Category Archives: Torah 101

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#73: The Sequencing of Messiah

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What will happen in the times of Messiah? For us, that is an unanswerable question. Our Sages tell us that unless you are a prophet, it is not possible for you to know ahead of time how the Messianic transformation will unfold. That said, our Sages do provide us with descriptions and accounts and hints and allusions that can give us some insight into what we have to look forward to. In this podcast we focus on the concept that Messiah may be part of a sequence of events that string together to create the Messianic era.

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#72: The Variability of Messiah

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We have been awaiting and anticipating Messiah for millennia. Messianic yearning has been a hallmark of Jewish life ever since we were exiled from our land with the destruction of the Second Temple. Messiah, we have learned, will definitely happen. It is inevitable. But the type of Messiah depends upon the path that we choose to get there. Messiah is variable in many different ways. In this podcast episode we explore the various areas in which the variability of Messiah is manifested.

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#71: The Inevitability of Messiah

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The sources all agree: Messiah is not a possibility that we can potentially achieve; it is an inevitability. It will definitely happen. Under no circumstances will Messiah and not come before the year 6,000 since Adam. The inevitability of Messiah raises a fundamental question, though: if something is inevitable, it cannot be linked to frail, fallible, and fickle human free will. Yet the sources also maintain that the arrival of Messiah is in fact contingent on our choices and behavior. This paradox opens up for us new vistas of understanding of Messiah, it’s inevitability, and it’s variability. In this podcast we forge ahead in our studies seeking to understand Messiah and the Messianic era.

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This TORAH 101 Podcast is dedicated in the merit of the complete and speedy recovery of Ariel ben Yosef HaKohen.

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#70: The Messianic Renaissance

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The Messianic era will unleash seismic changes to our nation and to all of humanity. In this podcast we talk about the ultimate catalyst of Messiah: Repentance. The sources agree that it is only via repentance that Messiah can arrive. When our nation returns to the Almighty, the world is ready to transition to the next epoch of history.

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#69: The Miracles of Messiah

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Messiah is not an isolated, discrete, transformation that occurs in a vacuum. Messiah is the ultimate redemption. Our nation has experienced redemption before. The pattern of exile and redemption has been constant feature of our nation’s history. It began in Egypt. Our nation enslaved, tormented, and oppressed in Egypt for centuries until the Almighty redeemed us with the Exodus. After 850 years of hegemony, exile came again, this time in the form of the Babylonian exile: the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and sent the nation in chains to Babylon. The Persian exile and redemption is featured in the Purim story and the Greek in the Chanukah story. Currently, our nation is in the 4th and final exile, known as the exile of Edom. Messiah marks the redemption from this 4th and final exile. In this podcast we talked about Messiah in the context of the other exiles, and outline the miracles that we expect in the Messianic age.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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#68: The Persona of King Messiah

Podcast (torah101): Download (Duration: 44:22 — 20.3MB)

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Messiah will not be an ordinary person. He will be a towering figure who’s impact reverberates the world over. In this podcast we study what our Sages tell us about who Messiah is and what his stature will be, and talk about the wide-ranging and far reaching implications that he will have.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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#67: The Messianic Revolution

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Messiah will be an era of seismic changes for the Jewish people and for the world. Knowledge of God will be ubiquitous. The primacy of the Jewish people as God’s chosen Nation will be universally accepted. The pursuit of wisdom will supersede all other pursuits. The world will begin it’s a rapid progress towards perfection. How does this all happen? How do these changes unfold? In this podcast we explore one angle to this question, namely the eradication of the evil inclination in the Messianic era.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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#66: The Mechanisms of Messiah

Podcast (torah101): Download (Duration: 50:59 — 23.3MB)

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The sources depicting Messiah and the Messianic Era paint a very different picture of the world than the one we are accustomed to. Knowledge of God will be universal, on that day God will be One and His Name will be One. The pursuit of knowledge will dominate. The Jewish Nation will be heralded. King Messiah will be universally renowned. A spiritual Renaissance will sweep over the entire world. That is what will happen. But how will it all happen? What are the mechanisms by which these transformations occur? What are the means through which the entire world changes? In this very special podcast we outline the four major mechanisms of Messiah.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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#65: The Objective of Messiah

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The subject of the Messiah is notoriously confusing. What is Messiah? How will Messiah change our lives? What will be different in the Messianic era? The answers to these questions are not ubiquitously known. In this podcast we proceed in our studies of the Twelfth Principle of Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith by addressing the core essence of Messiah: What is the goal of Messiah? How does Messiah fit into the context of the objective of Creation? We ground our discussion with two citations: A comment from Rambam’s Treatise on Reward and Punishment, and one from Ramchal’s Maamar HaIkarim. We conclude the podcast with an observation that thoroughly transforms the subject.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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#64: Messiah: A General Introduction

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Our nation has been anticipating and longing for the Messiah, Moshiach (משיח) in Hebrew, for millennia. We are awaiting his arrival, which can come any day. The Messianic era is a utopian world that we yearn for. But what exactly is the Messiah? What are the qualifications to be Messiah? What is the Messianic era all about? In this podcast episode we embark on a thorough and rigorous study of the subject of Moshiach. Believing in it and anticipating it constitutes the 12th of the 13 principles of Faith as codified by Rambam. We hope, with the help of the Almighty, to cover this subject extensively and comprehensively. In this episode we begin by studying Rambam’s own words, both in his commentary to Mishnah and in his Mishneh Torah.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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#63: Admission to the Afterlife

Podcast (torah101): Download (Duration: 1:14:31 — 34.1MB)

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The term “Olam Haba” refers the world after the Resurrection, the world where there’s life with no death, where there is the dispensing of reward for those who adhere to the word of God. If we were to distill our life mission to one sentence it would be this sentence: our mission in this world is to earn admittance to Olam Haba. What does it take? What must we do to earn eligibility to the ultimate reward in Olam Haba? In this comprehensive podcast we offer the answer to that most critical question. Along the way we cover other related subjects, such as the relationship that we have with our spouses in Olam Haba, and the standing of Gentiles in Olam Haba, and the gradients of levels that we can achieve in Olam Haba, but the primary takeaway of this episode is to know exactly what you need to do to become a bearer of a Golden Ticket to Olam Haba.

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This TORAH 101 Podcast is dedicated in loving memory and leilui nishmas Aharon Ben Yosef, whose yahrzeit is today, the 11th of Kislev, the day that this podcast is released. May his Soul be elevated in Heaven.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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