Take One Daf Yomi

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 44 and 45, introduce us to the Muchni, a bit of detachable wheel that keeps the rest of the items in the wagon from being rendered impure. Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern of Yeshiva University joins us to talk about technology's ability to both flood our lives with unholy things and help insulate us from disaster, and shares with us how his modern Orthodox community learned to rethink technology after the outbreak of Covid-19 forced many of the rituals that were previously conducted in person to move online. What can an ancient detachable wheel teach us about our lives today? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 40 to 43, cover a wide array of crucial questions, from why we're not allowed to take a hot shower on Shabbat to precisely what men should do with their members while urinating. Because we've been off for a few days, celebrating Pesach, Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to help us catch up on the Talmudic majesty we've missed. What is muktzah, and how can it help us see Shabbat in a whole new light? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Shabbat 39, acknowledges what every amateur chef already knows: There's nothing more difficult to cook to perfection than the lowly egg. A minute here or there can make the difference between jammy perfection and a gray-hued mess, so producer Josh Kross, himself an egg enthusiast, joins us to interpret the rabbis' hard-boiled disquisition on the different approaches to egg-cooking. What might an omelet teach us about life? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 37 and 38, find the rabbis mulling the precise nature of a Kupah, a smallish stove that was popular in their day. And while the specifics of their conversation may sound archaic, its essence couldn't be more timely: What they're really trying to figure out is what to do when a new technology is thrust into our lives, and how our gadgets shape so much about the way we interact with the world. How is the Kupah just like an iPhone? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 35 and 36, raises one of the most loaded concepts in the entire Talmud: Bein Hashmashot, or Twilight. It's extremely significant for a host of religious obligations, yet the rabbis, in pure Talmudic fashion, couldn't decide on how long, precisely, twilight actually was. Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin joins us to shed light on this strange and fascinating concept. Why did some rabbis believe you had to view Mt. Carmel from the Mediterranean in order to grasp the truly meaning of twilight? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 33 and 34, tell a wild story of a mighty rabbi and his son, so disgusted with the ways of this world that they chose to retreat and live in a cave for 13 years. When they emerge, however, trouble ensues. Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin returns to teach us about the perils of very smart and serious people believing themselves to be better than the rest of us, and about why mysticism means seeing the divine sparks everywhere. Why should we never assume our scholarship and intelligence gives us special status? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Shabbat 32, gives us a brief but fierce paragraph about those about to die, and what they should and shouldn't be doing as they are about to pass. This passage feels a bit too real in the midst of a deadly pandemic, and we welcome The New York Times writer Bari Weiss to discuss her piece about hospital chaplains and the holy work they do these days. Why is visiting the sick the holiest of mitzvahs? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Shabbat 30, gives us a peak into the birth of modern politics: King David, dying, asks God how much time he has left, and God, refusing to answer, informs the aged monarch that the reign of his son, Solomon, is already set to begin. It's like an epic episode of HBO's Succession, as well as the moment of transition from the ancient world's view of kings as omnipotent to our contemporary understanding of rulers as servers of the people. Rabbi Dr. Ari Lamm joins us to talk about the glories of this story. What can the Talmud teach us about our current moment in American politics? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 28 and 29, features talk of the Tachash, a mysterious beast who may or may not have had a single horn, an enormous body, and a six-colored skin. Was he a Technicolor Jewish unicorn, or a Jewnicorn? Different commentators offered divergent interpretations, but in today's episode we take a page from one of our greatest Hasidic masters and read the Jewnicorn as a metaphor for human kindness. Why? Listen and find out.

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Shabbat 27, features the debut of what is arguably the oddest and most difficult to comprehend of all the mitzvot: The prohibition to wear Shatnez, or clothes made of both wool and linen. Why this specific ban? We welcome AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, to make sense of this curious commandment and tell us about the time he invited a Shatnez inspector to raid his closet. What do wool and linen have to do with Cain and Abel? Listen and find out.Take one is sponsored this week by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. In this time of anxiety, Jewish based mindfulness and meditation may the thing you need. Find out at Jewishspirituality.org/Takeone and when you check out, put in the code Takeone20 for a 20% discount.