The Book of Memories (Rabbi Shnayor Burton and Mikey Stone)

The act of building God's house reflects kindness, generosity, and wisdom, yet bloodshed is the main activity practiced within it. Why? And what does it have to do with the secrets of the creation? Tune in this week to find out. 

We are commanded to remember the Sabbath day (implying a past Sabbath), and to safeguard the Sabbath day (implying a future Sabbath). What do these commands entail? And what about the present experience of the Sabbath? Pay close attention to this week's discussion of these questions and more, and perhaps you will pick up hints concerning secrets of the sin of the tree of knowledge, the forbidden relations, and the ultimate redemption. 

The Torah mandates that we count Jews in half-units. It's a cliche to assert that as individual selves, we are incomplete and lacking, but this week we strip away the platitudes, and show how the appropriate absorption of the self into the whole of Israel, and the message of the Half-Shekel, are fundamental to Torah learning, the Holy Land, and the World to Come. 

Join us this week for the season finale of The Book Of Memories, as we discuss the roadmap for world peace. 

Stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks about exciting next steps for the podcast! 

God told Moses of His four-part plan for Israel's redemption from bondage, (which we symbolize by drinking four cups of wine at the Seder). 

Moses relayed the message to the Israelites: "And Moses spoke thus to the Israelites, but they did not heed Moses out of shortness of breath and hard bondage."

Join us for this bonus Pesach episode as we discuss how this verse describes not only a passing moment in early Israelite history, but our very predicament today. Emerge with a new understanding of the freedom we will celebrate (and anticipate) on Seder night. 

How do we make sense of the tension between Moses's and the Prophets' attitude toward the Temple service? Is human sacrifice warranted (in theory!)?  Is knowledge of God the ultimate religious value, or wholly inadequate compared to awe of the Unknown?
Eavesdrop on Rav Shnayor and Mikey as they contemplate these questions and more. 

In our new podcast, we attempt to transcend the barriers of stale language and foreign concepts that block us from hearing the eternally relevant call of the Torah and its sages.  We hope you will come along!

Please email us at BookOfMemoriesPodcast@gmail.com with questions or comments. We would love to hear from you. 

God released us from the bondage of Egypt, only to place us under the burden of the yoke of His commandments. Did we truly attain the liberation that the Exodus had the potential to offer us, or are we still in a certain kind of slavery? Join Rav Shnayor and Mikey as they ponder if and how we can celebrate freedom today in light of this, and what kind of freedom we can hope for in future times. 

Matzah, the bread of poverty,  symbolizes exiting Egypt, the land of the ever-flowing Nile river which the Torah likens to the "garden of God", and entering Israel, which relies on rainwater and "God's eyes are constantly upon". In this episode we discuss how this connects to the parallel and contrasting visions of life that appear in the first two paragraphs of the Shema, and how these two visions might be reconciled in the days of the Messiah when a river will flow from the Temple in Jerusalem. We also explore some practical suggestions for fully embracing the vision represented by the Matzah in the meantime. 

Many great theories have been posited to explain the Torah's Kosher laws, from the hygienic to the symbolic. But are the Kosher laws in truth a part of a larger story about humanity's connection to the animal kingdom? Join us as we begin in Eden, where vegetarianism was mandated, through the aftermath of the Flood, when meat of any animal was permitted to all, to the Torah's Kashruth restrictions for Jews. Stick with us as we take seriously the possibility that man's ultimate role, and the true expression of his creation in the image of God, is to rule over the animals properly, and as we speculate about what this may look like. 

Time: a most ephemeral and elusive concept. We measure it day-by-day and ascribe significance to the individual days of our lives, but Psalms 90 suggests this may be an accident of our subjective and ungodly perspective, and one that we should strive to transcend. Yet we are commanded to count each day during the period between Passover and Shavuos. Join us this week as we explore this complexity and posit two conceptions of time, one that is tied to astronomical phenomena and the physical world, and another, more mysterious time that has meaning at its center. 

The Holy Land spat out the Canaanites because of their incestuous and immoral practices, and we are warned that the same can happen to us if we emulate their abominations. What does sexual morality have to do with land? And for that matter, what do sexual matters have to do with holiness? We ponder these questions this week, and explore the value (or lack thereof) of the sense of touch, why immoral thoughts may be categorically worse than immoral actions, and how we might be able to embrace our animality in a shameless yet non-idealizing manner by viewing it as a tool and not an essence. 

