Last January on our trip to Israel, I made a note to myself that quick response codes (QR codes in short) were nowhere to be found. Well, maybe I saw a couple of them, but it surprised me that, in a country where technology was, by and large embraced, QR codes were strangely absent. Read More »

Adding massive amounts of ground beef soil to a “Meat Garden” Last month while speaking with students, a couple of them mentioned something called “Epic Meal Time”.  I saw a couple of their videos , found it interesting, but didn’t continue watching them.  That is, until this past week. Read More »

Wine is mentioned several times in the book of Esther Having begun a discussion of drinking on Purim , (and what got me re-interested in this topic), I wanted to do an initial post on which beverage one should drink in order to intoxicate oneself on Purim. Read More »

Books don’t write themselves I recently found the following that I had sent myself a couple of years ago and hadn’t previously posted, but should be: A previous entry of mine focused on the rabbinic notion of quoting the person who made a particular Read More »

Although there may be other posts like this one out on the Internet, I’ve been thinking about this topic for years and finally just wanted to post about it.  This post is about the semantics of the term “pre-marital sex” and differentiating it from other forms of non-marital sex. Read More »

With Purim occurring two months from today, my mind turned over shabbat towards one of the most well-known aspects of the festival: drinking . Read More »

Having returned yesterday from spending the previous day and a half in Las Vegas, I am looking forward to going to Tribefest this year (and, yes, I made sure I registered today). Read More »

Continuing in my attempt to count up the most frequently mentioned sages in the Tosefta , I have now counted up the appearances in סדר קדשים (for previous posts in the Tosefta, see the following: סדר זרעים , סדר מועד , סדר נשים , and סדר נזיקין ). Read More »

Both before, during, and after turning thirty a few months ago, my mind turned to perhaps the most famous rabbinic statement regarding changing ages – that of Yehudah, son of Tema , found toward the end of the fifth chapter of tractate Avot , wherein he goes through every decade of ones life and a few other ages, as well and characterizes them. Read More »

While on vacation in Florida, a difficulty presented itself to us: we would see a kosher certificate with a rabbi’s name on it, but know nothing about the rabbi. Read More »

Onward on my quest to count up the most prevalent mentions of rabbis in the Tosefta , I finished yesterday on סדר נזיקין (you can see previous posts on סדר זרעים , סדר מועד , and סדר נשים ). Of note, Rabbi Yehudah was, once again, far ahead of everybody else in the seder . Read More »

For our first gathering of Clal ‘s Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship (of which I am among the participants of the cohort) next week, we are to read Dani Shapiro ‘s Devotion: A Memoir . Read More »

Yesterday afternoon, as part of a Beach Hillel program, I saw the movie “UN Me “.  Now, while I attended partly because of my job and association with Beach Hillel, I was interested to hear criticisms of the UN.  It wasn’t a topic I had ever particularly given any thought, let alone any attention.  So, I watched. Read More »

These last couple of days during this time on the Jewish calendar known as עשרת ימי תשובה – the ten days of repentance – I was struck with a challenge: in the afternoons, I am typically somewhere out and about and I need to daven מנחה (the afternoon prayer). Read More »

Yesterday, I finished up going through סדר נשים of the Tosefta in counting up how frequently our sages appear (just as I’ve done with סדר זרעים and סדר מועד ). Read More »

On 11 September 2001, I had been in Jerusalem for two weeks, where I was studying at Ohr Somayach through Yeshiva University , where I had studied the previous semester. On the day in question, I had woken up late, although the planes didn’t crash into the buildings for another couple of hours. Read More »

A week ago, I left and returned from attending the second annual Hillel Institute. In the spirit of some of my recent posts (including my conference anticipations ), I’m going with ten reflections on the conference: 1) I was happy to see more tweeting (cf. picture to the right) taking place at this year’s conference than at last year’s conference. Read More »

Last week, during our last night at the second annual Hillel Institute of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life , someone asked me about the seemingly numerousness of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) graduates in Hillel. In truth, in no way were YCT graduates the majority of rabbis there, but it was noticeable. Read More »

I have now finished going through and counting up the most frequently mentioned sages in סדר מועד of the Tosefta (see here for סדר זרעים ). Read More »

Having gone today to the Orange County Fair for the first time, I had some thoughts: 1) It was great that we were able to get in for only $2 instead of the regular price of $11. Read More »