Michael el Chayil

I am trying something new. I have always learned everything by starting at the beginning and just moving through. After all, the author knows what they want to convey and what they believe is the best way to do that. It strikes me as the height of arrogance to think I know better than the creator before I have even started!  (And I am an expert on arrogance; if I do say so myself.) But now I am in kollel, so time to start learning like a kollel man. I started Shabbos (it is the next masechta after Brachos, after all), which begins by discussing הוצאה/carrying things out and in. The topic of הוצאה is discussed in through 9a, then veers to another topic. הוצאה is picked up again on 96a for a few daf. I was told that when the kollel learned this a few years ago, they learned all of הוצאה together. And Lakewood is now learning הוצאה and that is how they are doing it. Ok, at this point, if I were to learn it in order, that  would be the height of arrogance. So last week I skip...

Never heard the term "DMC"? It means "deep meaningful conversation". The first time I heard the term was from the daughter of a neighbor and close friend who had come back from seminary and was struggling with shidduchim. She had (and still has) a very close relationship with her mother. I saw her one afternoon and she had a particularly thoughtful look on her face. I asked her about it, and she told me, with a very sincere smile, that she and her mother had just had a DMC. (She has since married to a wonderful young man. Baruch HaShem, our families are still closer despite the years and distance.) This week's parasha begins with the Jewish nation on the verge of entering the promised land, then details how their bad decisions earned them 40 years of exile in the desert, and finishes with the mitzvah of ציצית. The very last verse of this parasha ends (in translation): I am HaShem, your G-d Who took you out of the land of Mitzrayim to be for you your G-d; I am Ha...

In a recent TftD , which was really about why we got the Torah (Go Team Klal Yisrael!), I mentioned that it is simply logical to not eat the limb of a living animal. After all, besides fish eating live fish and small reptiles/amphibians eating live bugs, animals kill their prey before eating it. Here is what Gemini says about it: So, while the image of a predator instantly killing its prey might not always be precisely accurate in every second of a hunt, the overwhelming preference and typical strategy for large land animals is to kill their prey as efficiently as possible to minimize risk and ensure a successful meal. As my daughter told me recently, I have found my people... I love learning in kollel in the morning and they more than put up with my presence. I often share ideas when getting coffee and/or passing each other outside beis medrash. (Inside beis medrash everyone is constantly busy!) It is a great environment for me because I have a huge pet peeve; I hate being wrong. In t...

I had the incredible opportunity to write a letter in a sefer Torah. I started the day learning and davening, then went to shiur by R' Fuerst, shilta, then to the mikveh, then to write the letter. What letter did I have the zchus to write in a sefer Torah that was dedicated to the memory of Mr. Rudy Tessler, ztz''l, a holocaust survivor whom I am very proud to have personally known (and behind whom I davened for years)? We'll get to that.... Writing a sefer Torah is one of the 613 mitzvos. The Rosh (brought in Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 270:2; see Shach and Taz there) says that we can fulfill that mitzvah by buying s'farim and learning them. I have done that and do that and hope to continue doing that for as long as HaShem grants me the ability to do so. Still, even if that is 100%, first class way to fulfill that mitzvah, you can't possibly compare that to the coolness factor of actually taking quill to parchment. One thing, though. There are a few requirements...

I was not popular in college. Some reasons are still evident five decades later, others are no longer relevant. In any case, one day I finally mustered the courage to ask out a freshman (I was a junior and still younger than her; one of the reasons I was not popular). In a moment of weakness, she said yes. She regained her sensibilities before I picked her up, so when I arrived she told me she had an exam to study for, and so had to cancel our date. She felt badly enough to invite me in for some popcorn before shooing me off. I wasn't so dense as to be oblivious to what just happened, but I had no better option, so I took her up on it. I wasn't there for more than 15 or so minutes. She asked me why I chose to be a physics major. I struggled to explain, and then said, "I mean, haven't you ever wondered why the sky is blue?" She got a puzzled look on her face and said, "No." I don't know if there is a punctuation mark for her tone. Kind of a mixture of...

[Just to let you know... this is not at all what I had planned to write (and,  בעזרת השם, will write later). This happens sometimes. Go figure. As I began my life as a Torah observant Jew, there were many, many choices to be made. I am sure I have mentioned this, but just months before getting married, I heard a story on the radio (of course I always listened to news radio stations...) about a study of who is most likely to get taken by a con. The study found that smarter people get taken more often than, well, less smart/sophisticated/educated people. Why? Because they feel they are smart enough to see through a scam. Less smart/sophisticated/educated people, on the other hand, are guided by: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I was not quite 20 and have always considered myself a smart/educated (nope, not sophisticated in the least) person, so that study really resonated with me. I am very distrustful of the biggest scam artist I know: my inner voice, followed clos...