In our prayers, which typically employ the phraseology of the Bible, we call the holiday of Shavuos the “day of the giving of our Torah”. Maimonides, who expounds on the reasons for the commandments according to their biblical parameters, teaches us that we count the Omer to express our eagerness and loving anticipation for receiving the Torah on Shavuos. The explicit text of the Bible never states that Shavuos is the day celebrating the giving of the Torah, and instead links the Omer and Shavuos to offerings of grain and barley and to cycles of agriculture. Yet the Torah teaches us, quite explicitly and at its very beginning, that there is a deep link between the arboreal, and knowledge and truth. Join us as we examine this link, and sketch how the counting of the Omer and its culmination on Shavuos may be a reentry point to the Edenic state. 

"One generation comes and another generation goes, but the earth stands forever",  says Koheleth, ascribing eternity to land and temporality to humans. Our connection to the land is repeatedly described in the Bible as one of both “alien" and "resident”, suggesting a paradoxical attitude towards land, where we are both transient and yet ensconced. Join us as we analyze this tension. We then look for true permanence by examining what a proper connection to our ancestral homeland would look like and lead to, and asking whether, contra Koheleth's plain meaning, the Torah's ultimate vision is for humanity, not the earth, to be eternal (by living in accord with the eternal). 

After the sin of the golden calf the descendants of Aaron replaced the first-born representatives from each family in Israel, who were originally supposed to perform the  temple service. In other words, the selection of one family as the priestly class was not ideal. Join us as we explore the consequences of this replacement, how Israel can still be called “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”, who will make up the priestly class in the third temple (may it be built speedily in our days) and more. 

" I make known Myself to him in a vision, I speak with him in a dream" (Numbers 12:6)

"Know that the true reality and quiddity of prophecy consist in its being an overflow overflowing from God, may He be cherished and honored, through the intermediation of the Active Intellect, toward the rational faculty in the first place and thereafter toward the imaginative faculty." (Guide of the Perplexed 2:36)

Join us this week for an introductory discussion of prophecy (according to Maimonides), what it is, who receives it, how it works, why it stopped, and how it will return. 

The land of Israel is described by God to Abraham as "the land that I will show you". Join us this week as we explore how this description gets to the very essence of what makes holy land holy. It is the land where inhabitants have the opportunity to see the way God sees, and to some extent, to see through His perspective. 

To access the essays mentioned in this conversation, order the book Oros Yaakov at the following link:
https://www.amazon.com/אורות-יעקב-Shnayor-Burton/dp/B0727TH8X8

Join us this week as we build on the idea of the "land that I will show you". We grapple with how the concept that land can be a conduit for man to see from a Godly perspective, takes on concrete form in a particular plot of land on planet Earth. We also explore what role the righteous people (particularly Abraham) contribute to this concretization, and why this particular strip of land in the Middle East that they saw Godliness in is still so central to this day. 

The prescribed purification process for contact with the dead is the paradigm of the mysterious class of torah laws called Chukim. The sages connect this process to Job's lamenting of man's mortality, and state that Job denied the resurrection of the dead. In perhaps our deepest and most wide-ranging discussion to date we posit that the essentially human tendency to view death as tragic paradoxically point to our eternal essence. Along the way we discuss the distinction between grass and trees as symbols of life, and conclude by suggesting that the human connection to the good paradoxically necessitates inscrutable laws in an imperfect world. 

Balak and Balaam were among the first to attempt to curse the nation of Israel, and, in doing so, emphasized Israel's distinctness. Yet the attempted curses were turned into praises of Israel's uniqueness. Join us this week as we discuss this archetypal dynamic concerning Israel's relation to the nations, and its connection to today's antisemitism.

Moses, the man not-of-words, gives a wordy address that encompasses most of the fifth and final book of the Torah.
Unlike the first four books of the Torah, Moses's speech expresses the prohibition against idolatry by repeatedly warning against serving gods that we "do not experience". 
And close to the beginning of his speech, Moses utters the biblical expression of lamentation-"Eichah"- in stating his inability to lead Israel alone. Join us this week as we explore the connections between these striking features of Deuteronomy, and much more. 

“Hear O Israel, the Lord who is our God will be One”. This is how Rashi, following the Sifri, interprets the first verse of the Shema, thereby understanding the statement as not a creed affirming a metaphysical truth, but rather as eschatology of the Future to Come. Until then, the "other gods" referred to in the second of the Ten Commandments roam the world. In this discussion, we attempt to unpack what this means and how the process we affirm in the Shema may unfold.

