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It is an amazing but all too common phenomenon that two people can witness the same event and yet “see it” very differently. This is the…
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“Where is Moshe [mentioned] in the Torah?” It is hard to imagine a more—let's be gentle here—superfluous question. A…
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When I ask ba’alei teshuva what the hardest thing for them to give up is, the most common response I receive is "…
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It is an often-cited truism that the Orthodox community, most ironically, tends to place much greater emphasis on kosher food than on kosher money.…
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“Mar Ukva said: I am, with regard to this matter, like vinegar, son of wine, with respect to Father. Father, if he were to eat meat…
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“Because of this the children of Israel, to this day, do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the socket of the hip, since Jacob’s hip…
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Rabbinic debates are not for the faint-hearted. They can be most intense, and sadly, can lead to tragic consequences. One of the most famous of…
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In our last post, we spoke about geneivat da’at, generating false goodwill, in the context of gid hanasheh. I imagine very few people…
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One would not normally associate the prohibition to eat the gid hanashe, the sciatic nerve, with issues of business ethics. But related…
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One of most famous mitzvot of the Torah is that of shiluach haken, the obligation to send away the mother bird before taking her little chicks…
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One of the teachings that is ingrained in us from a young age is that every letter, and surely every verse and story, found in the Torah is of great…
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The least observed of biblical holidays is undoubtedly Rosh Chodesh. As a holiday based in the Temple, with no home or synagogue based rituals,…
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Dan Arielly begins his best-selling book, Predictably Irrational, by noting that for we humans it’s all relative. We do not by evaluate A…
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That the “Orthodox” community is more careful about kosher food than kosher money is sadly obvious, and demonstrated all too often.…
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In the introduction to his responsa, Rav Moshe Feinstein writes that the Sages of each generation are permitted and obligated to issue halachic…
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“And it will be, when the Lord, your G-d, brings you to the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you,…
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In a beautiful teshuva (Orach Chaim 4 #89) written during Chanukah 1960, Rav Moshe Feinstein was asked (by Rabbi Leo Yung, rabbi of the Jewish Centre…
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“It is a sign between Me and the Jewish people that in ‘six days’ G-d created the heavens and the earth” (Shemot 31:17).…
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That one must be Jewish to shecht an animal is not necessarily obvious. One might have argued that as long as the meat is slaughtered…
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When I mention to people that it is likely worse to smoke than to eat pork, I often get strange looks. And usually the more observant the person, the…
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There are few, if any, semicha programs that require their students to learn shechita or safrut, and even fewer that require good…
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One of the questions I am often asked by those of my students who do not keep kosher, is have you really never eaten non-kosher food? I generally…
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Over and over again the Torah warns us not to allow avodah zara, idolatry, in the Land of Israel. Yet, as is often the case, things are not always…
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"It was for this reason that man was first created as one person [Adam]…to teach that no man is the same as another; therefore, every…