While it may sound unromantic, marriage partners are chosen, more often than we might like to admit, for socio-economic reasons. While this need not…
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Ketubot 63: Home Sweet Home
In our last post we discussed the challenge of balancing work and family obligations. The Mishnah that discusses the length of a "…
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Ketubot 62: Time Together
Finding the proper balance between work and family is a challenge that man has been dealing with since the beginning of time. There never seems to be…
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Ketubot 50: Practice Practice Practice
One of the most difficult, yet vital, tasks as we learn, is allotting enough time and effort for review. We all find the new more exciting, and…
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Ketubot 49: Family Support
The increasing age for marriage coupled with the high cost of housing has led to a situation of more and more children in their 20's and…
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Ketubot 47: The New Family
Our conception of the family unit has undergone revolutionary changes in the last few years. It should come as no surprise that norms of today often…
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Ketubot 33: Worse than Death!
"One should be as careful with a light mitzvah as with a heavy mitzvah" (Pirkei Avot 2:1). Not every mitzvah is created equal. While all…
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Ketubot 30: In the Hands of Heaven
Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book Outliers, demonstrates how so much of our success is a result of factors beyond our control.…
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Ketubot 28: Kids Talk
In our last post we discussed the fickleness of memory and how and when one may write down testimony for future use in a court of…
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Ketubot 20: Keeping Memories Alive
Our memories are notoriously fickle and even untrustworthy. Yet we have little choice but to rely on such. It is likely due to the unreliability of…
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Ketubot 19: Dying for Lying
It is well known that a Jew must give up his or her life only if asked, or ordered, to violate one of the three cardinal sins of Judaism; idolatry,…
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Ketubot 11: It's Great to Be a Jew
A legal system is much more than a collection of laws. It signifies the values a society holds dear. When one studies halacha, one is…
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Ketubot 10: Money, Money, Money
Money is a great motivator, impacting so many of the decisions we make. The crucial role money plays in our lives can best be seen by the fact that…
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Ketubot 5: Moving Yom Kippur
In our last post we discussed that a betulah should marry on a Wednesday evening so that if it is discovered that the wife is not…
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Ketubot 2: We Would Like to Invite You...
Planning a wedding is no easy task. One must pick a date, hall, caterer, band, florist, and on and on it goes. For those living in North America (and…
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Some Opening Thoughts on Masechet Ketubot
The Ketuba is one of the best known, but least understood, documents in Judaism. Read at every wedding, many mistakenly believe it is a marriage…
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Some Concluding Thoughts on Masechet Yevamot
"Rabbi Elazar said, in the name of Rabbi Chaninah: Torah scholars increase peace in the world, as it says, 'and all your children shall be…
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Yevamot 116: One Witness Is Enough
We have previously referred to the special leniency that allows a woman to remarry on the testimony of one witness. This was a most revolutionary…