Like much of the Book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 7 lays out the terms and conditions of the Israelites’ covenant with God. And if the Israelites obey that covenant, Deuteronomy 7:13 promises that, “God will ward off from you all sickness; and will not bring upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt, about which you know, but will inflict them upon all your enemies.” A powerful promise.  Within the context of Deuteronomy 7, the two parts of the verse function as a doublet, a biblical way of saying the same thing twice for poetic effect. The sickness we are protected from is ..read more

Today we encounter a sugya that attempts to explain the cause of natural disaster in a just world. The framework for this theoretical struggle is a specific series of “what if?” scenarios in which the Gemara considers who might be to blame (and therefore bear the financial responsibility) when a high wind destroys crops on a tenant-farmed piece of land. Is it the fault of the owner? The tenant farmer? Or just unfortunate luck? Let’s takes look at some of these scenarios: Scenario #1: What the owner said to the tenant, “Plant wheat,” and the tenant planted barley. Most of the valley was wind bl ..read more

Having quoted the school of Rabbi Yannai on another matter, the Gemara shares an additional teaching from the school that is unrelated to the previous discussion: With regard to prayer and with regard to tefillin, the measure is four kav. At first glance, this statement seems quite odd. A kav is a unit of volume equivalent to 24 eggs; four kavs are a little more than a gallon. It makes sense to talk about olives or flour in terms of kavs, but who measures prayer by volume? Thankfully, the Gemara provides a beraita to bring some clarity to the teaching: What is the relevance ..read more

Four years into the Daf Yomi cycle, you may have noticed that the rabbis often speak as if their rulings are definitive and followed by everyone. On today’s daf, however, the sages consider several cases of agreements which don’t conform to rabbinic standards and yet are still considered valid. Here’s the mishnah that kicks off the discussion: One who receives a field from another and lets it lie fallow, (the court) appraises it by how much it was able to produce, and he gives (his share of this amount) to the owner. This is what (a cultivator) writes to the owner: If I let the field lie fallo ..read more

A famous and famously unattributable quote asserts that, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” We might say the same of Jews — following the same religion but living in numerous diverse locales and cultures. The challenge this presents is taken up by today’s daf.  A new chapter of Bava Metzia begins with a mishnah that outlines the obligations of a person working someone else’s land One who receives a field from another: In a location where those cultivating the land were accustomed to cut the produce, this one must cut it as well. Where they were accusto ..read more

The website IsitaJewishholidaytoday.com is an invaluable resource, but its usual accuracy recently hit a bump, as we have just passed the most contested period of the Jewish year.  Though the start of the holiday of Shavuot was celebrated widely this past Tuesday night, the exact date of the festival has been a bone of contention for millennia. The ambiguity stems from the instructions given in Leviticus 23, which states that a certain type of offering (known as the Omer) should be initiated “on the day after the Sabbath,” and seven weeks counted from that point before celebrating Shavuot ..read more

As a child growing up in Sydney, Australia, I would often hear my parents wistfully reminisce about eating qei’mar (pronounced khey-mar) for breakfast everyday. Qei’mar, an Iraqi clotted cream made from the milk of water buffaloes, acquired an almost mythic quality in my young imagination.  The cream is made by slowly boiling raw milk over low heat, then cooling overnight, which results in a thick layer of cream. Water buffalo milk has a very high percentage of fat (about 40-60%) which makes it ideal for this recipe. Kaymak, a word with Central Asian Turkic origins, meaning “melt,” is a s ..read more

My family are from a coastal suburb of Tripoli, where my grandparents married very young and had 16 children. When the majority of Jews fled Libya in the early 50s, some moved to Italy, which had close ties to Libya (many Libyan Jews spoke Italian in addition to Arabic), and others, including my family, emigrated to Israel.   While there are no Jews left in Libya, the community lives on through beautiful customs, songs and perhaps what we are most famous for: our cuisine. Libyan-Jewish cuisine has Arab, Italian and Mediterranean influence, and is known for rich flavors, slow-cooked s ..read more

Jewish civil law provides protection for tenants, regulating the amount of lead time a landlord must provide before ending a lease agreement. Some of the details appear on today’s daf. As we’ll see, however, it’s not always the law that carries the day.  Here’s the mishnah: One who rents out a house to another in the rainy season cannot evict from Sukkot until Passover. In the summer, the landlord must give 30 days.  There were basically two seasons in ancient Israel — the rainy season, which runs from Sukkot until Passover, and the summer season, from Passover until Sukkot. One cann ..read more

Sometimes, parties come to court with claims that are less than certain. They may suspect they have a claim, but they aren’t entirely sure about it. The mishnah on today’s daf addresses such a situation, but when we get to the Gemara, things get a little more complicated.  The mishnah lays out several permutations of a property dispute, and then considers variations in which one party makes a certain claim and the other party makes a certain one, ruling in such situations that the law should benefit the party that makes a certain claim over the party that makes an uncertain one. It then a ..read more