Here’s today’s Tuesday TorahTutors tidbit – real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions. A TorahTutors student looking to learn Chumash content as well as boost her Hebrew language skills saw how paying attention to grammatical details, as basic as identifying pronouns and who is doing what action, can shed important light on the story. When the…
For this week’s Tuesday TorahTutors Tidbit, a tutor describes an important teaching moment that occurred in a real TorahTutors session: In the course of studying Tanach, we discussed a pasuk (verse) that concludes the story we were learning. My student interjected and asked how this pasuk can conclude the story, seeing as it is actually the…
In a bit of a departure, today’s #TuesdayTorahTutorsTidbit is not real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions, but it is real Torah, about TorahTutors sessions – and about Yom Kippur, about the new year, and about looking both backward and forward. In Parshat Nitzavim, which was read a few weeks ago, Moshe encourages the Jewish people…
Time for a Tuesday TorahTutors tidbit: Real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions… getting ready for a real(ly) big day. The biggest of four big days, in a sense. Did you think there was just one Day of Judgment? A TorahTutors student learned that the Mishna in Rosh Hashana (1:2) lists four: On Pesach, judgment is…
Time for a Tuesday TorahTutors Tidbit: real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions… and even, from a real TorahTutors student. A teenage TorahTutors student was exploring the text of Eichah and had a beautiful insight. Towards the end of Eichah Chapter 3, the topic turns to repentance: “Let us search and examine our ways and turn…
Time for a Tuesday TorahTutors Tidbit; real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions. A TorahTutors student encountered some overlap between halachic complexity and biblical narrative. II Shmuel Chapter 20 tells of Sheva ben Bichri’s rebellion against King David. When David’s agents caught up with him, they besieged the city he was in and began battering the…
As many students are heading back to school, thoughts of testing may be in the air. One TorahTutors student reviewing the stories of Avraham got to discuss a very different kind of test with his tutor. Tradition has it that God tested Avraham 10 times, and he passed all ten. But if God knows everything…
With Tisha B’Av just behind us, we may be thinking about the idea of “baseless hatred,” which the Gemara (Yoma 9b) gives as the reason the second Beit Hamikdash was destroyed. We may quite appropriately be thinking about ways to eradicate such discord from our people, and repair the sin that led to our exile.…
For this week’s Tuesday TorahTutors tidbit, we ask:How did a TorahTutors student studying technical Talmudic topics happen upon a verse from the poignant section of Yeshayahu that will be read as the haftarah this Shabbos? The Gemara in Gittin 34a discusses various cases in which a husband writes a gett (bill of divorce) for his…
Time for a Tuesday TorahTutors tidbit! Real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions. This week’s Torah portion includes the story of how two tribes (later joined by half of another tribe) asked to settle on the east side of the Jordan River, where there was good pasture for their abundant flocks, rather than crossing into the…