The Twelve Minute Shiur Freehof Institute

Picking up where we left off in episode #53. What qualities should we want in a shaliach tzibur (prayer leader)? And what qualities are we best advised to avoid? The halakhah weighs in.

Get the source sheet at www.freehofinstitute.org/podcast.

Pesach is coming. Time to get rid of your hametz. And there are four different ways to do it. Oh, the choices! This episode explores the whys and the hows.

Get the source sheet at www.freehofinstitute.org/podcast.

The leader of the prayer service - the shaliach tzibur - is traditionally considered our representative or emissary before God. So it's understandable that we want to appoint the very best person, or at least someone who is worthy for that job. Okay... but how do we define "worthy"? The first of a two-part series.

Get the source sheet at www.freehofinstitute.org/podcast.

For nearly a thousand years, students of the Mishneh Torah, Rambam's great code of halakhah, have sought to identify the Talmudic sources of his rulings. Sometimes, he appears to ​have no source whatsoever. When this happens, we have to ask: is Rambam just making this up? Is it permissible even for a great posek to derive a rule of halakhah on the basis of common sense or of his personal judgment? In this installment, we look at two outstanding commentators with two very different answers to that question.

Download the source sheet at www.freehofinstitute.org/podcast.

Progressive Jews have been writing new texts for the b'rakhot, the blessings or benedictions that form the core of our worship, for just about 200 years. There are lots of reasons for that, but our question here is whether we violate halakhah when we do it. Does Jewish law permit us to alter the text - the nusach - of a liturgical form that tradition says was ordained by the ancient Rabbis and perhaps even by Ezra the scribe? We have a theory that says "yes."
Get the source sheet at www.freehofinstitute.org/podcast .

We ask that the congregation please rise... to observe a custom (minhag) that was created for a very specific reason. That reason disappeared over 1000 years ago. So what did the Jews do about that? You guessed it: they maintained the minhag and came up with new reasons for it. That in itself tells us something about the role of minhag in our religious life. And as for those new reasons, do they have anything to teach us? Well, just maybe.