Take One Daf Yomi

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 26, is a festival for the senses. Rabbi Gidon Rothstein joins us to help us make sense of what we're supposed to think, say, or do, when we smell, see, and touch. Does the Talmud suggest a hierarchy of senses? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 25, asks a pointed question: Are there values worth losing your life for? Rabbi Rena Singer joins us to discuss what's worth dying for and why. Is idolatry on the list, and what is it anyway? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 24, the rabbis admit that prohibitions against eating certain things apply only if said things are eaten in the "usual manner." But what's the usual manner? Josh Kross returns to meditate on food snobbery, culinary expectations, and why innovation and tradition need each other sorely. What's the silliest way in the world to eat a burger? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 22 and 23, give us a touching story of an earnest scholar who realizes he got his life's work all wrong. Yael Steiner joins us to talk about the importance of humility, introspection, and paying attention. What lessons do the rabbis have for us about not succumbing to pride and learning to admit it when we get things wrong? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 20 and 21, introduce a concept that, at first blush, appears like a bit of a paradox: The more sacred something is, the more susceptible it is to impurity. Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to unpack this complicated idea, and what it has to teach us about what truly matters in life. Why should you never post pictures of your loved ones on social media? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 19, kicks things off with a novel halakhic ruling about hands. Lisa Ann Sandell returns to talk about her fear of germs, and how COVID-19 came as an affirmation of her very worst anxieties. Is there a message in antiquity's wisdom for us dirt-phobic moderns? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 18, tosses us into a reality that feels all too familiar, one in which contamination spreads quickly and must be stopped before normal life can resume. Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern joins us to explain how the Talmud's discussion of impurity has a special and starkly relevant resonance in the time of COVID-19. Why was the Hanukkah story, too, a tale of fighting an outbreak? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Pesachim 17, introduces us to the prophet Haggai. No one's idea of a superhero Biblical seer, Haggai, argues our guest, Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky, is the prophet we need right now, combining a delightful sense of practicality with a sharp and timeless moral vision. What can Haggai teach us that we desperately need to hear in 2020? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 15 and 16, ask a simple and searing question: How much should you sacrifice for your beliefs? It's a particularly poignant one these days, with a majority of Americans recently responding that they were afraid to openly and candidly share their political opinions. Legendary refusnik and former Israeli government minister and head of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky joins us, via a clip from a Tablet panel discussion earlier this winter, to talk about what happens when we no longer summon the courage to stand up for what we know is right. What advice might a former prisoner in the gulag offer us in modern-day America? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Pesachim 13 and 14, give us a curious ruling: The Prophet Elijah will never come on the eve of Shabbat. Why? Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter joins us to teach us a lesson in the holy importance of preparations, one we desperately need to learn before we rush into things. Why should we wish one another a good Erev Shabbat, or Shabbat Eve, rather than a good Shabbat? Listen and find out.