Category: Science and Health

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” With this unforgettable observation, Forrest Gump’s mother, played by the inimitable Sally Field, teaches her son (and us) that life can be both delicious and random. Such is the rhetorical power of a good analogy.  The rabbis don’t just enjoy analogies […]

On a recent flight, I rewatched a favorite movie of my teenage years: Dead Poets Society. All these years later, my eyes welled up just as they did at age 14 or so, as each of the Welton students ascended their desk to honor their beloved teacher, proclaiming Walt Whitman’s: “O Captain, my Captain.” The emotional conclusion […]

The Torah is an incredibly complex text. It is a product of a particular time and place but with timeless resonances. It contains narratives, laws and poetry. It tells the story of the Israelites and of the universe itself. Beyond these important thematic and generic issues, today’s daf reminds us of yet another reason that […]

Coronavirus variants with clunky, alphanumeric names have now been assigned the letters of the Greek alphabet to simplify discussion and pronunciation while avoiding stigma.The World Health Organization revealed the new names on Monday amid criticism that those given by scientists to strains such as the South African variant – which goes by multiple names including […]

Most Americans have had prior exposure to different coronaviruses before the COVID-19 pandemic, which may cause a certain antibody to be triggered in the case of COVID-19 infection, a new scientific study has found. Published in the academic journal Nature Communications, the peer-reviewed study investigated how the body’s immune system reacted to COVID-19 after prior […]

A significant challenge facing the rabbis as they discuss the details of the Yom Kippur rituals in the Temple is that the vast majority of them did not witness these events with their own eyes. Only a few of the rabbis who appear in the Mishnah lived during Temple times, the rest rely on what […]

Virtually the entirety of today’s daf is taken up with a discussion about the animals offered by the high priest on Yom Kippur. According to the rabbis, the high priest is meant to slaughter a bull and bring its blood with him into the Holy of Holies. On yesterday’s daf the question was asked: What […]

Many a parent has told their reluctant toddler to “eat your greens!” There’s lots of scientific evidence that richly-colored plants are an important source of vitamins and minerals. Today’s daf echoes this wisdom with its own discussion of the healing properties of cress.  Garden cress, scientific name lepidium sativum, is native to much of the Middle […]

Today the Gemara continues its discussion of a mishnah introduced on the previous page which describes how the high priest measures out incense to be offered in the Holy of Holies in Yom Kippur. Rav Pappa dominates the page, raising a total of six questions, four of which end with the word teyku — ”let it […]

Today’s daf tells us the story of a remarkable woman named Kimchit:  The sages taught: Kimchit had seven sons, and they all served in the office of the high priesthood. The sages said to her: What good deeds did you perform to merit this? She said to them: In all my days, the beams of […]