"He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then fed you manna, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to make known to you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the LORD decrees." (Deuteronomy 8:3)

"The heavens ("Shamayim") belong to God, but the earth He gave over to man ." (Psalms 115:116)

The Vilna Gaon teaches that the essence of Shamayim (the heavens) is that it is “Sham”, it is “there”. It is the ultimate not-here, and thus unknown, mysterious, inaccessible. Join us to unpack what it may mean to eat food from "there" rather than from here on earth, in other words, to eat Manna rather than bread.

"That some scoundrels from among you have gone and subverted the inhabitants of their town, saying, 'Come let us worship other gods'—whom you have not experienced!" (Deuteronomy 13:14)

"Let him who glories glory only in this, that he understands and experiences Me" (from Jeremiah 9:23)

The Torah gravely warns of scoundrels who may tempt us to worship gods we don't experience. Jeremiah says there is nothing to be proud of except for genuine experience of God. Thus, much hinges on today's discussion: What is Da'as Hashem and how might we attain it?

Why did prophecy stop? Can we bring it back? If so, should we? Did it already come back in the year 1216? Is there a danger that witchcraft and idolatry may return as well? 

Join us as we ponder these questions. We provide few conclusions, other than that this topic is of great importance, and not nearly as distant as one might think. 

The Torah promises long life as the reward for the fulfillment of two commandments: honoring one's parents and sending away the mother bird before taking her brood. We are taught that the apparent failure of this promise to materialize for a boy who helped his father send away the mother bird powerfully impressed the great sage Elisha Ben Avuyah, leading him to become the notorious heretic Acher. This week's conversation attempts to unpack this challenging teaching, which is surprisingly bound with the most fundamental issues, including death, immortality, resurrection, the world to come, and the eating of the Tree of Knowledge. 

"One of the mountains that I will tell you", "the place that God will select", "the land of Moriah". These are some of the ways the Torah refers to the holiest city, never using the name it is widely known by. Join us this week as we discuss why these cryptic signifiers may be most appropriate for conveying Jerusalem's specialness. 

Maimonides’ prooftext that man has power over his own actions is the biblical verse that describes the power man attained after sinning and eating from the forbidden Edenic fruit. Yet Maimonides also teaches us that as God wills that each part of creation exist in accord with its nature, He wills that man exist as a free rational agent. Furthermore, Maimonides emphasizes that the belief that man is given the power to do good or evil is fundamental to the Torah. Does it follow that God willed that man would eat from the Tree of Knowledge? And if so, how could the Torah call that a sin? 

Join us this week for Part 1 of our discussion of Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance, focused on Chapter 5, as we grapple with these questions and more. Stay tuned for next week’s Part 2, as we will, God not preventing, discuss Chapter 6, focusing on Torah verses that suggest God at times controls human action. 

Is man’s free will ever (externally) impeded? No, it is absolute, says Maimonides, and yet man can lose the ability to change his sinful ways. Join us this week as we discuss this apparent paradox, addressing numerous points in the sixth chapter of the Laws of Teshuvah along the way.

A world of perfect and absolute wisdom, coherence, and moral order would seem to be the only kind of world that a Perfect Being would create. Yet, one crucial element might be missing in such a world, one that is necessary for relating to this Perfect Being as our God.  Join us this week as we navigate this conundrum, and learn how it sheds light on the Account of the Origin. 

“My breath shall not abide in Adam forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years."

Noach and his family survived the great flood described in the beginning of Genesis. Join us this week to learn why nonetheless, the flood marked the end of humanity, and what is being done to bring it back. 

Our forefathers advised their wives to tell the inhabitants of lands they sojourned in that they were not their wives, but their sisters. Far from being instrumental mistruths,  these incidents are links in a great biblical and midrashic chain illuminating the Torah’s idea of love, and how subjective minds are meant to relate to the physical and the objective. Join us this week to find out more, and why and how we should try to make God’s world our sister. 
 
Rav Shnayor's essay on this week's topic appears in the book linked to below. It is strongly recommended. 
https://www.amazon.com/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%A7%D7%91-Shnayor-Burton/dp/B0727TH8X8/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA+%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%A7%D7%91&qid=1633091685&sr=8-5

The prophet Elijah, against the Heavenly Court's wishes, taught Rabbi Judah the Prince and his students the secret protocol for bringing about the final redemption. The rabbis almost succeeded, until they were thwarted at the last moment by Elijah himself.* Join us this week to find out what this secret protocol might be, why it is so hard to follow, and how it inevitably brings about the resurrection of the dead. 

