Category: Science and Health

Here’s an irony: Yom Kippur is among the most widely observed of the Jewish holidays, yet for a majority of Jews, it’s also the most alienating. Consider: Shabbat is largely about rest, Sukkot is about the cycles of ecology, Passover is about freedom. All relatable and relevant concepts that don’t depend on a belief in […]

Khoreshte beh is a classic Persian dish of quince and beef shank stewed slowly in a pomegranate base and served over steamed basmati rice. Iranian Jews commonly eat it as a pre-fast meal for Yom Kippur. Quince and pomegranate are both in season, as the holiday lands at the transition from summer to fall. Its […]

Doves aren’t a part of my family’s holiday celebrations, but they seem to have been for the rabbis. If you had to gather doves to eat on the day of the festival itself, you might have to climb a ladder to reach them in their dovecote (a shelter for domesticated birds). But what if the […]

Halakhic decision making can be, at times, a bit convoluted. New rules are sometimes born awkwardly from older ones, and rabbinic thinking can fly in the face of contemporary logic or knowledge. But on today’s daf, we find one of those occasions when you can trace a rule directly from Torah through the Mishnah to […]

As we saw on the first page of our tractate, Hillel and Shammai disagree about whether it’s permitted to eat an egg laid on a festival. The Gemara has since established that such an egg is in fact prohibited. But on today’s daf, we find a teaching from Rav Mari that implies the opposite: If one examined a chicken’s […]

Outside the Land of Israel, Jews are commanded to observe an extra day for every festival. The idea was that certain communities couldn’t know exactly which day the holiday fell, so they would celebrate it for two days to ensure they celebrated on the right day. You might suppose, therefore, that both days would need to […]

When I first got to college in Massachusetts in the late ’90’s, I learned that alcohol was never sold in the state on Sundays. This rule was a kind of vestigial law left over from some combination of the state’s puritanical roots and the fervor of the Prohibition Era — and it no longer made […]

I am terrible at asking for help; doing so often makes me feel like I have failed. Rather than admit I need aid, I will struggle unnecessarily and take twice as long to get something done. However, a couple months ago, I sprained my ankle in a spectacularly embarrassing fall and had no choice but […]

Regarding an egg that was laid on a festival: Beit Shammai say it may be eaten. Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten. Welcome to Tractate Beitzah (literally: egg). The tractate is named for this opening mishnah which presents three disputes between Hillel and Shammai, including this one about whether an egg laid on a […]

As the name implies, Tractate Sukkah deals with the laws specific to Sukkot, one of three pilgrimage festivals on the Jewish calendar. The major biblical commandments surrounding this festival are to build and dwell in a temporary shelter called a sukkah (Leviticus 23:42) and “take” four species, later understood to be the lulav and etrog […]