“Rabbi Zera merely describes a stringent practice which Babylonian Jewish women had taken upon themselves”
This term, first used by medieval commentators (see Zimmerman, p. 27, note 6), is,...
Tag Archives: Talmud
“Unparallel parallels which feed a partisan ego scarcely represent good scholarship…”
Unparallel parallels which feed a partisan ego scarcely represent good scholarship, whether the dabblers...
“For the rabbis, breastfeeding offers a fascinating set of variables for academic investigation”
For the rabbis, breastfeeding offers a fascinating set of variables for academic investigation. First,...
“Being the principal alcoholic beverage of Mesopotamia, beer is discussed at length in the Babylonian Talmud and, naturally, the vocabulary is Mesopotamian”
Being the principal alcoholic beverage of Mesopotamia, it is discussed at length in the...
“In addition to the biblical distinction between normal and abnormal discharges, the rabbis developed two more categories…”
Leviticus 15 is concerned with normal and abnormal, male and female genital discharges. As...
“The practice of waiting seven blood-free days following the end of a regular menstrual period is variously described in the Talmud as heḥemiru al atzman, minhaga, and halakhah pesukah, indicating that a variety of attitudes existed as to the severity of the requirement”
Zimmerman is correct in saying that a seven-day wait after any bleeding has become...
“…the term halakhah pesukah need not be considered the opposite of minhaga. It may simply mean a rule that cannot be questioned or supported on the basis of conventional talmudic dialectics”
Perhaps it can be argued that the ḥumra of the daughters of Israel is...
“The contrast between wine culture of Palestine and beer culture of Babylonia is well documented in the Talmud…”
One of the important distinctions between the diet of Graeco-Roman Palestine and Babylonia was...
“Through their sharp political interpretations of the Passover story, Rav and Shmuel described the political condition of the Jewish people long after the Exodus from Egypt”
In its transition from Joseph’s death to a new era, the book of Exodus...
“…the true Jewish ethos of modesty does not exclusively pertain to sexuality…”
The topic of “tzniut” or “modesty” has recently become a prominent point of discussion...