Author: Meghan Froy

The Jewish month of Tevet always begins during Hanukkah. But when the first of that month also happens to be Shabbat, it’s a busy day in synagogue.  As Rabbi Titzhak Nappaha says on today’s daf: When the new moon of Tevet occurs on Shabbat, we take out three Torahs: From one, we read the topic of the […]

One of the oldest Jewish jokes in the book involves Mr. Cohen and Mr. Goldberg, regular minyan goers (meaning they pray together daily at the synagogue). One morning, as Mr. Cohen is hemming and hawing about going to synagogue, his wife asks: “Why do you even bother going? You don’t even believe in God!” His answer: “Goldberg talks to […]

Many home cooks this past year, in an Insta-inspired spirit, upped their challah-baking game with new braiding patterns, interesting flavors and vibrant colors. Yet it was a more standard ingredient that unwittingly connected many to their roots. If you used Fleischmann’s yeast for your challah, you leavened your dough with the essence of American Jewry. […]

The mishnah on today’s daf points out a challenge with gathering Jews from all over the world on Yom Kippur, with their different expectations and attitudes toward ritual life. Culture clash becomes somewhat inevitable — like this: And they made a ramp for the goat due to the Babylonian Jews who were in Jerusalem, who would pluck […]

Today we are still troubleshooting the dramatic ritual of the two male goats whose fate is determined by casting lots: One is designated to be sacrificed on the altar, and the other to be sent off into the wilderness, symbolically carrying the nation’s sins. The mishnah on 62a wonders what happens if one of the goats dies […]

The Talmud takes great care not only to record teachings accurately, but to attribute them correctly. This doesn’t mean mistakes are not made. Often, the Talmud will attribute a teaching to one rabbi, only to remark that others attribute it to another rabbi. Or, as is the case today, it will know the source but […]

An egg cream was my father’s kitchen claim to fame. He assembled them with great flourish — Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, cold milk from a glass bottle, and a long, hard shpritz of seltzer, followed by a vigorous stir. Even today, when I drink or think of it, it takes me back to my family’s […]

Echoes, mantras, song choruses — repetition is powerful. The rabbis were particularly attuned to repetition in the sacred language of the Bible, which they understood to be bursting with meaning. Since the sages thought of divine language as perfect, they did not view repetition as redundancy, but as an important clue to deeper significance. Any extra […]