Beitzah 30a

This article is intended to present an overview of the laws of muktzeh. For any practical questions on the subject, please consult your posek.

Sunday. Many of us do not go to work. There is, however, so much to do at home. How many of us have the

This week’s parsha, Lech Lecha, states that Hashem is “the shield of Avraham.” In the first paragraph of the Amida we also have the phrase that Hashem is the “shield of Avraham.” We start the Amida by reciting how Hashem is the God of our forefathers, He is good to us, remembers the good that our ancestors did, and how He will

The Talmud (Yevamot 63a) encourages a husband to love his wife at least as much as he loves himself and to honor her more than himself. R’ Elazar elaborated on the verse, “It is not good that man be alone; I will make him a helper against him” (Bereishit 2:18.) He asked, how can she be a helper and be against him at the same time? The answer is that if

Planet Earth is covered with boundless water and no dry land is visible. No terrestrial creatures can inhabit this watery chaos. Birds circle overhead. Finally, the waters retreat, and life can commence. This scene depicts the original creation of our planet. Everything was covered by a watery void until Hashem retracted the watery

During World War II, many yeshivos in Europe closed and the boys were sent home, as everyone scrambled to find a safe place to hide from the Nazis or leave Europe altogether. There was one yeshiva whose students and rebbeim miraculously escaped and remained together throughout the war—the Mir Yeshiva. In 1939, a week after Sukkos, the Mir

Why include the story of Migdal Bavel, the Tower of Babel, in the Torah? It serves as more than a mere a history lesson explaining mankind’s spreading out across the world. It is an introduction to Avraham and a coda for Noach while providing an interesting gloss on Rashi’s comment to the first verse of the parsha.

Did you ever stop to imagine what life was like inside Noach’s ark?

There were three floors. The middle floor was filled with a collection of the world’s animals: wild, domestic and otherwise, birds and critters of all shapes and sizes, vermin and an endless potpourri of creepy crawlers. Then there

Some marketing people are really geniuses. Think of the one who invented the term “gluten-free.”

Before that, they used terms such as “without gluten” or “does not contain gluten.” Both terms are accurate, but when you see the words “gluten-free,” you almost get excited.

I once attended a lecture in Aish HaTorah in which the rabbi told us of a survey where random people in Manhattan were asked, “Are you a good person?” Some said “Yes” or “I am basically good” or “I try to be good.” Only one person said that they were bad. The rabbi then asked the audience, “What exactly makes a person

The Kotzker Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, zt”l, was once visiting a certain town, and as was customary with visiting teachers, he was invited to the local cheder to spend time with the young talmidim and to farheir them, to test them. When the Kotzker arrived, he learned that the boys were studying Parshat Bereishit, in the pesukim where the descendants of Adam

It didn’t take long! Cradled in an exquisite garden and mandated with just one command, Man wasted no time in disobeying the Divine will. Guilty, he and his wife were swiftly dismissed from the comforts of Eden. Subsequently, their jealous firstborn son brutally slayed his own kin, disgracing the earth with murdered blood.

A colleague, Rabbi Jonathan Gross, served as a rabbi in Omaha, Nebraska, for close to a decade. Nebraskans, as you may know, take their football and their home team—the Huskers—very seriously. And so, it wasn’t unusual that someone from the local community posted the following question on the rabbi’s blog: “Is it permissible to