General

Goal: The chanichim should see from this story the anarchy and immoral behavior that took place during the time of the Shoftim, largely because there was no king or strong central leader in charge. They will also see the irony and the backwardness shown in this story by the people who should be leaders.

Goal: The chanichim should understand why Pilgesh B’Givah was such a horrible event – because it happened in a Jewish town by Jewish people, and how absence of leadership in Am Israel at this time allowed this to happen.

Goal: The chanichim will discuss how Shimshon is an extremely strange Shofet, and how this was all on purpose; that Am Israel needed an undercover Shofet who could work undercover, living amongst the Pelishtim, to fight them single handedly on behalf on Am Israel. The chanichim will discuss why Shimshon needed to be a Nazir to offset the dangers of this mission and will discuss the story of his birth and the characters of his mother and father- Manoach and Eshet Manoach.

Goal: Teach about the life of Shimshon: being a Nazir, his battles with the Pelishtim

Backround: Since there are many different ways to present and teach this Perek and so many different things to focus on, I included a lot, but you guys can choose which of these aspects you want to discuss in your shiur.

Goals: Chanichim will understand the messages and the various themes in Shirat Devorah, why Devorah sings Shirah after this battle, and why we should sing Shirah in general.

חידון התנ"ך

על ספר שמואל א' ועשרה פרקים ראשונים של שמואל ב'

Goals: The chanichim will discuss that despite Shimshon’s true reason for living amongst the Pelishtim and starting up with him, he will become influenced by the end, and start giving into his ta’avot and his need for revenge. This will ultimately lead to his downfall.  The question in all of these stories is what are Shimshon’s intentions? Is he really 100% doing this as an undercover mission, or is he taking a lot of fringe benefits (women, power, strength, revenge)? Also the chanichim will discuss the difference between koach – physical strength – that Shimshon definitely has, and gevurah – spiritual strength, which it seems he lacks, and what we can learn from this about what the spiritual personality should be of a leader.

As we saw in the last shiur, even thought Yehoshua was supposed to wipe out all the 7 nations in the land, he didn’t, and as you can see in the map from Shiur #1, there is quite a lot of eretz hanisheret, of left over land that has not been conquered, left full of non Jews. In perek 2 here, the malach comes to bochim and rebukes Am Israel for this sin.

The goal of this shiur is to discuss with the chanichim the original command to wipe out the 7 nations originally. Is this ideal? Or is it genocide? Why would Hashem want us to wipe them out, why can’t we live with them?

Goals:

The chanichim should understand the different stages of the Shoftim cycle and how it differs from the system of Melucha-Galut.

The chanichim should understand the general structure of Sefer Shoftim and how it is in a downhill spiral.

Intro: In our last shiur we saw how Am Israel failed to fulfill their mission by Yehoshua and left a lot of the land unconquered. Then the Malach came to them in the beginning of Perek Bet to yell at them for not fulfilling their job, and not taking initiative to conquer the rest of the land.

Now we move onto a 2nd problem which is a direct consequence of Bnei

Israel not taking initiative to conquer the land. There are now many, many avodah zara worshipping members of the 7 nations hanging out around Jewish towns in Eretz

Israel.  They start influencing Bnei

Israel to do Avodah Zara as well.

(Feel free to get into a discussion here about peer pressure, when are we influenced by our environments and when not, how do you balance being in an environment where people around you have different values {public school, secular college, a rougher chevra}  and maintaining your values and individuality…etc).

Goal: The chanichim should see the irony in the Am Israel going to war against Shevet Binyamin, and how in this civil war, they accomplish everything that they were not able to accomplish when attempting to conquer the land in the 1st perek. This ends the Sefer on an extremely depressing note, stressing again that Am Israel need strong moral leaders in order that anarchy and events like this civil war, do not happen again.

Goals:

The chanichim should understand Yehoshua’s strengths as a leader and how he differed from Moshe.

The chanichim should understand the challenges Yehoshua faced leading the Jews during the transition period from life in the Midbar to life in Eretz

Israel.