Take One Daf Yomi

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 32, tells us a bit about the privileges of the Kohanim, the priests who served in the ancient Temple. But do modern-day Kohens still enjoy any perks now that the Temple is gone? Rabbi Nuriel Klinger joins us to shed light on some well-known, and some largely obscure, benefits of being a Kohen these days. Why must a Kohen redeem the firstborn donkey? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 31, is all about the boundaries Jews and gentiles must keep to live peacefully with each other. Rabbi Stuart Halpern joins us to help us to argue that respecting clear distinctions and differences makes society more, not less, cohesive. Why wouldn't he, a TV afficionado, let his kids watch that very special episode starring Santa? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 29 and 30, introduce the peculiar concept of Noten Ta'am, something that gives flavor, an idea that sounds like it belongs more on a cooking show than a page of Talmud. Rabbah Sarah Hurwitz joins us to explain this idea, and what it teaches us about the essence of Kashrut. What does taste have to do with keeping exclusively kosher pots and pans? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 27 and 28, raises everyone's favorite Passover pastime, the selling and buying of Chametz. Elana Stein Hain returns to make sense of all this wheeling and dealing, and explain why sometimes the deepest and most profound truths rest in legal loopholes. Is their secret poetry in our fine print? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 26, is a festival for the senses. Rabbi Gidon Rothstein joins us to help us make sense of what we're supposed to think, say, or do, when we smell, see, and touch. Does the Talmud suggest a hierarchy of senses? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 25, asks a pointed question: Are there values worth losing your life for? Rabbi Rena Singer joins us to discuss what's worth dying for and why. Is idolatry on the list, and what is it anyway? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 24, the rabbis admit that prohibitions against eating certain things apply only if said things are eaten in the "usual manner." But what's the usual manner? Josh Kross returns to meditate on food snobbery, culinary expectations, and why innovation and tradition need each other sorely. What's the silliest way in the world to eat a burger? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 22 and 23, give us a touching story of an earnest scholar who realizes he got his life's work all wrong. Yael Steiner joins us to talk about the importance of humility, introspection, and paying attention. What lessons do the rabbis have for us about not succumbing to pride and learning to admit it when we get things wrong? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 20 and 21, introduce a concept that, at first blush, appears like a bit of a paradox: The more sacred something is, the more susceptible it is to impurity. Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to unpack this complicated idea, and what it has to teach us about what truly matters in life. Why should you never post pictures of your loved ones on social media? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 19, kicks things off with a novel halakhic ruling about hands. Lisa Ann Sandell returns to talk about her fear of germs, and how COVID-19 came as an affirmation of her very worst anxieties. Is there a message in antiquity's wisdom for us dirt-phobic moderns? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 18, tosses us into a reality that feels all too familiar, one in which contamination spreads quickly and must be stopped before normal life can resume. Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern joins us to explain how the Talmud's discussion of impurity has a special and starkly relevant resonance in the time of COVID-19. Why was the Hanukkah story, too, a tale of fighting an outbreak? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 17, introduces us to the prophet Haggai. No one's idea of a superhero Biblical seer, Haggai, argues our guest, Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky, is the prophet we need right now, combining a delightful sense of practicality with a sharp and timeless moral vision. What can Haggai teach us that we desperately need to hear in 2020? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 15 and 16, ask a simple and searing question: How much should you sacrifice for your beliefs? It's a particularly poignant one these days, with a majority of Americans recently responding that they were afraid to openly and candidly share their political opinions. Legendary refusnik and former Israeli government minister and head of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky joins us, via a clip from a Tablet panel discussion earlier this winter, to talk about what happens when we no longer summon the courage to stand up for what we know is right. What advice might a former prisoner in the gulag offer us in modern-day America? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 13 and 14, give us a curious ruling: The Prophet Elijah will never come on the eve of Shabbat. Why? Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter joins us to teach us a lesson in the holy importance of preparations, one we desperately need to learn before we rush into things. Why should we wish one another a good Erev Shabbat, or Shabbat Eve, rather than a good Shabbat? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 12, is about time. How late is rude late? How early is too early? Producer Sara Fredman Aeder returns to explain to us how the rabbis thought about time, and what we hurried moderns can learn from them. Why should you plan your day in 30-minute increments? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 11, asks a question that's all too familiar: Is technology always bad? Always good? Something in the middle? Rabbi Gabi Weinberg joins us to teach us a lesson about controlling our machines lest they control us. How do we focus on traction rather than distraction? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 10, makes us wonder: What role does doubt play in religious life? Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to explain Judaism's obsession with constant questioning. What lesson might a couple of mice teach us about the universe and our place in it? