Author: Meghan Froy

Back on Nedarim 20, we encountered a mishnah that described four types of vows that can be automatically dissolved without a halakhic authority: vows of exhortation (“come to lunch or I swear I won’t eat a bite today”), vows of exaggeration (“I swear the fish was this big!”), vows made unintentionally, and vows that cannot be fulfilled due to […]

With advances in medicine, human beings on average live longer today than any preceding generation. The customary Jewish birthday greeting,  “May you live to 120,” may one day be a realistic possibility for many of us. But often with extended years come a range of life-altering changes. Those in their later years are likely to suffer from […]

Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani said that Rabbi Yonatan said: Anyone who gets angry, all kinds of Gehenna rule over him … That is, anger inevitably leads to suffering — most of all, for the person who is feeling it. Gehenna, that hellish underworld that serves as the first stop in the afterlife, is perhaps invoked […]

We ended yesterday’s daf with a mishnah that listed four types of vows that are dissolved by the sages: vows of exhortation, vows of exaggeration, vows made in error and vows that are made against one’s will. These four kinds of vows are flawed from the get-go because the vower didn’t have all the information or the right intentions, […]

It turns out that latkes don’t actually have to be round. What makes a latke a latke is not its circular shape but that the potatoes are mixed in an egg batter and then fried. The latke batter for these unique latkes — which consists of Yukon gold potatoes, onions, eggs, potato starch and matzah […]

The actor Paul Newman was once asked why he didn’t cheat on his wife, actress Joanne Woodward. His response: “Why would I go out for a hamburger when I have steak at home?” This statement was famously held up as a model of marital fidelity. Less famous is Woodward’s own reaction. She is reported to have said: […]

Ten years ago, the UK-based nonprofit Alcohol Change created Dry January, a public health campaign that promoted abstaining from alcohol for 30 days at the start of the calendar year. The campaign has spread around the world and grown in popularity, with millions of people participating, and the term Dry January (and its cousin Dryuary) […]

In a legal context, two sentences that run consecutively are served one after the other while two that run concurrently overlap. So for example, if you’re sentenced for two crimes, each with a sentence of three years, you might be in for six years if the sentences are consecutive. But if they run concurrently — […]

As we have already seen, a key distinction between vows and oaths is that vows refer to objects while oaths refer to people. A mishnah on today’s daf informs us of another difference between them: There is a vow within a vow. But there is no oath within an oath.  This seems to mean that […]

Sigd is a Jewish-Ethiopian holiday that symbolizes the renewal of the union between God and the people of Israel marked 50 days after Yom Kippur. The holiday serves for communal self-examination, similar to the individual self-examining during Yom Kippur, and includes fasting and prayer. The idea behind the holiday is that in order to leave […]