Category: Science and Health

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 […]

If you read the biblical description of the Sukkot sacrifices (Numbers 29:12-34), you’ll notice that the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice an awful lot of bulls on the holiday. On the first day of the holiday, it was no less than 13 bulls, on the second day 12, on the third day 11 and so on in […]

With less than a week until the opening of Israel’s schools, parents and teachers received a positive forecast on Friday: The opening of the school year is unlikely to increase the pace of serious COVID-19 infections, as long as the rate of vaccination continues. This is according to a team of researchers from the Hebrew […]

Because Rosh Hashanah (the 1st day of the month of Tishrei), Sukkot (15 Tishrei) and Shemini Atzeret (22 Tishrei) all start on the same day of the week, Jews often find that day quite busy during the fall holiday season. Some years, fall weekends are swamped with Jewish holidays. Other years, it’s three out of four Mondays. It turns out, though, that […]

On Sukkah 5, we explored the radical rabbinic idea that the sukkah is a meeting place between people and God, an opportunity for us to elevate ourselves and for God to come down and meet us where we are. On today’s daf, we see another exploration of the personal relationship with God on Sukkot, but in a different […]

Volumes — literally, volumes — have been written on the notorious rabbinic concept of the yetzer hara, the “evil inclination.” It’s the tug we feel to do something we know is wrong, our baser instinct, our id, a powerful self-interest that can sometimes overwhelm the better angels of our nature. Today, the rabbis explore this aspect […]