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 8 and 9, remind us of the difficulty and importance of doing good deeds for their own sake. Producer Josh Kross returns to share a story of an emotional Thanksgiving, and teach us a lesson on life in the time of COVID-19. How does an ancient story about pilgrimage help us rethink our very modern priorities? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 6 and 7, riff about blessings, which we always make before performing a mitzvah. With one notable exception: Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to help us make sense of one more way the night of Passover is different. How is the seder like a ritual pool? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 5, is serious about the prohibition on having any unleavened bread in the house before Passover. Author Meira Spivak joins us to share her full-proof method for physical and spiritual cleaning. Can true preparation occur in just under a week? Or is the task of prepping for Pesach a year-long obligation? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 4, gives us a helpful reminder that any mitzvah worth doing is worth doing early. Dr. Elana Stein Hain joins us to explain this principle, and why it's essential in these busy and distracted times. Does the early bird always get the mitzvah? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 3, finds the rabbis singing the praises of euphemisms and going to great lengths not to say bad words. Why? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 2, kicks off Tractate Pesachim, and, as per usual with the Talmud, it does so in a quizzical fashion. Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to introduce us to this new tractate. Why refer to Passover in the plural? And why start out the discussion with the word "light"? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 103, 104, and 105, bring to a close Tractate Eruvin, one of the Talmud's most intricate and complicated volumes. Law professor Ethan Lieb joins us to celebrate, and muse on the Hadran, the blessing at the end of each tractate, which contains a surprising message we shouldn't ignore. Why does the Talmud animate each one of its tractates? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 102, is very much in vogue, asking about the black hats that observant Jewish men so often wear. But why wear these hats at all? Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to offer his observations on the meeting of style and substance, and what the black hat truly means. Are orthodox Jews fashion outliers? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 101, discusses tradition, and why the way we used to do thing matters when we try to figure out what's right and what's wrong. Yehuda Goldberg joins us to discuss the importance of customs. How do customs help us build community? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 100, has the rabbis warning against a husband trying to have intercourse with his wife without her explicit consent. Rabbi Aviva Richman joins us to explain why this rabbinic recognition of the notion of consent is tremendously meaningful even if it is deeply flawed. What can this passage teach us about the Talmud's approach to sex? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 98 and 99, remind us again that it is forbidden to throw away sacred writings. We talk about book collections, and why so many of us hold on even to books they know they'll never read. Do books have magical powers? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 96 and 97, raise a curious question: Why are we commanded to wear tefillin every day of the week but not on Shabbat? Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to ponder this conundrum and find in it a seminal principle to live by. Does absence truly make the heart grow fonder? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 95, has Tefillin on the mind (and on the arm). Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone returns to shed light on this most ancient and still most potent of all spiritual technologies. Why did the Lubavitcher Rebbe promote the wearing of Tefillin so passionately? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 94, gets down and intimate: What, it asks, happens when your courtyard opens up onto the public domain? Andrew Marantz,  staff writer for the New Yorker, joins us to talk about the things we do online, and whether we can still expect a shred of privacy on social media and elsewhere. Are our metaphors to blame for our failure to see the Internet for what it truly is? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 93, wonders what happens when guests come in and cause all sorts of inconveniences. Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal joins us to talk about why guests can be both annoying and a true pleasure, and what obligations we have to make them feel welcome. How can an ancient ruling about eruvin make us better hosts? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 91 and 92, ask a poignant question: Are we permitted to modify our laws based on how we've behaved during a time of danger? Rabbi Jon Spira-Savett joins us to discuss the ways in which COVID impacted his congregation, and talk about what life might look like after the plague. Are there any innovations brought about by the pandemic that might continue to inspire us even after it is gone? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 89 and 90, finds two rabbis engaged in a philosophical conversation about the very way we see reality. Rabbi Avi Straussberg joins us to explain why this particular debate -- involving a ship sailing in a clear blue sea -- matters, and what it can teach us about life today. Is the ocean half empty or half full? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 88, asks a cheeky question: If you stole something, do you get to keep it? Ben Schachter, an artist and the author of Akhnai Pizza, a new graphic novel based on one of the Talmud's most famous tales, joins us to ponder this problem, especially as it pertains to copyright, intellectual property, and ideas. How can we encourage remix culture while still making sure artists get supported and paid? