Topics covered: Chapter 20, Mishna 5 As we complete Chapter 20 with some seemingly unrelated and highly specific rabbinic decrees like moving straw off a bed on Shabbos or clothes off a “consumer” pressing board, let’s take a moment …

  Topics covered: Chapter 20, Mishnas 2,3,4 We may add a raw egg to the mustard strainer even though the egg white will be separated from the yolk. And now that we’re talking about mustard, we enter a big brouhaha …

  Topics covered: Chapter 20, Mishnas 1, 2 The flipside of Jewish exceptionalism is the responsibility we owe God and the world to behave like mensches. When we fail in our mission as Jews, we not only harm ourselves, we …

  Topics covered: Chapter 20, Mishna 1 Though Rabbi Eliezer is often more stringent than his colleagues in matters of Torah law, he more lenient in the case of creating, and suspending a “wine strainer” on a Festival. He even …

  Topics covered: Chapter 19, Mishnas 4, 5 and 6 A quote from Rav Adin Steinsaltz on why and how we study Talmud. Mishna 4 is about the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua in a case where two …

  Topics covered: Answering a community question, why does a Torah scroll transmit ritual impurity? A rabbinic prohibition that evolved to protect Torah scrolls from mice and dirty hands. Back to our daf in Chapter 19, Mishnah 3. Tragic case …

  Topics covered: Chapter 19, Mishna 3 An 8th day circumcision overrides Shabbos, but an uncertain 8th day cicumcision does not. Five examples of uncertainty: 1) uncertain gender because the baby is an “androginos”, 2) baby born at twilight Friday …

  Topics covered: Chapter 19, Mishnah 2 and 3. Preventing infection with cumin after a circumcision was a necessity in Talmudic times, so if it wasn’t prepared during the week, it could be ground atypically on Shabbos with one’s teeth, …

  Topics covered: An 8th day circumcision overrides a festival just as it does Shabbos, but its facilitators, like bringing the scalpel which could have been done before the festival, do not. Slaughtering the Paschal lamb or kid on the …