Mesilas Yesharim and the Haggadah
Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto opens Mesilas Yesharim with this questionable claim: הקדמה – אמר המחבר: החיבור הזה לא חברתיו ללמד לבני האדם את אשר לא ידעו, אלא להזכירם את הידוע להם כבר ומפורסם אצלם...
by Micha Berger · Published April 26, 2016 – י״ח בניסן תשע״ו · Last modified April 26, 2016
Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto opens Mesilas Yesharim with this questionable claim: הקדמה – אמר המחבר: החיבור הזה לא חברתיו ללמד לבני האדם את אשר לא ידעו, אלא להזכירם את הידוע להם כבר ומפורסם אצלם...
The gemara says that the preferred vegetable for maror is chasah — lettuce. The problem is that the lettuces sold today aren’t mar, bitter. One could try to find wild lettuce. The lettuce that was native to...
by Micha Berger · Published April 20, 2016 – י״ב בניסן תשע״ו · Last modified April 20, 2016
(Embellished with thoughts from my daughter Noa’s recent bas mitzvah speech. Yay, Noa!) If you think about it, charoses is quite strange. On the one hand, as we learn in preschool and the Rambam writes,...
by Micha Berger · Published April 16, 2016 – ח׳ בניסן תשע״ו · Last modified April 16, 2016
Two variants of Shalom Rav were found in the Cairo Geniza. Given the similarities between Cairo and Israeli nusachos, it is assumed to have been the Nusach Eretz Yisrael in the days of the...
by Micha Berger · Published April 11, 2016 – ג׳ בניסן תשע״ו · Last modified April 11, 2016
The Mishnah (Pesachim 10:5, TB 115a-b), in a section quoted by the Hagadah, states: רבן גמליאל היה אומר, כל שלא אמר שלשה דברים אלו בפסח, לא יצא ידי חובתו. ואלו הן: פסח, מצה, ומרור…. בכל דור...
by Micha Berger · Published April 7, 2016 – כ״ח באדר ב׳ תשע״ו · Last modified April 7, 2016
Before I define the label “Orthodox”, I want to spell out what kind of entity is being labeled. The Enlightenment and the fall of the ghetto walls created a religious crisis for Ashkenazic Jewry....
by Micha Berger · Published April 6, 2016 – כ״ז באדר ב׳ תשע״ו · Last modified April 6, 2016
Colloquially, discussions of the permissibility of drinking USFDA milk tend to start with citing the Igeros Moshe, as though the norm of drinking it originated with Rav Moshe’s (RMF) responsa on the subject. But...
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