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 87, inquries whether a lake could count when determing an eruv. Rabbi Tzvi Sinenski joins us to tell a story about the late great Rabbi Norman Lamm, and how he wrestled with precisely this question to establish the eruv on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Does an eruv count even if you can't see it? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 86, contains an unlikely recommendation: revere the rich. Professor Lila Corwin Berman joins us to shed some light on how Jewish philantrophy changed drastically over the last few decades, and what that means for the Jewish community's most fortunate and for everyone else. What happened that gave the top one percent of donors more power than ever before? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 84 and 85, give us one charming anecdote that helps dive right into the true meaning of the eruv. Rabbi Hart Levine joins us to tell us about the diverse and welcoming community he'd built in New York, and how it was inspired by the laws and the logic of the eruv. What does it take to turn a bunch of Jews into a thriving community? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 82 and 83, introduce a curious prohibition against gamblers giving testimony in a court of law. Joe Bednarsh, Athletics Director at Yeshiva University and a world-class Poker player, joins us to discuss why the rabbis suspected anyone who made a living rolling the dice. Why do card sharks look down on those in the Casino who merely play the Roulette? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 81, reaches into the book of Ezekiel to discuss one of the Bible's most notoriously scatological references, the poop sandwich. Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to help us figure out what this unappetizing snack means, and why the Talmud seems to devote so much time to number two. Why is the punishment for mocking the rabbis being boiled in excrement? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 80, tells a story of a woman who defies her husband to make an eruv possible. Sara Shalva, Chief Arts Officer at the JCC in Baltimore, joins us to talk about how women create community, and what that means for gender roles and division of labor, especially during a pandemic. What would happen if we left socialization up to the men? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 79, finds the rabbis permitting building a fire on Shabbat to make a woman giving birth more comfortable. Dr. David Jay Berman, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins, joins us to share some troubling statistics about the risks expecting mothers, and particularly expecting mothers of color, face, and what we must do to heal them. How do race and socioeconomic status impact the health of mother and baby alike? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 77 and 78, drill down on which laws must be rigorously observed and which may sometime be overlooked. Officer Jacob Novikov, vice president of the NYPD's Shomrim Society, joins us to talk about the decisions he has to make every day when deciding how to handle infractions and interact with the community he has sworn to serve and protect. How does a cop know when to be strict and when to be merficul? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 75 and 76, find one of the rabbis, Rav Yosef, making a blunder. Rabbi Eric Wisnia joins us to explain why Rav Yosef's response can teach us everything we need to know about learning from our mistakes, and why this message is one we particularly need to hear in this troubled moment in American history. What should we do when asked a question about something that pertains directly to our interests? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 74, tells a sad and strange story of a man who built an eruv for just one home: His own. Was it kosher? Or must an eruv, designed to connect several abodes, include at least two houses? Adina Fredman joins us to shed light on this instructive anecdote, and offer a surprising look at the central question of what makes a home a home. How has COVID-19 driven us to reconsider our domestic sensibilities? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 73, raises a sharp question: What's in a home? Is it the place where you eat? Sleep? Both? Something else? Rabbanit Leah Sarna joins us to talk about the intricacies of domesticity, and about what we think about when we think about home. Did the definition of home change once so many of us started working from home? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 72, has the rabbis channeling their inner interior designers: What, they ask, makes a room a room? Author Lisa Sandell joins us to discuss how, while redecorating her very small Manhattan apartment, she found herself contemplating some of the very same questions as our ancient sages. Would the rabbis love shopping on Wayfair.com? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 70 and 71, tell us that one point of setting up an eruv is to teach our children about the laws of eruvin. It's a surprisingly profound lesson, as Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern argues: In focusing so much attention on seemingly mundane technicalities, Judaism is showing us that the best way to engage in religious practice isn't by waiting for revelations but by working hard, day after day, at what's less exciting but far more important. What does all of it have to do with the month of Cheshvan, which begins today? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Eruvin 68 and 69, raise the issue of disbelief, and ask a thorny question: How much doubt is too much doubt? Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to shed light on this complicated subject, and help us navigate the difficult but necessary turf of dealing with spiritual transgressions and transgressors. Which sins are worthy of absolute rebuke, and which are more forgivable? Listen and find out.

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Today’s Daf Yomi page, Eruvin 67, finds the rabbis in an usual state of mind: starstruck. Journalist and seasoned celebrity profiler Romy Oltuski joins us to share what it's like to sit in a room with a very famous person you admire very much, and what meeting celebrities can teach us about ourselves. Is celebrity worship a sign of a shallow culture, or is there some deep wisdom behind our obsession with the rich and famous? Listen and find out.

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