Rabbi Beryl Gershenfeld: What We Can Learn About Teshuva From Jewish Outreach [Teshuva 1/6]

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and our weekly emails. One of the best icebreakers I've ever heard and Lord knows I hate icebreakers. I can't stand them especially at a Shabbos meal, but I one time sat at a Shabbos meal with my dearest friends Ari and Atara Seagal. I don't know who started the icebreaker, but there was an icebreaker and they went around the table asking everyone what is your favorite parsha. What's your favorite parsha in the Torah? And I loved it. It was so like informative and interesting and I couldn't come up with one answer. So I ranked. I said I have really three parshas which I love the most. It's hard for me to select. Number one was probably Ki Sisa which is the story of the golden calf Egel. It's a just a magisterial parsha. Number two was parshas Chanan which we always read on Shabbos Nachamu and it's just this really amazing story about Mosha pleading with God to be let over and enter to Eretz Yisrael enter to Israel and God's answer is ultimately no and it's it's just an incredible parsha. And the last parsha which is really the easiest because it's the shortest is parshas Nitzavim just 40 sukim long 40 verses and I've always loved parshas Nitzavim and the reason why I loved it and really the common denominator in all of the parshios all of these texts in the Torah that I love ever so much is the common denominator of teshuvah itself and it is in the parsha of Nitzavim that we actually confront perhaps for the first time a commandment

Jump to a moment

1. 0:36where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and our weekly emails. One of the…
2. 6:54own experience and ideas into the larger canon of Torah and that obviously doesn't just include…
3. 13:17Gershonfeld and I became even closer. I was like the Gabbai. I ran the shul and…
4. 19:41thinkers, Abraham Joshua Heschel, further began taking trips to Boston and Rav Soloveitchik and I was…
5. 26:01being what's called frum, being religious. The mitzvah is making a person a holistic human being.…
6. 32:20and let's look at what's the first mitzvah in the Torah and why is it crafted…
7. 38:09you described the teshuvah process, there's something very beautiful about the or, the light of Torah,…
8. 44:24always surfaced when people talk about the baal teshuvah movement is the question of denominational affiliation.…
9. 50:39of that. Second of all, I wish the Torah education would be more relevant, understand that…
10. 56:52what always struck me and I was wondering, I've never asked this question, it's always bothered…

Every second of this shiur plays inside Lehallel — a filtered YouTube library where each video was reviewed against one written standard before it could appear. No ads, no comments, no autoplay into anything unapproved.