It’s probably a given that most of us would like to avoid death — not only because we enjoy life, but because we worry that dying itself will be painful. The rabbis worried about that too. On today’s daf we read two descriptions of what death might feel like, and
When in the throws of grief, one shouldn’t have to worry about making fashion statements or avoiding bad hair days. This may be an underlying reason that not only is there no requirement for a mourner to look kempt but, according to the Talmud, a mourner in fact should not
The mishnah at the bottom of yesterday’s daf listed a number of texts that one is forbidden to write on hol hamoed: Torah scrolls, tefillin andmezuzahs. The presumption is that whoever is writing these texts is doing so in order to sell them, and we’ve seen already that commerce is
Can we separate an artist from their art? A scholar from their scholarship? Can we appreciate a wonderful book written by a terrible person? These are some of the deeply painful questions we ask today, especially in the age of #MeToo and cancel culture, and the seemingly never-ending revelations of
Today’s daf addresses the question of whether buying and selling is allowed on hol hamoed. Here’s the first mishnah: One may not purchase houses, slaves and cattle (on the intermediate days of a festival) except for the needs of the festival, or for the needs of the seller who does
Today’s daf introduces the subject of tzara’at, the biblical skin affliction often translated as leprosy. If one found a suspect blemish on one’s body, the priests were to evaluate it to decide if the person was in one of four categories: 1) pure and free to go about everyday life;
Today’s daf continues a discussion that began yesterday, about a field in which someone has been buried. Graves, as we now know, communicate death impurity to anyone who comes in contact with them, and to anything that is built nearby or grows on top. Therefore, graves were marked — often