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In the Talmudic discussion of the Sotah ritual, the halacha is derived that, because part of the ritual requires uncovering the woman's hair, the obligation would otherwise be to keep the hair cove...
One possible reason, but I have no source for it being a requirement in any way, is that we have two different categories of Maror. One is things like horseradish - immediately and unequivocally bi...
Shavuos is about the weeks. That's the easy one. Sukkos is about more than one Sukkah. Not just that we need to build more than one to celebrate the holiday, but because Vayikra 23:43 refers to th...
During p'sukei d'zimra on a week day which is Rosh Chodesh, we add in, during the recitation of Korbanot, a paragraph about the sacrifices of Rosh Chodesh. On Shabbat, add in an extra paragraph wi...
I am looking at the geneology of the 12 tribes and I found that Reuvein had son named Palu. Palu had a son named Eli'av and Eli'av had 3 sons, Datan, Aviram and Nemuel (Bamidbar 26:9) וּבְנֵ֣י אֱל...
during the week,one does not say tachanun in the house of a mourner (or, if the mourner must daven in shul, in the shul). (Emphasis added to the key phrase.) Except, that's not the case, at least...
Fortunately, I live in an area that has had an active Eruv for the last few years. For the first few months of the pandemic, this was actually not much of an issue. Local regulations prohibited gro...
I am looking for resources that go through the section (Vayikra 11:1-30) with a fine toothed comb and discuss and explain the inconsistencies in how animals are described/listed. I have assembled a...
Shabbat was given Shemot 15:25. See rashi there that is sourced from Sanhedrin 56b. Which is before the mana (ch 16) and the giving of the torah (ch 20).
There is a list in Bamidbar 33 of the places and transitions (they set out from X and camped at Y, they set out from Y and camped at Z, etc). This list doesn't say how long they stayed at each. I...
I found myself wondering about this while clearing the table after the first seder this year (which was also Shabbat). Most of the time, both in my family and in the group of friends I sometimes s...
This question arose at my seder this year and nobody present knew of an answer: The haggadah designates the three matzot for specific purposes: We are to break the middle one (and save the larg...
Jacob and his sons, when speaking to Egyptians, consistently refer to God as (ה)אלקים, "the god", and not by his name, יקוק, that distinguishes him from other supposed gods, or other names of his....
Each day, we recite the 8 p'sukim from Bamidbar 28 (1-8) which detail the rules of the twice daily Tamid. The Tamid is an Olah but I'm not sure of the exact purpose of the sacrifice. On weekdays, ...
Simply put, how much physical distance on the globe/map effects a discernable change in time? If I compute the zman for something, I do so based on (for some websites) my zip code. But that zip co...
This d'var torah makes the argument that an orphan can still fulfill the obligation to honor parents, because the sages interpret it more broadly than just your two biological parents. (See the li...
tl;dr in what sense did "the people" as a collective do/say anything? In the Artscroll A""Z 5b1, the commentary in note 1 points out that "The Jews referred to the manna as..." and later, that "th...
At the end of Shemot 19, Moshe has gone down from the mountain to speak to the people. Then Shemot 20 begins with the decalogue, with God speaking the commandments. We're then told (20:15) that a...
AA pointed out in a comment that this is addressed in Makkot 23b-24a. There the g'mara says that of the 613 mitzvot stated to Moshe, The word Torah, in terms of its numerical value, is 611, the...
I'm not fully finished with my hypothetical but it goes something like this: If I davened mincha at the earliest possible time, I can daven maariv before sunset. If I am called to help out with a...
I'm trying to integrate things I (think I) know. Am I right that there's a general religious principle to follow most secular law? The Bible has more than one example of defying a law that contrad...
I've chatted with Monica about this. She agreed with my assessment of the place I first heard about it, which I don't consider good enough to link to. It's about a jurisdiction where COVID emergen...
I'm trying to understand (the classical Jewish view of) the character of Yaakov. He gets the birthright by exploiting a situation -- he did nothing inherently wrong and WE see him as justified in ...
Measuring is always a Rabbinic prohibition. It is only prohibited to directly measure something, but there is no problem to do an action that indirectly measures something out. See Shulchan Aruch 3...
