Amongst the many wonderful opportunities and challenges wrought by the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is that of running our…
The privileges and obligations of the firstborn are a major theme of Pesach. Most famously, the proximate cause of the Exodus was makat bechorot, the…
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…
“Where is Moshe [mentioned] in the Torah?” It is hard to imagine a more—let's be gentle here—superfluous question. A…
When I ask ba’alei teshuva what the hardest thing for them to give up is, the most common response I receive is "…
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.…
“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…
“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…
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…
In our last post, we spoke about geneivat da’at, generating false goodwill, in the context of gid hanasheh. I imagine very few people…
One would not normally associate the prohibition to eat the gid hanashe, the sciatic nerve, with issues of business ethics. But related…
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…
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…
The least observed of biblical holidays is undoubtedly Rosh Chodesh. As a holiday based in the Temple, with no home or synagogue based rituals,…
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…
That the “Orthodox” community is more careful about kosher food than kosher money is sadly obvious, and demonstrated all too often.…
In the introduction to his responsa, Rav Moshe Feinstein writes that the Sages of each generation are permitted and obligated to issue halachic…
“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,…
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…
“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).…
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…
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…
There are few, if any, semicha programs that require their students to learn shechita or safrut, and even fewer that require good…
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…