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Posts by Monica Cellio
A tallit is normally worn only during the day, yet there is a custom to also wear it for all services of Yom Kippur including Kol Nidrei. Why? I've heard that it's because we take the torah scrol...
After Tisha b'Av we have seven special haftarah readings, which always align with the same torah portions. Every chumash I've seen gives these special readings for those parshiyot. I was taught t...
Rosends pointed out a related question elsewhere with a variety of answers. Here is a compilation of what I learned there and by following links from there: Chabad says (without citing a sour...
In Shemot 18:2-4, Yitro comes from Midian to join the Israelites after the exodus, bringing Moshe's wife Tzipporah and his sons Gershon and Eliezer. This appears to be the torah's last mention of ...
Our community is small. More than "people in general", I think we need to reach people who want to help us build this community. People who, beyond looking for answers to specific questions, want...
To my reading, the discussion that follows makes it clear that the rabbis were wrong to excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Eliezer's excommunication is followed by various disasters, including the...
At services that include it, we stand for Hallel. I've never learned about it but this makes sense; we're sanctifying God, like in Kedusha for which we also stand. But at every Pesach seder I've b...
I should say up front that I am not learned in kabbalah. Like, at all. I recognize some of the words and names of sources. From the text you quoted, it sounds like the danger of studying kabbalah...
I don't have a source for this beyond what you already said about the text saying Chag HaPesach, but I offer this reasoning: Shavu'ot is, as you said, about the weeks (plural). For Sukkot, while ...
Each year my rabbi arranges the sale of chameitz for me (and anybody else who asks), and I know that I could also do this online. Either way, I provide some basic information, like the location of...
This past Shabbat I was reminded (while watching the torah reader rolling the scroll) that all (or nearly all?) of parshat Balak is written as one long paragraph in the scroll -- three solid column...
I live in the diaspora and this doesn't affect me personally, but in thinking about the sh'mita cycle while tending my small garden, I found myself wondering about some details. Does the law to not...
In the instructions for festivals, Vayikra 23:6 says, of Pesach: You shall eat unleavened bread for seven days. Devarim 16:3 is similar, and Devarim 16:8 starts: "After eating unleavened brea...
In Devarim 3:27, when Moshe pleads with God to be allowed to go into the land, God says to him: עֲלֵ֣ה ׀ רֹ֣אשׁ הַפִּסְגָּ֗ה וְשָׂ֥א עֵינֶ֛יךָ יָ֧מָּה וְצָפֹ֛נָה וְתֵימָ֥נָה וּמִזְרָ֖חָה וּרְאֵ֣...
I have been taught that we count the omer at night with a b'racha. Counting at night makes sense; it's the first opportunity to fulfill the commandment each day and we should rush to fulfill a mit...
When Yisrael spent 40 years in the wilderness, they sometimes camped for longer periods of times and sometimes for shorter ones, sometimes even just two days (Bamidbar 9:21 -22): וְיֵ֞שׁ אֲשֶׁר־...
That's bizarre. The question was imported and then deleted by System. I don't know why, so I've undeleted it and confirmed its visibility in an incognito window (i.e. while not signed in). Update...
It's not either/or but "both, and". Judaism has a system of rules, halacha, by which we are to live our lives. Halacha is not negotiable, so that might sound like "all or nothing". Instead, thin...
I've heard a setting (by Debbie Friedman) of the song "Shalom Aleichem" that, in the last verse, says "shuvchem" instead of "tzeitchem" (recording, mixed group of singers). A rabbi who knew her to...
First, it may not be valid to assume that creation was bound by the laws of science as we now understand them. Why should we assume that the very first plants grew by photosynthesis in the same wa...
It's not either/or but "both, and". Judaism has a system of rules, halacha, by which we are to live our lives. Halacha is not negotiable, so that might sound like "all or nothing". Instead, thin...
We know that God told the entire torah to Moshe (with Moshe writing it down the second time) at Har Sinai. This must include the book of D'varim, because I have learned somewhere that there is a d...
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