Parshat Kedoshim

This week's Torah portion is chock full of rules for living...and the genius of singer/songwriter Elana Jagoda is that she took all those rules and made them rhyme. And rock. Give Kedoshim a listen and we promise, you won't soon forget what's holy and what's not.

This is Episode 30 of the weekly Torah cartoon from HasidicStrip.com. Each week, a different storyteller - some musical, some poetic, some just straight-up, tell the story of the current Torah portion...and then we animate it!

Parshat Acharei Mot

Bad stuff goes down in the desert. God demands discipline: sends the Israelites to the corner with a bunch of heavy-duty rules to study. In Acharei Mot, Amichai Lau-Lavie revives his Bar Mitzvah parsha to share what he's learned after 27 years of sitting in the corner with this text.

This is Episode 29 of the weekly Torah cartoon from HasidicStrip.com. Each week, a different storyteller - some musical, some poetic, some just straight-up, tell the story of the current Torah portion...and then we animate it!

Parshat Metzorah

Picking up where we stopped scratching in the last episode, it's back to infestations in Metzorah. But as Rabbi Steve Greenberg explains, a "tzara'at" rash can infiltrate your clothes and your house...not just your skin. Tune in for tips on staying disease-free.

This is Episode 28 of the weekly Torah cartoon from HasidicStrip.com. Each week, a different storyteller - some musical, some poetic, some just straight-up, tell the story of the current Torah portion...and then we animate it!

Parshat Tazria

Tazria is possibly the grossest parsha in the entire Torah, full of scaly skin, sprouting sores and breakouts of Biblical proportions. Join the contagiously comic chronicler of crustiness Jennifer Traig for a tour of Biblical skin disease. Bring your own pimple cream.

This is Episode 27 of the weekly Torah cartoon from HasidicStrip.com. Each week, a different storyteller - some musical, some poetic, some just straight-up, tell the story of the current Torah portion...and then we animate it!

Parshat Shemini

A musical in two acts, this week's Hasidic Strip is so catchy that you'll be singing it in the shower for the rest of the year. Just warning you. From dead priests to unkosher feasts, Shemini has got it going on. A great big tip of the matador's hat to Sephardic indie rock outfit DeLeon for the writing and performance.

This is Episode 26 of the weekly Torah cartoon from HasidicStrip.com. Each week, a different storyteller - some musical, some poetic, some just straight-up, tell the story of the current Torah portion...and then we animate it!

Parshat Bo - A Passover Rerun

Chag sameach! Which means "happy holiday" - indeed, it is a happy holiday! Passover, the festival of matza - starts Wednesday night, April 8.
There's not a new Hasidic Strip episode this week. In fact, we're showing reruns! Why is that, you ask? A wise child you are.
We don't always read the next chapter in the Torah each week. For special occasions, we turn in the Torah to stories that match up with the holiday. For Passover - aka Pesach in Hebrew - we read lots of little excerpts that have to do with the Pesach offering, unleavened bread and so on. In the same way that a clips show builds up excitement for the next episode of your favorite TV series, these holiday selections are a time-out from the calendar of Torah stories we tell on "regular" weeks, and give us exciting new ways to put the pieces together.
The special readings for Passover include a bunch of Hasidic Strip episodes - some of which we haven't even made yet! Watch them again...and come back next week for our next "regular" episode - Shemini.