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In Jewish law, they absolutely do. Take the ma'aser behemah, the tithe of animals. It's not just about giving a tenth of your livestock; it's about whose livestock and how you got ...
The Shmita, the Sabbatical year, mandated that every seventh year, all debts were to be forgiven. A beautiful concept. A clean slate, a chance for everyone to start fresh. As it sa...
Sometimes, it's in the seemingly small details that we find the biggest surprises. Take horses, for example. Yes, horses! Deuteronomy, Devarim in Hebrew, chapter 17, verse 16, tell...
We're going to dive into one of those today, a passage from Sifrei Devarim, a collection of legal commentaries on the Book of Deuteronomy. It deals with kilayim (כִּלְאַיִם), a Heb...
What is shatnez, you ask? Simply put, it's the prohibition against mixing wool and linen in clothing. It's a rule we find clearly stated in Deuteronomy 22:11: "You shall not wear s...
Sifrei Devarim 310, a passage from the ancient commentary on Deuteronomy, really digs into this idea. It starts with a powerful line: "Reflect upon the years of generation upon gen...
The ancient rabbis grappled with this feeling, particularly when thinking about the exiles of the Jewish people. They found echoes of this isolation, this sense of being utterly ab...
It's easy to get caught up in the moment, to think that the way things are now is how they'll always be. But Jewish tradition encourages us to look deeper, to see the hand of somet...
Talk about pressure! And that's exactly where we find him in the Book of Judith. Holofernes's inner circle — the chief men, those living by the seaside, and even the Moabites — are...
