One of the most well-known Talmudic passages of masechet Megillah is the teaching of Rava that “one is obligated l’beshumei, to drink, on Purim,…
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Megillah 4: Megillah, Take Two
“Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: One is obligated to read the Megillah at night and lishnota, repeat it, during the day” (Megillah 4a). While this may…
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Some Concluding Thoughts on Masechet Megillah
“And I have given them statutes that are not good, and laws that they do not live with" (Yechezkel 20:25). In our last post, we…
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Megillah 32: Torah Tunes
Learning Torah is meant to be enjoyable. It is for this reason that a mourner is not permitted to learn (Moed Katan 21a) [1]--the joy that…
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Megillah 21: We Stand on Guard for Thee
One of the ways we show respect for a person is to stand in their honour, and such an honour is not only bestowed on people. The notion of the…
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Megillah 17: Must We Pray?
One of the most central requirements of Jewish life—both in time and importance—is that of daily prayer. Yet most fascinatingly, the…
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Megillah 14: The Songs of Israel
Pesach is the foundational holiday of the Jewish people, and the Exodus is the defining moment of Jewish history. A group of slaves formed a nation…
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Megillah 14: Whipped Into Shape
Often it takes our enemies to whip us into shape. “Rav Abba the son of Kahana said: Greater was the removal of the ring [of Achashverosh] than…
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Megillah 6: Try Harder
When one makes a siyum to mark the completion of a tractate of Talmud, we recite the beautiful words of the hadran[1], that "we toil and they…
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Megillah 4: Active Defence
"Rav Yehoshua ben Levi said, women are obligated in the reading of the Megillah she'af hen, because they, too, were included in the…
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Megillah 3: What Comes First
"These days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of…
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Megillah 2: Breaking the Walls
The first daf (page) of Masechet Megillah focuses on the distinction between open and walled cites, regarding the timing of the reading of…
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Some Opening Thoughts on Masechet Megillah
Masechet Ta'anit ends with a description of how, on the 15th of Av and on Yom Kippur, "the maidens of Jerusalem" would dance in the…