Adapted from a shiur by Rav Eliezer Gewirtzman Answering the call One Purim some years ago, I was about to begin the Megilla reading when a man approached and placed a cell phone on the bima. He explained that his…
Torah amid the ruins The archeology world was recently excited by the discovery of a marked beka (machatzis hashekel) weight in a dig at the Kosel. A small stone bearing an inscription that archeologists identified as the word “beka”—written backwards—was…
ואכלת ושבעת וברחת As heard from Rav Dovid Shlomo Englander Eat and Run Paul Guadalupe Gonzales likes eating. Paying, less so. Last May, Gonzales invited a woman he met online to dinner at a California restaurant. He ordered lavishly for…
Adapted from a shiur by Rav Daniel Dombroff The case of the overstuffed chair Several bochurim sat recently in a Mir Yeshiva dorm room. One was on an old upholstered chair that another boy had rescued from the trash a…
Adapted from a shiur by Rav Shmuel Honigwachs A follow-up on credit unions and cooperatives. Our recent article following the kol korai on credit unions (“State of the Union: May One Join PenFed or First Atlantic?”) prompted many questions from…
Adapted from a shiur by Rav Yosef Greenwald Going alone Bais Din has a side job in addition to mishpat: to serve as shotrim, officers (Devarim 16:18). This function requires Bais Din, in certain circumstances, to intervene to protect society…
Adapted from a shiur by Rav Yosef Greenwald Justice as Divine representation Bais Din is called in the Torah by the Divine name Elokim (Shemos 22:7 et al.). A monetary Bais Din of three judges is G-dlike in that it…
Rabbi Dovid Englander The Din Torah process in contemporary times It is not uncommon for people to question the beis din’s procedures, action, and motives, especially when they are first exposed to a beis din as a party to a…
Adapted from a shiur by Rav Yosef Greenwald Murder in the park Victor Melo, 16, began his afternoon listening to music in the sprawling national park in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia. At some point a classmate of Victor’s, standing nearby,…
Part 2 Electrical Fire: In Part 1 of this series, we stated that if someone lights a fire in a way that it should technically have been stopped before reaching his friend’s property – for example, a wall separated the…