In today’s Talmud pages, Kiddushin 40 and 41, we begin by telling the story of when Rabbi Tzadok was enticed by a noblewoman to engage in sexual intercourse with her. But rather than focus specifically on this page, today, and all this week we have been celebrating a few milestones. These are: the new Jewish year, 5784; our reaching the middle page of the Talmud; and the upcoming publication of Liel’s book How the Talmud Can Change Your Life: Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book. Today we are focusing on friendship. The Talmud talks about friendship starting from the advice from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) that instructs us to “acquire a friend” which may sound strange, as one would think that a friendship would not be based on a financial arrangement. But what the Rabbis are trying to remind us is that friendship requires work. What kinds of work do the Rabbis think we should do to earn our friendships? Listen and find out. 

In celebration of all of these milestones, we invite you to pre-order the new book now. You can do it through your local bookstore, directly from the publisher, or wherever you get your favorite books. Once you’ve preordered the book, take a picture of your receipt and visit https://tabletm.ag/preorder and complete the form and upload a copy of your receipt. Once we have your email address, you will be invited to a virtual event, and be eligible to receive one of ten special packages, hand-curated by Liel, that will make your Jewish journey more meaningful, beautiful, and yeah, why not, fun.

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Take One is a Tablet Studios production. The show is hostedby Liel Leibovitz, and is produced and edited by Darone Ruskay, Quinn Waller and Elie Bleier. Our team also includes Satephanie Butnick, Josh Kross, Robert Scaramuccia, and Tanya Singer. 

Check out all of Tablet’s podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts.