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Posts by Monica Cellio
The child of a Jewish woman is a Jew. Is this status transmitted through birth or through parentage (genetics)? Specifically, if a Jewish woman acts as a surrogate for two non-Jews, what is the s...
This doesn't strictly answer your question, but I think the background information and context will be helpful. The halacha (Jewish law) is that we can violate any torah law to save a human life e...
Din Online, one of the many "ask a rabbi" services online, wrote in an answer that usage of this phrase is custom but there's no law that formalizes it. They add that it is usually used for someon...
I know that if one designates something for the temple (an offering or a donation), it can't be taken back -- it's committed. Is this a general principle of designating things, or is it specific t...
A few years ago, on the fall equinox, I noticed that the day was longer than 12 hours according to the (secular) sunrise/sunset times. Curious, I did some investigation. One reason for the differ...
Sorry about the confusion! We imported a small number of questions and answers from Mi Yodeya. If any of those had been written by you, then they would have been assigned to a "holding" account o...
The general answer to your question is that Hebrew is preferable but you also need to understand what you're saying, so it's permitted to pray in other languages. (Ideally you are working to impro...
Sefaria has just announced this year's Powered by Sefaria contest. The goal is to attract projects that are interesting and creative and that make use of Sefaria's library of texts and/or open API...
Eventually we want to have integrated chat. We aren't there yet. In the nearer term, we're overhauling the commenting system in a way that will make it easier to have discussion threads on questi...
I have heard (but have no source) that, to fulfill the obligation of reading the megillah, one must either be physically present for a reading or, if listening by phone, follow along in a kosher sc...
Exodus 21:28-29 (and onward) gives us laws concerning the ox that gores. If it happens once, they kill the ox but do not punish the owner. But if the ox has a pattern of goring and the owner has ...
Upon learning of someone's passing, I have been taught, we immediately say baruch dayan ha-emet. I have also been taught that we don't say blessings (or learn torah) in inappropriate locations. M...
This past year I grew some vegetables for the first time. I don't live in Eretz Yisrael, so I know I don't have to tithe my produce, but it made me wonder: what if I did? How would I go about tha...
Here on Codidact tag names can include Hebrew. In the interest of inclusivity I created a bilingual tag for a question I just asked (and asked someone else to do the same). Questions we import fr...
In Lech L'cha there is a famine so severe that Avram has to leave Canaan and go down to Egypt for food. He leaves Egypt with great wealth, and then in Bereishit 13:1 he continues traveling with Lo...
For tashlich I'm used to joining a group, and thus somebody else figures out where to do it. But there won't be groups this year. I could of course return to any of the locations we've used in th...
Ah, there was another one! Thanks for finding that. This question was (somehow) imported twice, at these two URLs: https://judaism.codidact.com/questions/277598 https://judaism.codidact.com/quest...
We have learned by experience that the data-import process gets tripped up by some character encodings... like Hebrew. (Oops!) The mix of HTML (what we can get from SE) and Markdown and character...
I've read a lot about lashon hara from the perspective of (not) speaking it. My question is from the other side: what are one's obligations, both halacha and ethically (per Judaism), upon witnessin...
I was talking with a US rabbi from a liberal movement who left a congregation after 30 years. He told me that he needed to disengage from his now-former congregants, out of deference to the new ra...
Due to the pandemic, on Rosh Hashana1 some congregations will be blowing the shofar outdoors to mitigate the health risks. In an urban area, this means someone could stay safely far away and yet s...
Allow them, but require clinical (or at least euphemistic) language. Allow them: These topics are as important as any others in halacha and rabbinic tradition, and anyway people will naturally enco...
It seems likely that we will import at least some content from Mi Yodeya. There's a separate question for that; in this question I want to focus on a suggestion brought up in an answer there: keep...
During the COVID pandemic many synagogues have moved activities online, including communal prayer. Some have even done this on Shabbat, and the Conservative movement recently published a responsum...
A mishna on Ketubot 59b lists the household tasks a husband may demand of his wife (grinding corn, baking bread, washing his clothes, etc). It then goes on to say that if she brought a bondwoman (...
