Torah 948 articles

The Coming Week’s Daf Yomi by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz This essay is based upon the insights and chidushim (original ideas) of Talmudic scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, as published in the Hebrew...

The Shulchan Aruch states that it is forbidden to eat a bread meal from the tenth hour onward on Erev Pesach (SA OC 571:1). (Of course the reference is to matza...

Imagine the following Seder “teaching” technique. (Full disclosure: my wife has forbidden me from actually doing this at our Seder this year. Or any year.) After Kiddush, sometime after eating the...

No book of the Torah requires greater effort to discover nuggets of contemporary relevance than Vayikra. And no book yields greater gold. Let the mining begin! Two paradigm korbanos (sacrifices), Olah...

Ours is a parsha of construction. First we account for the Mishkan materials Take from among yourselves a terumah-offering to Ad-noy. Every man whose heart impels him to generosity...

At the beginning of our parsha we learn that we may do work only on six days (Shemot 35:2). Based on this verse, the Midrash learns that another verse which says...

The Coming Week’s Daf Yomi by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz This essay is based upon the insights and chidushim (original ideas) of Talmudic scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, as published in the Hebrew...

Moses is described as the “safra rabah, the great scribe of Israel” (Sotah 13b). Moses was surely a scribe in the technical sense; as Rambam noted in his Introduction to the...

The Torah forbids a Jew, during Pesach, not just from eating chametz but even from deriving benefit from his chametz. Furthermore, there is an additional prohibition of even owning chametz on...

Much of the Golden Calf saga confounds. Among the classic elements of inquiry are: a. What precisely was their sin? b. What role did Aharon play? c. Why does...