How we work
Your Torah, checked at the source.
A learned reader decides whether to trust a whole sefer on its sources. So we treat every source as the reader who opens the Chumash will.
Three standards
What every sefer is held to.
Only what you said
A sefer carries only the sources the rav himself cited. Nothing is added to his Torah, and nothing is put in his mouth. If something is missing, we look for it in his other shiurim, not in anyone else's.
Checked at the text
Every pasuk, Gemara and Rishon is read in the source itself, never from a summary or from memory. What we cannot locate, we bring to the rav as a question.
Every number counted
If the page says "four words", there are four words; if it says "three reasons", there are three. A reader who knows no Torah can still count, so we count first.
An illustration: the kind of correction we make as a matter of course
The shiur said
"We are all created b'tzelem Elokim, it says it right there in Bereishis, in the first perek."
The draft said
"We are all created b'tzelem Elokim, in the image of God (Bereishis 1:26)."
The text says
וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ, בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ
Bereishis 1:27. Verse 26 says בְּצַלְמֵנוּ; the phrase itself is in 27.
The sefer prints
"We are all created b'tzelem Elokim, in the image of God (Bereishis 1:27)."
One verse off is the kind of slip no one notices, until the one reader who opens the Chumash does.
Your voice
A sefer the rav can claim, word for word.
Spoken Torah and written Torah are different things. A shiur repeats itself, circles back and leans on the room; a page cannot. We find the sentence the rav would have written had he sat down to write, and keep everything that makes it his: his register, whether chassidish, litvish, Sephardi or kiruv; his stories and mashalim; the way he builds to a point.
Where he gave a shiur three or four times, we read every telling and build from the fullest one, because a rav's most repeated Torah is usually his most refined.
Your review
Nothing is final until you say so.
Every chapter goes to the rav on his own private review page, where he can read it, mark it and return it, as closely or as lightly as he chooses. Some rabbanim mark every line; others read the whole manuscript and send a few notes. Each note is applied, or answered in writing.
Questions of halacha are never ours to decide. Anything that touches psak is marked for the rav, and stays as he rules.
What we never do
The lines we do not cross.
- Add a source the rav did not cite
- Put a word in his mouth he would not say
- Quote a source from memory or from a summary
- Change a story into a better story
- Decide a question of halacha
- Publish or send anything without the rav's approval
See it on your own Torah.
Send us one shiur, and we will write it up as a sample chapter.
Send a shiur