Open Search form

Jewish Law - Halacha

Apply for a Blog

Oct 21, 2026, 10:42 PM

HalacHUH? Part 1: A Breakdown of Judaism’s Most Puzzling Rules

A Modern Day Chicken Milker Doing What He Does Best

In this new subseries to my America’s Rebbitzman content, I, your faithful Rebbitzman, will be addressing some of the most widely argued and bizarre decisions of our faith. Now, it is important to remember that in bringing you these...

Oct 21, 2026, 9:53 AM

We Perfected the Pause and Forgot the Melacha

Every Friday afternoon, a remarkable thing happens across the Jewish world. Millions of people stop. We have made an art of it. The urn is filled and the hot plate is plugged in. The lights are on timers, the tissues...

Oct 21, 2026, 2:00 AM

The Power of One-Aleph: Perspective, Despair, and the Observer

This week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, carries Abraham into the unknown and offers a quiet lesson about how we see the world and how that seeing shapes it. To get there, I want to start with a riddle, move...

Oct 20, 2026, 1:25 PM

Choose Life: The Moral Price of the Moon

Abraham Joshua Heschel. Photo: Peter1c / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; modified from original || Background image licensed via Canva.

With the advent of Space exploration, rabbinic writers debated whether Jewish law permitted a person to leave planet Earth. Possibly the first voice to be heard on this question was that of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch (1902-1994)....

Bruce D. Forman

Oct 16, 2026, 11:54 PM

The Death Penalty: What Judaism Knows About Justice and the Power of Restraint

The recent controversy surrounding the suggestion of a public execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of murdering 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, has renewed interest in capital punishment. The Trump administration’s proposal to livestream...

Oct 13, 2026, 7:59 AM

Seeing Red: Hubris and the Halakha of Space Flight

Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, photo: Nadav Efrati / Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nahum_Eliezer_Rabinovitch

Vladimir Menshikov, Boga Nyet! [There is no God!], 1975. State Museum of the History of Religion in Saint Petersburg. Scaled-down, low-resolution image permitted under fair use clause, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B0_%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82_1975.jpg

In 1961, as humans reached Space, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch (1902-1994) wrote a private letter in which he declared that Space travel was permitted according to Jewish law. The Lubavitcher Rebbe offered a broad, affirmative framework for...

Boruch Itzkowitz

Oct 13, 2026, 12:02 AM

When Halakha Meets Headlines: The Toronto Burial Controversy and What It Reveals about Jewish Authority

The Toronto Beth Din's decision to restrict burial rites for Jews who die by medical assistance has ignited predictable outrage. Critics frame it as cruel, outdated, punitive. Supporters defend it as principled adherence to Jewish law. Both sides miss...

Gershon Blumstein

Oct 6, 2026, 8:57 PM

The Judaism That Lives

How Halakhah Learns to Read a Changing World Beneath almost every Jewish question lies another, more difficult one: How do we live Torah in a world that keeps changing? We are about to ask that question in ways no previous generation...

Oct 6, 2026, 3:34 PM

The Heavens Belong to God: May a Jew Leave Earth?

Apollo 8 Flight Plan, Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-apollo-8-delivered-moment-christmas-eve-peace-and-understanding-world-180976431/
Overlaid with astronaut:, stock photography licensed via Canva

Early Space exploration precipitated an interest in how Jewish law might be kept beyond the confines of planet Earth. Before asking how Halakha could be observed in Space, we need to return to an earlier question: whether humans may...

Joseph C. Kaplan

Oct 2, 2026, 7:01 AM

Deracheha Darchei No’am – Her Ways are Pleasant Ways

Some of the most difficult questions in life as well as in Jewish law (halacha) — questions that are practically, psychologically, emotionally, and legally fraught — deal with end-of-life issues. Sharon and I have agonized over them, in moments...

Load more