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Our Gemara on Amud Aleph uses a strange phrase, הא דרב אשי בדותא היא, which translates approximately as, “We must conclude that this teaching of Rav Ashi was mistaken.”
The word בדותא translates into English with less contempt than the connotation In Hebrew. It is more than mistaken. It implies something made up without any basis (see Ran Nedarim 3a, “elah”, and Melachim 1:12:33.) It is difficult to un …
Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the concept that items which are numbered are considered more significant, which can affect the laws of nullification. That is, if ordinarily we might say a non kosher item will be nullified if mixed into a majority, if this non kosher item has a significance in that it is counted and sold by numbers instead of volume, it will not be nullified.
The idea that something becomes important when it is counted is disc …
Dear Therapist:
Our 20-year-old son recently returned home from a year learning in Israel. He is boy who struggled a lot in his teens both academically and religiously. Baruch Hashem, he seems to have had an excellent year of growth, he likes his rabbeim and has learned a lot about being a mentsch, though he still has a way to go. He is very proud of his year and some new concepts and ideas he has learned. The yeshiva has an emphasis on emotio …
Dear Therapist:
My daughter has always been an all-around healthy 17-year-old . She does tend to have anxiety but it’s always been kept in check. Lately though she’s become a shell of herself. She’s had trouble eating and sleeping and is not herself. We’ve tried very hard to get to the root cause of her distress. Finally she confided that she’s been having intrusive thoughts of kefira type themes. She’s horr …
Last month, Orthodox Jewish journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt published an article in The Atlantic highlighting the popularity of Laura Doyle’s 2001 New York Times bestseller, ‘The Surrendered Wife,’ among Orthodox Jewish women. Doyle’s book provides a practical guide to marital bliss and harmony, suggesting that women stop being critical and demanding of their husbands, respect and trust them, regularly engage in self …
Our Gemara on Amud Beis records an incident of a woman whose husband was away for twelve months delivered a baby. Obviously, there ought to be a concern that this child was a mamzer, yet the Gemara rules that it is conceivable that her pregnancy lasted for twelve months, and so the child is kosher.
What I find fascinating about Gemaras such as these is that often we must say Nishtanu HaTibiyyim, the medical and physiological realities have …