My grandfather (with whom I was very close and in many way set my direction in life) was a graduate student of Electrical Engineering at CalTech, one of the top universities for science and engineering to this day. He told me about a student defending his thesis whose professors (to start things off) asked him to write down something basic. He turned to them and said (with a smirk), "I would have thought gentlemen of your caliber would already know that." He was hoping it would lighten the mood. It didn't; it was a bad move. I actually saw nearly the same thing in my own graduate career. One of the professors was my thesis advisor and I had never seen him get angry nor raise his voice. When the postdoc who was giving a presentation made a similar remark, I saw the back of my research adviser's neck turn an amazingly deep shade of red. It did not go well for the postdoc. Talmud Bavli begins with Masechta Brachos, which begins with a mishna that begins with these words:...

I went to the kollel on erev Shavuos for mincha/ma'ariv because it is across the street from my daughter where we were having the s'uda that night and because, well... I learn there; I reasoned there was a good chance I would also hear a shiur from the rosh kollel. As it turns out, the rosh kollel spoke that night at the Agudah, which is where I typically daven at night. מאן טראכט און ג-ט לאכט/Man plans and G-d laughs, as the Yiddish expression goes. Since I have started reviewing Brachos, I figured I may as well start there. However, instead of opening to the first mishna/daf, I checked out the stuff before that. I struck gold. The הקדמה/introduction of R' Nissim Gaon. I thought it was just an introduction to Masechta Brachos; oh, no.... it is an introduction to Shas! In fact, R' Nissim starts with this question: Why did only the Jews get the Torah? I have wondered that myself for a long time, though I framed the question as "Why are there people who are not bound...

Many, many people will stay up all night learning tonight. Many, many of those will be a wreck the next day. In fact, the learning at 3:00 AM is not always so great. Davening will be difficult the next morning. Baruch HaShem the reading of Megilas Rus won't be till the second day, so there is a chance I can pay attention. It is also likely that there will be less learning than usual on the first day, as those of us who pulled an all-nighter are going to be recovering. (Just speaking for myself, I do not recover as quickly now as I did in my 20s and 30s and even 40s and 50s.) For all those reasons, many, many people will not  stay up all night learning. It just doesn't make sense. Why do we do it? Apparently because the generation who actually stood at Har Sinai fell asleep that night and needed to be woken with shofar blasts. So we are repairing that. Hang on.. .they were the generation that left Mitzrayim, saw a year of miracles, crossed through the Yam Suf, ate mahn. It is un...

It is sort of a joke, but it's a frightening reality for many people: Whoever dies with the most toys wins! Substitute pretty much anything for "toys" and you have the same problem. Here's a good one: Whoever dies with the most "dahf gemara"s wins! How about, "Whoever has the longest seder wins!"? I have a whole TftD on keeping priorities straight. What do Chazal say about it? There is a machlokes between R' Meir and R' Yehuda (Nedarim 9b) regarding how to read a verse in Koheles (5:4) ט֖וֹב אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹֽא־תִדֹּ֑ר מִשֶּׁתִּדּ֖וֹר וְלֹ֥א תְשַׁלֵּֽם/It is better not to make a pledge, than to pledge and not pay. The basic issue is that this seems too obvious to mean what is says. This verse comes on the heels of a verse that warns us not to delay making good on our vows. R' Meir reads this as: "If you do  make a pledge, then you need to pay; but it is better not to make that pledge in the first place, as you may come to not pay it....

Even if you have never done it, we all know the concept of cramming for exams. You learn material differently when you are being tested. I know a physician who had an epiphany as he walked out of his first exam in medical school. Up to that point in his life, the routine for classes had been to learn the material, cram for the test, dump all that material out of his brain to make room for the material the next semester, repeat. As he was about to dump out the knowledge he had just gained, he realized, "Oh no! I need this knowledge to be a good physician! People's lives will depend on me retaining this knowledge!" In other words, he then realized that entering the field of medicine meant pop quizzes on life and death matters at any moment. We are all actually in that position. As Rashi brings on our introduction to Noah (B'reishis 6:9), אֵלֶּה תּֽוֹלְדֹת נֹחַ נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק/These are the generations of Noah, Noah was a righteous man. Says Rashi, quoting Chazal: To ...

