Category: Science and Health

Dear Daf Yomi,  I live too far from Jerusalem to deliver my annual contribution to the Temple myself, so my neighbors and I pooled our shekels together and sent them via messenger. But somewhere along the way, our package was lost.  I’m happy to do my part to support the ritual practices of the Temple, […]

Earth’s defense against the dangers of asteroid impacts have taken another step forward after NASA approved the continued development of the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor space telescope. Coming after its successful mission review, the telescope helps NASA detect near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are asteroids and comets that come within a range of 30 million miles […]

Today we are still troubleshooting the dramatic ritual of the two male goats whose fate is determined by casting lots: One is designated to be sacrificed on the altar, and the other to be sent off into the wilderness, symbolically carrying the nation’s sins. The mishnah on 62a wonders what happens if one of the goats dies […]

The Talmud takes great care not only to record teachings accurately, but to attribute them correctly. This doesn’t mean mistakes are not made. Often, the Talmud will attribute a teaching to one rabbi, only to remark that others attribute it to another rabbi. Or, as is the case today, it will know the source but […]

An egg cream was my father’s kitchen claim to fame. He assembled them with great flourish — Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, cold milk from a glass bottle, and a long, hard shpritz of seltzer, followed by a vigorous stir. Even today, when I drink or think of it, it takes me back to my family’s […]

Echoes, mantras, song choruses — repetition is powerful. The rabbis were particularly attuned to repetition in the sacred language of the Bible, which they understood to be bursting with meaning. Since the sages thought of divine language as perfect, they did not view repetition as redundancy, but as an important clue to deeper significance. Any extra […]

Despite previous understandings of the relationship between a species’ body size and the probability for its extinction, a new Tel Aviv University study released on Thursday challenges this perception by indicating that probability for extinction is actually correlated to the number of offspring.  This peer-reviewed study was published this March in the academic journal Global Ecology […]

For anyone who has been learning Tractate Yoma over the last many weeks, the strict ruling in the first line of the mishnah that appears on today’s daf will be utterly unsurprising. Each action of Yom Kippur that has been stated, is stated in order. If he (the high priest) performed one of the actions before the other it is […]

A number of years ago I served as the m’saderet kedushin (officiant) at a friend’s wedding. When discussing the details of the ceremony and the meaning behind them, I instructed her to ask the caterer to place two glasses and a bottle of white wine on a little table under the huppah. “Interesting!” my friend commented. “What’s the […]

When a world-leading hospital prepares to conduct medical research in outer space, the sky is not the limit. Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer on Monday said its new ARC Space Lab will send eight medical experiments into orbit. The experiments will be conducted by Israel’s second space traveler, Eytan Stibbe, on Axiom Space’s first […]