Certain pages of Talmud are rightfully iconic, today’s among them. For several pages, the rabbis have been exploring the importance of not oppressing others with words. On today’s daf, we have a story to illustrate that principle — and a whole lot more. It begins with an argument about the purity of Akhnai’s oven, an earthenware construction that has been sliced up and reassembled with sand between the sections. Rabbi Eliezer holds that the oven is no longer subject to impurity, but the other sages disagree. Akhnai was probably the name of the oven’s owner, but the word also means snake a ..read more

After extensive discussion of ona’at mekach, exploitation or fraudulence in business, the Gemara turns to a new mishnah to discuss the topic of ona’at devarim, verbal exploitation. Further down on the daf, the Gemara will derive the two types of ona’ah from the twice-repeated prohibition of lo tonu (“do not exploit/defraud one another”) in Leviticus 25:14 and 25:18. The mishnah explains what verbal exploitation means: Just as there is a prohibition against exploitation in buying and selling, so is there verbal exploitation. One may not say to a seller ..read more

Today, the Gemara quotes a beraita that teaches us that transactions involving consecrated property are not subject to the prohibitions against exploitation and charging interest. In response, the Gemara seeks to understand exactly when one can charge interest for consecrated property.  What are the circumstances of interest in cases of consecrated property? If we say that (the Temple) treasurer lent 100 in exchange for 120, didn’t the treasurer thereby misuse consecrated property? And once the treasurer misused, his money immediately leaves its consecrated state and becomes non ..read more

“I don’t like Passover, because I don’t like the fact that we were slaves.”  We were sitting in a living room where I had been invited to teach a class on the upcoming holiday to a small group of Russian-speaking Jews. When I asked the group to share a story of their connection to Passover, several people described how as children in Ukraine or Russia their father or uncle would go somewhere unknown and return with pillow cases full of matzah, which the family would eat with no explanation of the food’s connection to a seder, a holiday, or even that it had anything to do with being Jewish ..read more

Question: How do I celebrate the in-between days of Passover? — Rachel M. The four middle days of Passover — known in Hebrew a hol hamoed — are a period in which some of the restrictions observed on the first and last days of the holiday (known as yom tov) are relaxed, but the days are still meant to have a festive holiday feel.  Among the main differences between hol hamoed and yom tov of Passover is that it’s permitted to do work. In general, you are not supposed to work on hol hamoed unless you enjoy it, it is for the holiday or if not doing so would make you incur loss. So many people ..read more

Passover kashrut laws are always challenging, and the biggest challenge has to be finding a good kosher-for-Passover cake. If you need the cake to be pareve (dairy free), that’s even harder. So when a festive and good-looking Passover cake, made of layers of chocolate cake and whipped cream, first appeared in a national newspaper in Israel in the 80s, it was immediately adopted by many home cooks, my mother included. The cake was a revelation! At the bottom rests a rich chocolate layer made of whipped eggs and melted chocolate. When cooled down, the cake is topped with simple whipped cream lig ..read more

As we’ve seen in recent pages, the Torah demands that people act ethically when buying and selling in the marketplace. Specifically, the rabbis define an ethical transaction as one in which the agreed-upon price is no more or less than one-sixth the value of the item. Today, we learn about some exceptions to this rule. Here’s the mishnah: These are matters that are not subject to (the halakhot of) exploitation. Slaves, and documents, and land and consecrated property. Why these four categories? The Gemara, drawing from a beraita, explains: It is written: “And if you se ..read more

On today’s daf, the Gemara continues its examination of the laws of second tithe, the sacred portion of one’s produce that had to be brought to Jerusalem and consumed there. While one method is to bring the produce itself, depending on how close one lived to Jerusalem, it might not be feasible to get the produce to the city before it rotted, or the burden might be unmanageable. So the Torah provides a solution: One can desacralize the produce, transferring its second-tithe status on to coins, which are then brought to Jerusalem where new produce is bought with this money and consumed. The ..read more

The Torah prescribes a complex system of tithing that was clarified by the rabbis. Maaser sheni, the second tithe, was taken from produce grown in the land of Israel during the first, second, fourth and fifth years of the seven-year agricultural cycle. When the tithe was operative, it was brought to Jerusalem and eaten there. If the distance from your home was too great to transport the tithe, you could sell the tithed produce for cash, bring the money to Jerusalem, purchase new food, and consume it there. Opting for this convenience obligated you to add a fifth to the value of ..read more

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Metzorah, is primarily concerned with a peculiar biblical affliction called tzaraat (tzah-RAH-at). Commonly mistranslated as leprosy — the Greek translation of the Hebrew, lepra, sounds a bit like the word leprosy — tzaraat is frequently characterized by white patches of skin, something modern scholars have suggested is similar to vitiligo. This week’s portion is primarily concerned with how to recognize tzaraat, prevent its spread and purify someone afflicted with it.  We might wonder why so much of the Torah’s attention is devoted to this subject. Aft ..read more