languages, literatures, and religious cultures of Mesopotamia and the Near East at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"You stand all of you today before the Eternal One your God," begins our Torah reading this week – and how to share with you the joy of all of us who are able at long last to be together in person on the Harvard campus? Beyond a podcast message expressing some of that joy in words, I hope you will enjoy the photos at this link: https://hillel.harvard.edu/harvard-torah-ep-46-slideshow, snapped at our Harvard Hillel Pop-Up Café this past week, welcoming students to campus.

"Ki Tavo" – "When you come into the Land" – is our reading this week; and amid the many blessings of our coming back into in-person community, psychologist Jerry Zuriff and Social Studies student Sarah Shamoon '21-'22 join the Harvard Torah conversation to ponder the Curses that figure in this week's Torah reading along with the possible blessings, what to make of those 'rebukes' or 'chastisements,' and how to make sure they are not our fate.

As our students head back to campus for a great Harvard ingathering, Rabbi Jenn Queen, Harvard Hillel's Robert and Dale Mnookin Director of Engagement, joins in the Harvard Torah conversation – in the face of a reading that may seem quite alien and even alienating in parts at first glance – to discuss being present with and for one another as the essence of creating a community that listens to our Torah.

Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, expert in inequality and the U.S. criminal system, and Ezra Feder ‘24, both of whom have worked in Maryland’s Office of Public Defense, join the Harvard Torah conversation – as our scriptures command us to appoint ‘judges and officers in all our gates’ – for a discussion on pursuing righteous justice.

This week's instalment of Harvard Torah comes to you recorded amid travels – as our ancestors, in our scriptures, prepare to set up a distinctive haven and home country. I hope you enjoy this brief and solo journeying interlude in the ongoing series, and I can promise a return to the podcast's customary format, with a wonderful Harvard teacher and student, for next week's Torah reading.

Spencer Glassman '23-'24, just back from a year in Israel, joins the Harvard Torah conversation, to reflect on ourselves and on others in our land – as we hear the Children of Israel instructed in our scriptures in fearsome terms about the conquest ahead of them, and we hear them told to love the stranger.

Professors Arthur Applbaum of Harvard and Jon Gould '10 of Berkeley Law School join the Harvard Torah conversation, as our Torah gives us some of the most fundamental words and covenantal ideas of our tradition.

As we begin our Torah's book of Deuteronomy, Moses retelling the wilderness years to the people, Rabbi, Professor, Historian, and Theologian Arthur Green joins the Harvard Torah conversation along with Folklore, Mythology, and Religion scholar Daniel Frim '14, to discuss the theme of Story.

As we read about Tribes – Matot – and about the Journeys of our people – Mas'ei – Adam Nahari '20 and Ellie Blum '20, who have led hundreds of Harvard peers of many faiths and backgrounds on the Harvard College Israel Trek over several years, join the Harvard Torah conversation to speak from their experience of shepherding people to the Promised Land.

"Then it came to pass, after the plague..." says our Torah this week. Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases Yonatan Grad and incoming student Paz Meyers '25, who has spent this past year in SARS- CoV-2 research, join the Harvard Torah conversation to reflect on where we now are, what's ahead, and what we have learned.

As our Torah gives us the rite of the Red Heifer, and the death of Miriam, and Moses' striking the rock, and the foreign prophet Balaam's awestruck blessings of the Israelite camp, and more and more, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion Kimberley Patton and Harvard Divinity School graduate Shira Mogil join the Harvard Torah conversation, to discuss tremendous and fascinating and even terrifying mystery, and how we (and other creatures on this earth) may touch it – not without hazard.

Avishay Ben-Sasson Gordis of Harvard's Government Department, research fellow at the Berl Katznelson Foundation and at Molad: The Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, joins the Harvard Torah conversation for a special episode focused on the current governmental debacle in Israel, on the theme of Rebellion – as our Torah gives us the story of the revolt of Korach and his band of discontented Levites against Moses and Aaron, and as the longtime Prime Minister of Israel asks rhetorically, with reference to his own present situation and this week's Torah-reading, "How did God deal with rebellion against Moses our Master?"

Founder of the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership, Dr. Ronald Heifetz, and Sarah Bolnick '22 join the Harvard Torah conversation to discuss Courage, as we read of the Israelite scouts surveying the Promised Land, and as Harvard students committed to Israel face challenges among their peers. (Listeners interested in learning more about the ethical, logistical, and political issues regarding Israel, the Palestinian territories, and vaccinations, touched upon by our guest toward the end of this conversation, may wish to read the article on the subject in the 5/5/21 edition of the Times of Israel.)

As we read in the Torah of the menorah and its lights in our ancient sanctuary, Professor of Astronomy Karin Öberg and astronomy student Natasha '21 (who likes to keep a low internet profile, hence the first name-only introduction) join the Harvard Torah conversation – to follow the example of our ancient ancestors who took this reading as an occasion to speculate on the luminaries of the heavens.

Dr. Judith Kates, Radcliffe and Harvard alumna, Professor of Jewish Women's Studies at Hebrew College, and formerly the first coordinator of Harvard's Committee on Women's Studies, joins Harvard Ph.D. Candidate and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies in Harvard's program in Religion, Rachel Slutsky, in the Harvard Torah conversation, to reflect on women making pathways through the landscape of our heritage and sources – as our cycle of scriptural readings and of holidays brings us to the Sotah, the woman suspected of adultery, in our Torah, and to the Book of Ruth in the recent holiday of Shavuot.

Dr. Mira Bernstein, who applies mathematical insights to addressing gerrymandering, apportionment of representatives, and other problems of present-day democracy and society, and Cara Kupferman '20, who has worked in the back rooms and on the front lines of a U.S. election, join the Harvard Torah conversation – as we read about the counting of the Israelite people, tribe by tribe, and the naming of their leaders – while, in the present, we see the results of a U.S. Census, and a new Pew Research Center study on Jewish Americans.

Professor Joseph Singer, who teaches property law, legal philosophy, and federal Indian law at Harvard's Law School, and Gabriel Karger '18, who is now pursuing a PhD in Political Philosophy at Princeton and a JD at Columbia Law School, join the Harvard Torah conversation to discuss the ethics of Ownership, as we conclude the book of Leviticus with its laws about land, property, and release from debts and indentured servitude in the Jubilee year.