Author: Meghan Froy

Today the Gemara continues its discussion of a mishnah introduced on the previous page which describes how the high priest measures out incense to be offered in the Holy of Holies in Yom Kippur. Rav Pappa dominates the page, raising a total of six questions, four of which end with the word teyku — ”let it […]

Today’s daf tells us the story of a remarkable woman named Kimchit:  The sages taught: Kimchit had seven sons, and they all served in the office of the high priesthood. The sages said to her: What good deeds did you perform to merit this? She said to them: In all my days, the beams of […]

If you walk into a synagogue today, you’ll find a light burning in front of the ark. This light, the ner tamid (literally: “eternal light”), has come to symbolize God’s eternal presence in sacred spaces. The practice is derived from a number of biblical sources, including Leviticus 6:6, which mandates that a fire be kept burning on the […]

Winston Churchill is said to have said: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. “   Parshat Beha’alotcha is a Torah portion of both difficulty and opportunity. Here’s the sequence of events in this portion. 1. The Levites prepare for service in the Tabernacle.  2. The commandment […]

Tashlich is a Jewish ritual, dating to the Middle Ages, that involves tossing bread into a live body of water between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The bread symbolizes a person’s sins, and the water is meant to wash them away. This practice has spawned a whole genre of contemporary jokes. What do you toss into […]

When is a “man” not necessarily a man? When we’re on page 43 of Tractate Yoma, among many, many other places. Traditional Hebrew, like many languages, is locked into a gender binary. People, objects, concepts, even verbs and adjectives, are linguistically either masculine or feminine, often in unpredictable ways. Why is “chair” masculine and “conversation” feminine? […]

Chew on this: One of America’s most iconic gum brands was originally a Jewish-owned tobacco business.   In 1891, Morris Chigorinsky emigrated from Russia to the United States, where in the early 1900s he assumed control of the American Leaf Tobacco Company. But by 1938, Chigorinsky’s (who by then had changed his surname to Shorin) business […]