One of the most well-known Talmudic passages of masechet Megillah is the teaching of Rava that “one is obligated l’beshumei, to drink, on Purim,…

“Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: One is obligated to read the Megillah at night and lishnota, repeat it, during the day” (Megillah 4a). While this may…

“And I have given them statutes that are not good, and laws that they do not live with" (Yechezkel 20:25). In our last post, we…

Learning Torah is meant to be enjoyable. It is for this reason that a mourner is not permitted to learn (Moed Katan 21a) [1]--the joy that…

One of the ways we show respect for a person is to stand in their honour, and such an honour is not only bestowed on people. The notion of the…

One of the most central requirements of Jewish life—both in time and importance—is that of daily prayer. Yet most fascinatingly, the…

Pesach is the foundational holiday of the Jewish people, and the Exodus is the defining moment of Jewish history. A group of slaves formed a nation…

Often it takes our enemies to whip us into shape. “Rav Abba the son of Kahana said: Greater was the removal of the ring [of Achashverosh] than…

When one makes a siyum to mark the completion of a tractate of Talmud, we recite the beautiful words of the hadran[1], that "we toil and they…

"Rav Yehoshua ben Levi said, women are obligated in the reading of the Megillah she'af hen, because they, too, were included in the…

"These days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of…

The first daf (page) of Masechet Megillah focuses on the distinction between open and walled cites, regarding the timing of the reading of…

Masechet Ta'anit ends with a description of how, on the 15th of Av and on Yom Kippur, "the maidens of Jerusalem" would dance in the…