Moshe Rabbeinu couldn’t recall the halacha about the proper course of action when encountering a Jewish man engaging intimately with a non-Jewish woman (Sanhedrin 82a). Pinchas had to remind him that Moshe himself had...
In their declaration that the conquest of Cna’an will proceed successfully, Yehoshua and Calev employ an odd metaphor: The idolatrous residents of the land, they say, will be vanquished because “they are our bread”...
There are a number of common English aphorisms that parallel (or are sourced in) Talmudic statements. What Chazal said in Avos (1:15), “Say little and do much” echoes in “Actions speak louder than words.”...
Faced with a forced choice between continuing to live or committing one of three sins – idolatry, murder and arayos, forbidden sexual relations – a Jew is commanded to forfeit his life. In the...
Shepherds were abhorrent to ancient Egyptians, Yosef tells his brothers, as he relates what they should tell Par’oh in order to reserve the area of Goshen for his immigrating family (Beraishis 46:34). We find...
The nature of the “work” that Yosef came to Potifar’s house to do on the day when the Egyptian’s wife sought to entice him to sin with her (Beraishis 39:11) is famously the subject...
It’s considered uncouth, or worse, these days to assign any sort of “national character” to peoples of different ethnic or geographical backgrounds. And we are well advised to not assume anything about any individual...
Killing takes a toll – on the killed, of course; that’s pretty obvious. But also on the killers. That is something that the Ohr Hachaim introduces in his commentary on the pasuk “And He...
For a religion derided in some circles as denigrating women, Judaism would seem to have an odd attitude. In a famous aphorism based on the list of adornments in our parsha (Bamidbar 31:50), Chazal...
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