Category: Science and Health

Today we encounter a number of mishnahs that focus on whether a vow not to partake of a particular food extends to forbidding its derivatives.  One who vows that dates are forbidden to him is permitted to eat date honey. One who vows that late grapes are forbidden to him is permitted to eat vinegar […]

Today’s daf finds us in the midst of a series of mishnahs exploring the implications of vows forbidding consumption of various foods. The overarching question animating much of this material is whether a vow concerning a particular food also applies to byproducts of that food or to other similar foods. And as we’ve seen over […]

Jewish history is replete with persecutions, but the systematic murder of two thirds of Europe’s Jews (6 million in total) in the Holocaust, or Shoah, altered Jews and Judaism forever. Since the end of World War II, Jewish communities have grappled with how and when to commemorate the Holocaust. As a result, just as there […]

Testing all Ashkenazi Jewish women for a variant of the BRCA gene that greatly increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer – instead of only women at high risk due to family history – has been found to be cost-effective. The analysis by researchers at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the Hebrew University’s Faculty […]

A loss of taste or smell during a COVID-19 infection could actually be a good sign, a new study has found. A new peer-reviewed study published on Plos One has found that the loss of either sense during a COVID-19 infection is a strong predictive factor for a robust immunologic response. As the COVID-19 pandemic […]

A towel was discovered in the stomach of a 25-year-old woman (S.) living in the north of Israel after she had suffered from stomach aches for months – now she claims that the hospital didn’t treat her properly.  At the beginning of August S., pregnant with twins, arrived at the Holy Family Hospital in Nazareth […]

On today’s daf, the Gemara quotes a teaching from Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar about vows concerning fish.  (A person who says): “Fish [dag] I will not taste,” is prohibited from large ones and permitted to small ones. (A person who says), “Fish [daga] I will not taste,” is prohibited from small ones and permitted to large ones. […]

From the Talmud: In former times, the faces of corpses of the poor were covered to hide the marks of poverty: only the faces of the rich corpses were uncovered. In former times, the poor used a bed made of reeds to carry the deceased while the deceased of the rich were carried on stately, […]

Some 3,544 Americans have died due to long COVID since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Long COVID is a general term for a wide range of symptoms that COVID-19 patients may experience weeks or […]

US biotech firms Moderna and Merck are collaborating together on an mRNA-based cancer vaccine, based on the mRNA technology used in Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, and are set to move into phase III trials next year. The experimental vaccine made by Moderna is being coupled with Merck’s own immunotherapy medication known as Keytruda in order to […]