*https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.85b.11?lang=bi

We believe that the soul is eternal and that the dead will return to life. Why, then, do we fear dying and mourn the dead? And why does the Torah give weight to the phenomenon of death? There is indeed a tension here, and this week we speculate about why this is as it must be. 

Esau greatly honored Isaac throughout his days, and yet his brother Jacob received their father Isaac's prime blessing. It is Israel alone that can actually fulfill the verse which commands "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long on the land that the Lord your God gives to you", and yet the Talmud teaches that certain of Esau's descendants continue to outdo Israel in honoring their parents. Join us this week for a discussion of what this means and how it can be. 

The Torah's laws and ethical directives ostensibly discourage both the valuing of physical beauty, and the occult. Yet both phenomena are prevalent in the Torah, particularly among our beautiful mother Rachel and her kingly descendants, such as Joseph, the dreamer of dreams, and King Saul, who consulted the necromancer of Ein Dor.  Join us this week for a discussion of how these phenomena relate to each other and whether and how there might be a valid place for them.

To  wait or to initiate? That is the question this week, for both womankind and for Israel. Join us to find out what it means and why it matters.

Maimonides tells us in his Guide that not everyone who has a veridical dream is a prophet, perhaps having in mind Joseph the righteous. But if Joseph was indeed not a prophet, he nonetheless had a mastery of the dream realm, one that offended his brothers yet caused the highest members of Egyptian society to seek his counsel. Tune in this week to learn how this dreaming power relates to exile, why the other sons of Jacob rejected it, how it can be activated through proper eating, and more. 

Seventy from the house of Jacob went to Egypt, the first and prototypical place of exile.  Seventy is also the number of original "languages", or nations, that inhabit the world outside of Israel. Join us this week to learn how the fate of these seventy nations is linked to the children of Israel's role in exile and the ultimate redemption, and how we can consciously participate in this process. 

God called it "My Nation". Majorities of Jews throughout multiple ages made it their home. It was the location of a temple, altars and sacrifices to Hashem.  Rav Yehudah Halevy made pilgrimage to its holy sites... Egypt. Join us this week to learn why the difference between it and the Holy Land is subtler than one might think. 

What is the purpose of Israel's exile? Is it a consequence of national sin, or a necessary condition for outreach to gentiles? On the surface, these are our sages' two main, opposing approaches, but in truth, they are two steps of one process by which ruptures in Daas Hashem are exposed and then repaired. Join us this week as we explore what this means, touching on some secrets of the Torah along the way. 

Warning: Listen to this bonus episode only if you are prepared for an unfiltered and occasionally speculative conversation about Daas Hashem. 

"He established them to endure forever, providing a law that shall not be transgressed."  Thus does Psalms 148 describes God's institution of laws of nature-in other words, His justice. Does this divine justice relate to our human imperative to pursue justice in the legal and ethical senses? And if God's justice is expressed in His unyielding natural law, how can His occasional miraculous interventions, which break that law, also be called just? Join us as we discuss these questions and more, with the aim of understanding a term we are used to rolling off our tongues in prayer and learning. 

Water and Air, Matter and Spirit. Humanity, infused with the air of life by God, barely survived its first encounter with the deluge of matter, and only by retreating to an ark. Moses, "the one who pulls out of the water", confronted the sea directly and subdued it. Join us this week to learn what this means and how we can follow in his ways. 

Is the Torah our guide to understanding God's ways, and ipso facto, the good life? Or is it something Other entirely? And if it may be the latter, why does it contain so much humanly graspable law? Join us this week as we grapple with these questions and more. 

Many of the Torah's laws, and a large portion of traditional Torah study, concern the domain of what appears to be civil law. What explains the emphasis on what at first glance is a secular area of law, an area that appears to have parallels among the laws of other nations? Stated differently, what exactly is a divine civil law, and what is its purpose? This week we analyze this question, and in turn speculate about the relationship between Godly and human thought, the importance of escorting one's guests, and much more. 

Sources:
Genesis 19
Mishneh Torah: Laws of Mourning 14:2
Derashos Haran: Derash 11
Tosfos on Avodah Zarah 10b

How can we construct a house for One who is beyond space? Why donate our treasures to One who owns the heavens and the earth? Join us this week to find out.