The following has been written absolutely with the permission of my amazing grandson. In fact, he was touched that I wanted to write about this. I have had the merit this year to have a steady chavrusa with my grandson who is in 8th grade. This is not "intro to gemara" any more. By the time a bachur gets to 8th grade, they are learning topics in depth with Rashi and Tosafos. They learn Bava Kama and one of the first topics they learn is when one ox damages another. Most oxen are tame and they were quite common in ancient cities, and really enabled commerce the way trucks do nowadays. When a normal ox -- תם/innocent -- gores another ox, it is considered an unusual event and is dealt with as such. First, the owner of the ox only pays half the value of the ox he killed; which is know as חצי נזק/half damages. Second, there is a cap on the liability, which is the value of the animal itself. That is know as מגופו/from its own value. The word "גוף", of course, literally me...

There are two words for "fat" in Hebrew: שׁוּמָן/subcutaneous fat, which is the fat just under the skin and is jiggly חֵלֶב/visceral fat, which is the fat around organs and is relatively firm The fat you see in and around you steak is שׁוּמָן/subcutaneous fat. You are never going to see חֵלֶב/visceral fat in your cholent (Ashkenazim, anyway, who make cholent the right way, i.e., with beef.) That is because the חֵלֶב/visceral fat is forbidden under penalty of spiritual excision. חֵלֶב/visceral fat from non-domesticated animals, such as deer, is not forbidden. (If you ever make a venison cholent, please let me know.) Moreover, it is not a Torah prohibition to cook and even eat venison with milk (deer, cow, or otherwise). Of course you know that Chazal forbade it. There is an interesting animal called the כוי/koy (yes... there is no translation) that is an animal that is on the spectrum (oh aren't I so woke!); somewhere between a domesticated animal and a non-domesticated an...

We know that (at least since the second set of tablets) that there is a prohibition to write the תורה שבעל פה/Oral Law. Over the centuries, and always only after careful consideration, parts have been put in written form. Like a life saving surgery, as much is revealed as necessary, but no more. First the mishnayos were committed to writing, then the gemara. Nonetheless, the mishnayos and gemara have been written in a way that learning them really requires a teacher who himself is part of the chain of tradition. Even ArtScroll consulted with sages of our generation on how to handle the translation into English. See their introduction and the הסכמות/approbations. Interestingly, while there has always been a main core of the תורה שבעל פה/Oral Law that everyone knew and passed from generation to generation/rebbi to talmid, there were also lesser known -- thoroughly authentic -- teachings that were known to fewer sages. When a sage said something in beis medrash that had not been ...

It's erev Shabbos. Typical Jewish home.. everyone has lots to do. I think it is pretty common for each of the children to have their own responsibilities Children don't always do everything they are supposed to do. As parents we give them "consequences." This family has a simple rule: If you don't take care of your responsibilities on erev Shabbos, then you don't get dessert Friday night. Perfectly appropriate and effective. One week, Mommy tells the children: You have all been so good the last few months, I want you to have some time on Friday to do what you want. You don't have to do your jobs this week and I'll be sure there is a special dessert. Wow! Everyone runs off to do whatever they like best with all this extra free time. Except one... little Shprintze, who is crying! "But Mommy! I want dessert! How will I have dessert if I don't set the table?!" Mommy is a little surprised and tries to talk to Shprintze, but Shprintze is so cau...

The core of the Oral Law is encoded in the mishnayos collected and culled and edited into their final form by R' Yehuda. Collected, culled, and edited from where? There is a large body of statements that were used as the core curriculum in the ancient yeshivos of Eretz Yisroel. R' Yehuda produced from there the six orders of the mishna that is the official set of statements used by the entire Jewish nation. There are also other collections, authoritative in content, but not as well known nor are well studied. These are known as ברייתות; which literally means "outside teaching", as they are outside the office cannon of mishnayos. The gemara often uses them to clarify and deepen our understanding of a topic. The gemara (Shabbos 6b) is curious about why a ברייתא makes two quite obvious claims in one breath: Were someone to move an object between a private and public domain on Shabbos; if it was by accident, they have to bring a sin offering, but if it was on purpose, the...

