Rabbi Chaim Ozer Geldzahler
Shiurim on Navi, the Megillos, Gemara and Teshuvah, in English and Yiddish, given at Beis Midrash Tiferes Eliezer in Toms River. Every new shiur appears here as soon as it's posted.
and counting
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Shabbatons, shul and school events, simchas, community gatherings and yeshivos, in English or Yiddish.
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His full TorahAnytime library, plus his videos on YouTube. New shiurim show up here on their own.
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Short clips from Rabbi Geldzahler’s shiurim.
“The Torah is not afraid of my questions.”
Rabbi Chaim Ozer Geldzahler gives shiurim at Beis Midrash Tiferes Eliezer in Toms River, in English and Yiddish. His approach is simple to say and hard to do: put away the version you learned as a child, open the text, and ask every question.
See how a shiur works ↓Put down the five-year-old’s version
Many of us still picture the Megillah as the Purim play in the school lunchroom, and Navi as stories from second grade. Everything we learn later, even Rashi and the Rambam, gets piled on top of that childhood picture.
Rabbi Geldzahler starts every sefer the other way. He opens with the basic questions, until the room admits it doesn’t really understand the story yet. Then the learning can begin.
“Eighty percent of your Torah shouldn’t be two years old.”
A shiur, step by step
Whether it’s a perek of Shmuel, a daf of Bechoros or a chapter of the Rambam, his shiurim follow the same path.
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Lock away what you think you know
Nothing gets thrown out. It gets set aside, so it doesn’t decide what the text says before you read it.
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Read the text as an adult
Just the pesukim, with no commentary yet. These are real people making real choices, and some of it is painful. “Life isn’t kid friendly. Go to the text.”
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Ask every question
Every word on the page has to make sense, and it does. A twenty-year-old asking questions deserves real answers, not what quieted him in fifth grade.
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Then open the meforshim
Now Rashi notices the detail you missed, the Ramban answers Rashi, and the Ibn Ezra asks your question from the corner of the room. He calls it walking into a beis medrash that has come alive, “like a symphony.”
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Bring it home
What does this mean in the bigger picture, and what does it mean for you today?
Chazal kept Sefer Iyov in Tanach
Most of Sefer Iyov is hard questions about why the world seems unjust. His friends offer answers, and at the end Hashem Himself tells them they were wrong. Rabbi Geldzahler takes that as a lesson: questions are part of any honest person’s avodah, and the Torah makes room for them.
So his shiurim don’t always end with a neat answer. Sometimes the shiur is the questions, laid out honestly, so the listener can keep working on them. He doesn’t claim to have every answer, and he says so.
“I don’t have all the answers. I have the questions. We can look for it together.”
“If you give yourself to the Torah, the Torah is going to give itself back to you.”
Navi, Megillos, Gemara and the Rambam
“So many of our questions are answered in Navi,” he says. “We were told Navi as two-year-olds.” His shiurim go back to the sources most people stopped learning after school.
Navi
Yehoshua, Shoftim, Shmuel, Melachim and Yirmiyahu, perek by perek.
The Megillos
Esther, Rus and Eicha, read as adult stories with real stakes.
Gemara
A daily Daf Yomi shiur in Yiddish, currently in Bechoros.
Rambam & Avos
The Shemoneh Perakim: the soul, prophecy and free will, in a 39-part series.
Teshuvah
Roadmap to Teshuvah, From Treason to Forgiveness and Seeds of Destruction.
Yamim Tovim
The Haggadah, Chanukah and the Yamim Nora’im.
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Watch the interview
In TorahAnytime’s Behind the Lens, Rabbi Geldzahler explains how he learns, why he reads Tanach as an adult, and why no question is off-limits.
טַעֲמוּ וּרְאוּ כִּי טוֹב ה׳
Taste, and see that Hashem is good.
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Books & writings
Essays, articles and journals by Rabbi Geldzahler, free to read. New ones appear here as soon as he posts them.
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