Shavuos, Harvest, and the value and danger of belief in torah from heaven

Sins of the eyes or of the sense of touch using eyes

Sins of the eyes or of the sense of touch using eyes

The Secret of Yisrael in Galus

This lecture examines the philosophy of fasting through multiple frameworks: as a time-management strategy that creates space for spiritual focus by removing daily obligations, as a protest against modern consumerism and the tyranny of constant productivity, and as a communal gathering that redirects resources toward charity and collective introspection. The discussion then shifts to the deeper problem of Jewish cultural survival in exile, arguing that Judaism requires a complete lived culture—not just abstract principles—and exploring the Kabbalistic metaphor of the Torah as a sword that allows Jews to carve out autonomous cultural space within dominant host civilizations, much as the soul must create meaning within the prison of the body.

Desiring People vs Desiring natural pleasure

This lecture examines Aristotle's distinction between natural/common pleasures and chosen/specific pleasures in Jewish ethics, focusing on food and sex as the two bodily pleasures subject to temperance. The instructor argues against materialist reductions of desire, showing how sexual and gustatory desires are mediated by narrative and cultural scripts rather than being purely physical phenomena. The mitzvah of kiddushin (marriage sanctification) transforms base physical desire into interpersonal, story-laden desire directed toward one's spouse, making proper measure a question of direction and context rather than mere quantity or self-control.

Obesity Epidemic isn’t a failure of Temperance (NE III.11)

This lecture examines Aristotle's hierarchy of human goods and the virtue of temperance, distinguishing between natural bodily desires (shared by all humans) and cultivated, qualitative preferences (specific to individuals and cultures). The instructor argues that modern obesity is primarily a physiological regulation problem rather than a failure of temperance—true temperance concerns *what* and *how* we consume (choosing refined over base pleasures), not merely *how much*. Jewish dietary laws like kashrut exemplify genuine temperance by imposing qualitative order on eating, though modern food abundance presents challenges even these traditional structures struggle to address.

Dialectic restricting temperance to pleasures of body and to sense of touch (NE III.10)

Dialectic restricting temperance to pleasures of body and to sense of touch (NE III.10)