This week I started my summer position as the Interim Director of Jewish Life at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living, which is a fancy way of saying that I’m subbing for the facility’s rabbi, who is going on parental leave. I’ve spent the last two weeks shadowing the rabbi, chatting with the residents, attending meetings and classes and

First item of business today is an unfinished wrinkle from yesterday. Rabbi Yirmeya asks whether it was okay for the Israelites to bring with them “stabbing meat” (not properly slaughtered) from the desert into the promised land. The Israelites were promised “houses full of all good things,” which Rabbi Yirmeya said included pork, so by argument a-

Behind Ancient Bars officially came out on May 12, and I’ve been getting heaps of emails from folks who received the book and started reading it. It’s always a strange delight to see one’s book separate from oneself, making its way throughout the world to various hands—some who know me and some who don’t.

So far we’ve had two book release parties

Today’s page starts with a new mishna: it is kosher to slaughter with a hand sickle, a flintstone, and a reed stalk. The only instruments disallowed for slaughter are a harvest sickle, a saw, teeth (Steinsaltz thinks they mean the teeth of an animal attached to a jawbone), and a fingernail, because they strangle the animal, rather than slice the

We are continuing our discussion of yesterday’s mishnah about eating meat that was slaughtered during Shabbat and Yom Kippur. A nameless tanna recites before Rav a rule we’ve already seen, which is that it all depends on the intent: if you accidentally

We have two short mishnayot for today. The first says that slaughter by a foreigner is not kosher, and that it imparts ritual impurity through carrying.

The Gemara specifies that, while the meat is forbidden to eat,

Today’s mishnah is a bit amusing, perhaps: meat slaughtered on Shabbat or Yom Kippur is kosher, but the person is to be put to death. The Gemara takes some fun turns, though. Rav Huna quotes Rav (and others say, Rabbi Yehuda) as saying that the meat should be avoided during the holiday. The reason some think it’s Rabbi Yehuda is that he allowed

Yesterday’s page had some info about expertise in butchery. This one opens with Rav Nachman citing Rav: if you watch a slaughter, beginning to end, you may eat the meat; if you didn’t see the whole thing, you may not. But this

Yesterday’s page was all about tracing the rule of a rebuttable presumption (certainty trumps uncertainty). Today’s page segues to figuring out a different rule, and if you like statistics, this one’s for you!

Exodus 23:2 says, “after the majority to incline” (אַחֲרֵי רַבִּים

There’s a rule in torts called res ipsa loquitur, meaning “the thing speaks for itself.” It creates a presumption that if (1) the incident was of a type that does not generally happen without negligence, (2) it was caused