Category: Science and Health

The flu vaccine can be vital for protection against the effects of COVID-19, according to research presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reported earlier this week.  Patient data from around the world was analyzed, and the conclusion is that the […]

On today’s daf, we learn from a mishnah that if one spreads a sheet over the s’chach (roofing materials) of a sukkah to provide shade from the sun or to catch falling leaves, then the sukkah is unfit for use. In the Gemara, Rav Hisda comments that if a sheet is used for decorative purposes, it does not […]

According to family legend, we’re descended from Zelig Zeides, the chief mathematician of Slutsk. My great-aunt Essie used to brag, with a lot of pride and a little less credibility, that Grandpa Zelig invented the perpetual calendar and bequeathed to all of us a deep appreciation of and a natural talent for all that is math. Our […]

This week, the Central Bottling Company (CBC) agreed to invest in Israeli food-tech company, BioMilk for the development of products based on cultured milk. In the terms agreed, which are subject to the signing of a final agreement, CBC will invest up to $2 million in BioMilk. BioMilk aims to produce technologically groundbreaking products which […]

If you, like me, are a regular chicken roaster, you’re halfway to one of the best salad dressings out there: schmaltz vinaigrette, a tangy, savory top coat for a simple salad of mixed greens and whatever you’ve picked up at the farmers market.  Using a warm fat, like bacon or duck fat, in a vinaigrette […]

Today’s daf is the main piece of a beautiful and intricate discussion about why the minimum height for a sukkah, as we learned yesterday, is 10 tefahim, or handbreadths. The discussion consists of three main sections in which this height is compared first to the Ark of the Covenant, then to a whole variety of Temple vessels […]

Tucked away in a lab, deep within the massive scientific research complex in Rehovot that houses the external campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s agriculture department, a small group of Israeli scientists is growing some of the most highly concentrated, pure and potent organic psilocybin “magic” mushrooms ever created by man. While the above […]

Today’s daf continues our discussion of sukkahs that are too tall. The rabbis offer a number of ways that someone might try to “shorten” a tall sukkah — raising the floor with dirt, building a platform in the middle of the sukkah — and assess each one for its halakhic permissibility.  As part of this discussion, the Gemara […]

Pfizer and partner BioNTech plan to ask US and European regulators within weeks to authorize a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, based on evidence of greater risk of infection six months after inoculation and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease […]

The opening pages of Tractate Sukkah explore, among other things, the essential requirements for a sukkah. On today’s daf, we learn from Rav Shmuel bar Yitzhak that: The law is that one’s sukkah must be large enough to hold one’s head, most of one’s body, and one’s table. This ruling is of particular note because it […]