A few days ago I wrote about the first session of a class applying talmudic reasoning to modern legal cases. The first class covered cases of unintended benefit: somebody, in the process of committing a crime, accidentally causes benefit to the victim -- does he deserve leniency? I noted that the class gives CLE credits and wondered in passing ( Read more... )

I've taken a few classes put on by the Jewish Learning Institute (they teach concurrently in many locations worldwide) and am currently taking this one. The title is "The Dilemma", and they describe it as: modern dilemmas, talmudic debates, your solutions. Each class looks at a group of real incidents around some theme, after which we discuss ( Read more... )

Shavuot night I went to an interesting class at our community-wide tikkun leil shavuot, the late-night torah study that is traditional for this festival. The class was taught by Rabbi Danny Schiff on "the real context of the oven of Achnai".
We started by reviewing the famous story in the talmud (Bava Metzia 59b ( Read more... )

Going to the eye-doctor and having my pupils dilated seems to cause the day to become bright and sunny. But this is Pittsburgh, where sunny days are relatively uncommon. Does this mean that most people in Pittsburgh never have their eyes checked this way, or are we all mysteriously choosing the same few days for this?
I posted the preceding on the ( Read more... )

This week was my congregation's annual shabbaton. We take over a cabin in the "suburbs" of Zelienople and have a grand time. This year was the largest I've seen at 42 people, and all of them seemed to be engaged in it. It was great.
When nobody feels pressure (got to get upstairs to the bar mitzvah, got to ( Read more... )

Today's daf has a long discussion of how some of the rules of talmudic reasoning relate to each other, drawing examples from the laws concerning the temple service. In lieu of that discussion (which does not fit in the margins of this daf bit), I offer a summary of the rules cited on this daf:

• Kal v'chomer: I learned this as the "how much the ( Read more... )

My rabbi and I were recently studying in tractrate B'rachot and came ( Read more... )

The g'mara discusses cases of group loss. If a caravan is travelling ( Read more... )

I had to miss minyan this morning for a doctor's appointment so I didn't prepare a daf bit for the congregation, but here's something my rabbi and I studied this week ( Read more... )

Dafcast.net is producing a new adaptation of the talmud as a podcast. I just listened to tomorrow's daf, which is all stories (so pretty accessible), and I'm looking forward to more of this. The project is young, so if you're interested in helping, they'll be happy to have you. They're looking for translators, scriptwriters, performers, and ( Read more... )