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New to the lectures of Rav Raphaël Benizri? Here is a path of five lectures to get you started, with no prerequisites: each one stands on its own, with a summary and the full transcript.
1. Bereshit: The Beginning of Creation
A way into the Torah through its first word: how the text opens, and what came before the world. Bereshit: Rav Benizri reads the first word of the text, the bet and Elokim, the six things that preceded the world, and the six days of creation.
2. Pirkei Avot, Part One: An Introduction to the Tractate
The most accessible tractate of the tradition: short maxims on how to live, handed down from master to disciple. Pirkei Avot, Part One: Rav Benizri introduces the tractate — mussar in the Torah, the two positions of the Rambam, and the place of Avot within Nezikin.
3. Sukkot: The Festival of Joy
A festival explained from the inside: why joy, why the sukkah, why its universal reach. The sukkah as a true home, the hakafot, the seventy nations, and the joy of the water-drawing: the meaning of Sukkot according to Rav Raphaël Benizri.
4. Mishlei: An Introduction to the Book of Proverbs
The practical wisdom of King Shlomo, and what a mashal, a parable, really is. Mishlei: why this book is read between Pesach and Shavuot, what a mashal is, and how the midrash reduces the 613 mitzvot to a single principle.
5. The Three Patriarchs: Mirrors of Our Own Lives
Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov as mirrors of our own lives. Bereshit as a mirror of human history: the war of the kings, the ideology of Nimrod, Sodom, and a messianism that one does not receive from outside.
What next?
- Follow the weekly parasha, in step with the Torah reading.
- Prepare for each festival with the lectures on the Jewish festivals.
- Print a Questions for the Table booklet for the coming Shabbat.
- Keep the glossary of Hebrew terms close at hand.
- Get to know Rav Raphaël Benizri better.