This week, with Simchat Torah, we arrive at the ending and the beginning.

As we hear the poetic message Moses bequeaths to us in our Torah toward the end of our wilderness journey, Harvard Ph.D. student and scholar of Jewish art, history, and scribal tradition, Deborah B. Thompson, and Sonia Epstein '22 join the Harvard Torah conversation to explore how cherished verses, poems and songs and special letters can be touchstones and guiding stars on our travels. For a key to the biblical passages on which the song at the end of the podcast draws: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_V8uT7TtVpzNF1O9nSG1qKYIY4AgWS8s/view?usp=sharing To learn more about the scriptural letters Deborah studies, visit her blog: www.devorahlearnsmasorah.com

As we find our Torah telling the story of itself as a written Book, two scholars of scriptural literature join the Harvard Torah conversation – Professor Luis Manuel Girón-Negrón, whose current work on the 15th century Arragel Bible tells of remarkable communication and collaboration in Spain of that time in the production of a codex of scriptural translation and commentary incorporating Jewish and Christian traditions and ideas – and Theo Motzkin '19 who now studies the ancient languages, literatures, and religious cultures of Mesopotamia and the Near East at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.   

"You stand all of you today before the Eternal One your God," begins our Torah reading this week – and how to share with you the joy of all of us who are able at long last to be together in person on the Harvard campus?  Beyond a podcast message expressing some of that joy in words, I hope you will enjoy the photos at this link: https://hillel.harvard.edu/harvard-torah-ep-46-slideshow, snapped at our Harvard Hillel Pop-Up Café this past week, welcoming students to campus.

"Ki Tavo" – "When you come into the Land" – is our reading this week; and amid the many blessings of our coming back into in-person community, psychologist Jerry Zuriff and Social Studies student Sarah Shamoon '21-'22 join the Harvard Torah conversation to ponder the Curses that figure in this week's Torah reading along with the possible blessings, what to make of those 'rebukes' or 'chastisements,' and how to make sure they are not our fate.

As our students head back to campus for a great Harvard ingathering, Rabbi Jenn Queen, Harvard Hillel's Robert and Dale Mnookin Director of Engagement, joins in the Harvard Torah conversation – in the face of a reading that may seem quite alien and even alienating in parts at first glance – to discuss being present with and for one another as the essence of creating a community that listens to our Torah. 

Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, expert in inequality and the U.S. criminal system, and Ezra Feder ‘24, both of whom have worked in Maryland’s Office of Public Defense, join the Harvard Torah conversation – as our scriptures command us to appoint ‘judges and officers in all our gates’ – for a discussion on pursuing righteous justice.  

This week's instalment of Harvard Torah comes to you recorded amid travels – as our ancestors, in our scriptures, prepare to set up a distinctive haven and home country.  I hope you enjoy this brief and solo journeying interlude in the ongoing series, and I can promise a return to the podcast's customary format, with a wonderful Harvard teacher and student, for next week's Torah reading.

Spencer Glassman '23-'24, just back from a year in Israel, joins the Harvard Torah conversation, to reflect on ourselves and on others in our land – as we hear the Children of Israel instructed in our scriptures in fearsome terms about the conquest ahead of them, and we hear them told to love the stranger.

Professors Arthur Applbaum of Harvard and Jon Gould '10 of Berkeley Law School join the Harvard Torah conversation, as our Torah gives us some of the most fundamental words and covenantal ideas of our tradition.