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Top Shavuot videos

The Real Shavuot: Receiving Torah or Harvest Festival?

Video series • Part 1 of 6 • 6 min

The Torah seems to speak of Shavuot as a harvest holiday, but the Rabbis conceive of it as the time to celebrate the Giving of the Torah. Which one is it? In this series, Rabbi Fohrman shows that the two actually complement each other to bring deeper, relevant meaning to Shavuot.

Why Did God Give the Torah to Only One Nation?

Video series • Part 1 of 3 • 4 min

The Mount Sinai experience changed human morality forever. So why was only one nation invited to witness it? Some say this moment turned the Jews into God’s “Chosen People.” But what if the Ten Commandments contained a message about a dark moment in the Jewish People’s past, one that is meant to remind them what their true role among the nations should be.

Why Ruth’s Story Captures Shavuot Perfectly

Video series • Part 1 of 5 • 11 min

The connections between the themes of Shavuot and the Book of Ruth seem… tenuous at best. Thankfully, Rabbi Fohrman unearths how this lowly convert taught us the perfect moral message to complement the awesome moment of revelation.

Why Does Shavuot Mean "Weeks"?

Video series • Part 1 of 5 • 13 min

Nobody celebrates when the IRS updates the tax code. So why do Jews make such a festive celebration around the giving of our law? To understand this question, we have to return to the name of the holiday – “Weeks” – and how the time period from Passover to Shavuot prepared us for true freedom.

Did Ruth Seduce Boaz?

Video series • Part 1 of 4 • 11 min

The infamous nighttime rendez-vous between Ruth and Boaz might rub people the wrong way. What are two righteous individuals doing alone at a threshing floor? But Rabbi Fohrman’s closer investigation just might redeem this taboo tale.

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Rabbi Fohrman Our lead scholar

Rabbi David Fohrman is the founder and lead scholar at Aleph Beta. Over the last two decades, he’s pioneered a way of reading Biblical text that feels both rigorous and revelatory. Through Aleph Beta, he’s given expression to that, developing what is now a vast library of content, spanning all types of media: animated videos, podcasts and books. He’s also embarked on an effort to train a team of Torah scholars adept at the close-reading methodology he’s pioneered – and their work can be found at Aleph Beta, too.

Prior to his founding of Aleph Beta, Rabbi Fohrman served as a senior editor and writer for the ArtScroll Talmud Project. He also taught Biblical themes as adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University, where he had earlier received a Master’s degree in Western intellectual history. Rabbi Fohrman received his rabbinical and Talmudic training at the Ner Israel Rabbinical College, but some of his earliest and most profound exposure to Biblical text analysis came from his encounters with Rabbi Yosef Leibowitz, in his childhood years in Northern California.

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