Reader Advisory:  The House on the Rock is a very cool site in Wisconsin. Short history: A (in my estimation) brilliant architect found a huge pointy rock and built a house around it. He was also (in everyone's estimation) a bit of a kook. He collected dolls, non-horse merry-go-round critters, old road signs, etc. He also built large room size music boxes. Walking through the attraction feels like walking through the mind of someone a bit off/deranged, but harmless. This TftD feels like that. Feel free to move on. I have started learning masechta Nedarim. I find that each seder (Zerayim, Mo'ed, Nezikin, Nashim, Kodshim, Taharos) has its own way of looking at the world. Within a seder, each masechta has its own personality. Then there's Nedarim, which is just off the charts in its own world. Even the Ran introduced Nedarim by telling us that Nedarim is not written like any other gemara. Speaking of which, why am I quoting the Ran instead of Rashi? Because there is no Rashi ...

Let's be real. I did not grow up frum (understatement of the century). I didn't start learning in earnest till about 30 years ago, and even that has been very part time till just a year ago. Nonetheless, I still look for opportunities to use my background and secular education to have some value add. Here was my recent try. I am learning about mixtures of milk and meat. I just got to the topic (for the last couple of weeks) of drops of milk spattering pot of meat. Very interesting topic. Lots of juicy details, some of which you can find in this TftD . One thing, though... we always look at the pot as if it has absorbed a lot  of food. How much? We are stringent and assume that the pan -- even though it is stainless steel -- has absorbed so much food into its walls that we just bite the bullet and consider them to be entirely food. That means for nullification purposes, we would need the contents to be 60 times the volume of the walls. I've tried the calculation a few times ...

In my youth, I was interested in the field of artificial intelligence as an avocation. I was fascinated by the idea of using computers to understand human reasoning. I dabbled in programming some models using specialized computer languages (most of which are now mostly relegated to footnotes in computer science books). There was an offshoot of that research called "computer/machine learning". Most of what passes for AI nowadays is fancy machine learning with a little bit of artificial intelligence sprinkled in. I bring that up to note, which should be absolutely obvious, that computers do not have free will. Even though Gemini (Google foray into the AI marketplace) will say, "Oh! I am so embarrassed about making that mistake! Thank you for pointing that out to me." She isn't embarrassed and she isn't grateful and she really isn't anything but a feminine sounding voice. (There is a long history of using feminine sounding voices. Google it if you are inter...

Here's the basic halacha: A Jew is prohibited from benefiting from a מלאכה performed on Shabbos; even when done by a non-Jew. Simple. You are in a completely dark room, someone comes in and turns on the light for you -- thus enabling things that were heretofore impossible (reading, for example) -- you have to leave the room. Simple; I mean, you know, more or less simple in the grand scheme of halacha; which is never simple. Check out this TftD for more on that topic, as well as a bonus story! This, however, is simple: It is much worse to benefit from a  מלאכה performed on Shabbos by a Jew, which is an actual violation of Shabbos. That is the bare halacha. Now, of course, is when the fun starts. There is a well known difference in opinion regarding unscrewing plastic bottle caps and breaking the seal on Shabbos. The issues are actually quite interesting and depend on some subtle halachic principles. Not for now. The dayan, R' Fuerst, shlita, is stringent and rules that it is fo...

I eschew cute titles. But if I didn't, I likely would have called this one: Lending a Hand On Shabbos. It turns out that using your hands to move stuff around is more interesting than you would have thought. (I am pretty safe there, even if you never thought about it at all, since anything is more than zero!) Masechta Shabbos does not begin with a listing of the 39 categories of forbidden labor. Neither does it start out by describing the beauty and radiance of Shabbos. It starts with a poor person begging for food and a well-meaning homeowner trying to help him out. The mishna details situations under which one or the other would be guilty of a capital offense, one or the other would cause the other to commit a capital crime, and situations they would just get whipped for rebelling against Chazal. How's that for an attention grabber? Let's start with the bare halacha. The home owner is in a רשות היחיד/private domain, and the poor person is in a רשות הרבים/public domain. N...

Of course I know the dictum of R' Akviva, לעולם יהא אדם רגיל לומר כל דעביד רחמנא לתב עביד/a person should always accustom himself to say that everything HaShem does is for the good. I have even written a TftD about it. I do my best. Still... often it feels like HaShem is giving me challenges to overcome. Of course I get stronger/wiser/better, so the result is good, but the actual challenge feels more like a burden. Take my 50 years in the workforce, for example. It certainly taught me the value of time. It taught me that I needed to keep learning more things if I wanted to stay working and getting raises. I needed to come up with creative ways to make time for learning (around my work schedule), and exercise to stay healthy (around my work schedule), and find ways to eat kosher economically (in the workplace). Many of those skills have transferred to my new workplace and schedule. I still get up early to learn and daven; so now I have more time during the day. I still keep up m...