Breakneck Through the Bible · Rabbi Bentzi Epstein

TORCH
  • 5.0 (15)
  • Judaism
  • Updated Weekly

A Marvelous journey through the Bible, the Torah. Presented by Rabbi Bentzi Epstein of TORCH Dallas!

  1. 2d ago

    Ep. 51 - Too Tired to Run

    Lot is standing outside Sodom with two angels, just before the city burns, and they tell him to run for the mountains. He asks for an alternative: a nearby town named Zoar, close enough that he won't have to face the wilderness alone. G-d grants his request, sparing that city from being consumed in the destruction. Then the fire falls. Lot's wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt as four cities are turned to ash. Lot's prayer for that small town to be spared gets answered. Abraham's prayer for Sodom itself, offered by the man whose righteousness the entire Torah is built around, does not. Rabbi Epstein brings in a teaching from the Maggid on why the smaller, more self-interested prayer succeeds where the greater one fails, and what it means that some prayers are being saved for people who haven't been born yet. The episode closes in a cave in the mountains, where Lot ends up after all, and where his family takes a turn that will shape nations for generations.

  2. Aug 21

    Ep. 50 - Bring Them Out to Us

    The angels have entered Sodom, and Lot has pulled them into his home despite the risk, in a city where sheltering a guest overnight is itself a crime. Rabbi Epstein and Tom pick up as the meal Lot serves turns out to be matzah, and the timing is not incidental. This is Passover night, centuries before the Exodus, the night the Torah ties to the very possibility of freedom. Lot has spent years chasing what Sodom offers and could never walk away from it on his own. Now G-d is about to take the choice out of his hands, and the conversation traces what that kind of mercy actually costs. That night the men of the city surround the house, and Lot makes an offer to the mob that is hard to read as anything but appalling. Rabbi Epstein and Tom work through what he might have been calculating and how the Sages weigh a failure like that. When the angels finally strike the crowd blind and drag Lot inside, warning him to gather his family before dawn and get out, he doesn't move. The Torah marks the moment with a cantillation so rare it appears only a handful of times in the entire text: he lingers. They end on the question they'll pick up next episode. If you've earned the right to survive judgment, have you also earned the right to watch it happen?

  3. Aug 10

    Ep. 49 - Sitting at Sodom's Gate

    Sodom is a city under a death sentence. Abraham has just finished negotiating with G-d over how many righteous people it would take to save it. Now the angels sent to carry out that judgment are walking through the gates and encounter Lot, Abraham's nephew, a man who chose to live in a place like this. Rabbi Epstein and Tom pick up the story right as the angels arrive, and the questions start piling up fast. Why come at night, in a city where sheltering a guest overnight is itself a punishable offense? And why is Lot the one sitting at the gate?  From there the conversation opens into a bigger question: what is an angel? The answer is that an angel is a messenger with a job and no ability to refuse it. It does what it's told, then retires to sing praise in heaven forever. It can't rebel. It can't choose the harder right over the easier wrong, because choosing involves free will, something angels don’t have. Humans, of course, do have free will; every time someone does the harder right thing when the easier wrong thing was sitting right there, they've pulled off something no angel can do. That is why a human being, though flawed, distractible, and capable of failing completely, outranks the beings who surround G-d's throne.

  4. Jul 29

    Ep. 48 - An Exercise in Humility

    What is a righteous life worth? Abraham puts that question to G-d directly, negotiating on behalf of a city he owes nothing to and testing how many good people it takes to redeem the many. He opens at fifty people, and stops at nine. Rabbi Epstein explores why that number carries significance far beyond this one episode, and what it reveals about the kind of presence a small group of committed people can have in a world that seems too far gone to save. Along the way, the conversation turns to what humility actually looks like when you are, by any honest measure, a great man. And the episode circles back to Lot, the nephew Abraham could not quite let go of, and the choices that placed him in a city under judgment in the first place. By the time the angels reach the gates of Sodom, one question lingers: if Abraham understood exactly what it would take to save the city, why didn't he go there himself and do it?

  5. Jul 10

    Ep. 47 - Why Bother Praying?

    This episode opens as the three guests rise from Avraham's table and set out toward Sodom. G-d then tells Avraham about the impending destruction of Sodom. Avraham prays to save the city, but his prayer will not work. G-d knows this before Avraham opens his mouth. Minutes later, Lot asks G-d for a much smaller favor and gets an immediate yes. A better man's prayer gets refused. A weaker man's prayer gets answered on the spot. Rabbi Epstein brings a teaching from the Dubno Maggid that flips this around entirely, and it reshapes how you think about every prayer that seems to go unanswered. The episode also covers why some of the angels turn back before reaching Sodom while others continue on, the ancient custom of walking a guest partway down the road, and the single incident of cruelty that ended fifty-two years of divine patience with the city.

  6. Jun 24

    Ep. 46 - Sarah’s Laugh

    Last episode, Avraham sent a messenger to bring his guests water. Everything else, he did himself. This episode picks up where that left off, as Avraham runs to prepare a full meal for the three guests waiting under his tree. The errand takes a strange detour first. The calves meant for the meal run away, and Avraham chases them into a cave. Inside are Adam and Eve, buried in the same ground that will one day hold himself, Sarah, Yitzchak, Rivka, Yaakov, and Leah. We now know this as Me'aras HaMachpela. The heart of this episode is what happens when the guests talk about Sarah. Told that she will have a son within the year, Sarah laughs to herself in her tent. G-d hears that laugh and brings it straight to Avraham, except He doesn't repeat her words exactly. One detail gets left out. Rabbi Epstein unpacks why G-d Himself would edit the truth rather than report it word for word, and what that choice teaches about protecting peace between a husband and wife, even when the truth is on the line. The episode also tackles a question that's been building for weeks: how did Avraham already know laws of the Torah that wouldn't be given until Sinai, generations later?

  7. Jun 16

    Ep. 45 - The Messenger Problem

    Avraham rushes to host three strangers and personally oversees every detail. Everything, that is, except the water. For that, he sends a messenger. Rabbi Bentzi Epstein and Tom unpack a chain of cause and effect that stretches from Avraham's tent to the rock that Moshe struck, and from there to a question: when you delegate a mitzvah, does something get lost? There is also a tree. One planted by Avraham for the shade of passing strangers. The same wood, centuries later, would be used to build the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle where the Divine presence rested in the desert. What you do with your hands in this world, it turns out, leaves a longer trail than you think.

  8. May 27

    Ep. 44 - Putting G-d on Hold

    It's been three days since Avraham's circumcision. He is in pain, sweating in the midday heat, when G-d comes to visit him. Then three strangers appear in the distance, and Avraham runs toward them, brings them into his tent, and spends hours hosting them. G-d waits. The question at the center of this episode is how that is anything other than a profound act of disrespect towards the Creator. Rabbi Epstein traces what Avraham’s actions actually mean.

See All (51)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

A Marvelous journey through the Bible, the Torah. Presented by Rabbi Bentzi Epstein of TORCH Dallas!

Information