Classes by Mordechai Dinerman

Today we pick up where we left off: it's just before Rosh Hashanah 1904, and Rabbi Akiva Yosef Shlesinger's plan to sound the shofar on Shabbos looks promising.
Today we find out what actually happened that Rosh Hashanah and why, and how the conversation carried on through the following year, up to Rosh Hashanah 1905, which was also on Shabbos.
And finally, we’ll reach the last scene of the story: the conversation leading up to Rosh Hashanah 1908.
As we go, we'll see how the balance of Rabbi Shlesinger's reasoning shifted, and we’ll also examine how some of his colleagues answered him on his own terms.
 

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A Blast From the Past: The Shabbos Shofar Showdown in the Early 1900s (Part II)

As Jews prepared for Rosh Hashanah 1904, Rabbi Akiva Yosef Shlesinger took up his pen and wrote to a rabbinic journal in Hungary, laying out why he believed the shofar should be sounded on Shabbos despite the rabbinic ban. In this class, we examine his account of the attempt leading up to Rosh Hashanah 1882, and then again leading up to Rosh Hashanah 1904. We'll trace the steps he took, the halachic and extra-halachic reasoning behind them, and how other famous rabbis reacted.

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A Blast From the Past: The Shabbos Shofar Showdown in the Early 1900s (Part I)

A man wrote to the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Rebbe of Chabad, about fears he couldn’t shake in matters of health and money.
What came back was a long letter working through Torah sources to explain how fear takes hold and how to loosen its grip.
This class takes this remarkable letter line by line, setting the scene, tracing the sources, and drawing out what it asks of us today.

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A Chasidic Letter on Anxiety

HaRav Levi Yitzchak Schneerson spent his final years in exile in Kazakhstan, banished there by the Soviets for his work strengthening Jewish life across the Soviet Union.
Soon after arriving there in 1940, he wrote a brief account of his imprisonment.
It reads like no ordinary memoir: each line is a kabbalistic commentary on his own life, shaped by a deep belief in personal divine providence.
Gathering to honor his yahrzeit on the twentieth of Av, we studied this account and worked to unpack its esoteric terms.
It isn’t the easiest material to understand, but it does paint a vivid picture of this special leader and his worldview.

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HaRav Levi Yitzchak, In His Own Words: A Commemorative Study

In 1612, Avraham Portaleone of Mantua published a landmark work of encyclopedic proportions covering all things Beis Hamikdash.
Reading through four of his discussions, we meet a man working under far-from-ideal conditions.
His sefer turns out to be part of a larger story about the struggles of Jewish printing and book possession in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.
The Rabbi-Doctor Who Wrote a Sefer on the Beis Hamikdash with Both Hands Tied Behind His Back