Take Two – Pesach Sheini’s special significance to my family
“Second Passover,” or Pesach Sheini, a minor Jewish holiday, is anything but minor in my family. It was on that Jewish date, which, in 1945, fell on April 27 (and this year, falls on...
Category: Judaism
When “Bigot” is Projection
The bigots are those who condemn us for our beliefs. It is important to state this clearly, to repudiate the gaslighting to which we are being subjected.
Kedoshim – Skin in a Zero-Sum Gam
Although, in the end, all tattooing is forbidden by halachah, one opinion in the Mishna (Rabi Shimon ben Yehudah in Rabi Shimon’s name) sees the prohibition as referring specifically to tattooing the name of an...
Ortho-doxxing at the Washington Post
It is fair to say that as Taylor Lorenz researched and wrote her article, she fully understood the evil of what she was doing.
Acharei Mos – “No. You Do ME”
“Propriety” was apparently a theme of the Sadducees, or Tziddukim, one of the camps of Jews during the Second Temple period that rejected the the Torah’s “Oral Law,” the key to understanding the true...
Metzora – Not Just the Kitchen Sink
I once witnessed an amusing exchange between a mother and her four- or five-year-old daughter. The former, trying to do some cooking with the child underfoot, told the little person, “You need to leave...
Tazria – The Little Man Who Wasn’t There
“On the eighth day yimol b’sar arlaso – the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Vayikra, 12:3). Rather than directly command circumcision, the Torah here employs the future passive tense – “it shall...
Shemini – Feel the Burn
Fire descending from heaven was something our ancestors in the desert experienced nightly for decades, as the daytime pillar of cloud was replaced by one of flame. It had surely become an expected, regular...
Tzav — Finding Fervor
“And for generations,” the Midrash, quoted by Rashi, adds to its assertion: “The word tzav [‘command’] implies ziruz [‘fervor’ or ‘zeal’] immediately…” The context of the Midrash’s statement are the laws of terumas hadeshen...
Vayikra – Love and Coercion
The Rambam famously explains how, in a case where a Jewish court has determined that a couple must divorce, the court can force the husband to hand the get, or divorce document, to his...
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