Each of the twelve months in the Jewish calendar contain a unique spiritual energy and power. The power of each month, encapsulated in a zodiac sign, is often represented in the holidays, festivals, and noteworthy days of said month. The month that just concluded, Tishrei, is jam packed with days of note: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeres, Simchas Torah. The month that we are just beginning, Cheshvan, contains no obvious days of import. But every month has its secrets and mysteries. In this special edition of the podcast, we invited Rabbi Shmuly Botnick to take us on a journey to the depths of the month of Cheshvan. Boy, did he deliver!

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The Sukkah that we dwell in for 7 days is a reenactment of the Clouds of Glory that enshrouded the nation for 40 years. Starting right after the Exodus, the nation was cocooned in miraculous clouds. These clouds flattened mountains, filled in valleys, and eliminated any threats. The clouds signal journeys, cleaned and ironed clothes, and blanketed the nation with defensive invisibility against their enemies. How exactly our sukkah resembles the clouds of Glory is a great mystery. In this very special podcast, we propose a novel approach to understanding the festival of Sukkot, the sukkah, and what exactly we are supposed to achieve over the course of this 7-Day festival and the Shemini Atzeres endcap.

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In honor of the festival of Sukkot, I gathered together with some of my TORCH podcaster colleagues to chat about the festival, it’s meaning, and lessons. Each one of us got an opportunity to share an idea on the festival, and to promote our respective podcast(s). In a decision that compromised the audio quality, we recorded inside a Sukkah, exposed to the elements and to all manner of ambient noise. If you are interested in being a fly on the wall of our Sukkah and can tolerate a suboptimal audio experience, this podcast is for you.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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Yom Kippur is the greatest day of the year. The name of book of Talmud that orients around Yom Kippur is Yoma, meaning “Day.” This is The Day when everything changes. On this day, the Almighty is close to us. On this day, He extends purification and forgiveness to us. On this day, God purifies us from all of our sins. This is the day when we can transform ourselves in an outsized, asymmetric manner. On this day, a small effort goes a very, very, long way. This day is like an elevator: with one push of the button we can ascend to heavenly heights! But it demands some work on our part. Yom Kippur is a magical, alchemical day, but it is conditional on us doing our part. In this special pre-Yom Kippur podcast, we lay out what are the costs that we need to pay to earn the alchemy of Yom Kippur. The price may be steep, but compared to what we get for it, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. This is not the day to squander. In this podcast, we learn what we need to do.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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One of the most mysterious elements of the Yom Kippur ceremony is the scapegoat ceremony. The High priest took two identical male goats and made a lottery, one was offered as a sacrifice to God in the Temple, and the other one was a scapegoat, upon which the sins of the nation were conferred and whose destiny was to be chucked off a cliff in barren desert. this was a central part of the Yom Kippur services when the Temple was extant, and even today it is incorporated into the Mussaf prayer on this holiest of days. What is the meaning of the scapegoat? What is the secret of the scapegoat? What lessons can we glean from this process that will enhance our understanding of Yom Kippur and what we are supposed to be trying to do? In preparation for Yom Kippur, we explore and examine this strange – frankly baffling – ritual, and uncover insights that get to the heart of what Yom Kippur is and how we can make the most of it.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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Our Sages enumerates a list of seven things that preceded the world. Included in this list is repentance. Why was it necessary to create repentance before the creation of the world? In this podcast we speculate an answer: repentance is a supernatural miracle that thoroughly violates the rules of this world, and therefore once the world would have been created, repentance can no longer be created. It is such an outlier, it is such a miracle, it is so wondrous and unprecedented, that there is no way to have created it post creation of the world. In this podcast – as we experience the Ten Days of Repentance spanning Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur – we explore the eight wonders of repentance. When you finish listening you will emerge with a renewed understanding and appreciation for the value and the miraculous nature of repentance.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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On the night of Rosh Hashana in Jewish homes the world over, a strange set of customs are observed. We take an apple, dip it into honey, and declare that we should have a sweet new year. We take a pomegranate, disgorge it’s seeds, consume them and pray that we be filled with merits like a pomegranate is replete with seeds. This ceremony continues with cabbage, squash, carrots, a head of fish for those who are brave enough, and many more ceremonial foods. What is the secret behind this very unusual custom? What is the meaning behind this strange ritual? What are some of the lessons that we can learn from the auspicious omens associated with foods? In this special pre-Rosh Hashana podcast we explored the meaning and the mystery of the ceremonial foods and fruits that we eat on the nights of Rosh Hashana., emerging armed with a keener understanding of the day and with tools to make the most of it.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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In addition to the many other themes and motifs of the day, Rosh Hashana is called the Day of Judgment. The Mishnah tells us that on Rosh Hashana every human has an individual audience with the Almighty in the same way that a shepherd counts each sheep individually. The judgment is comprehensive: all of a person’s income for the year is determined on this day. But the most important decree of Rosh Hashana is who will live and who will die.

In this podcast, we study a difficult statement in the Talmud regarding the judgment on Rosh Hashana. On the surface, this statement is quite inexplicable. Upon further analysis, however, we discover the central goal of Rosh Hashana, and, frankly, what we are trying to accomplish in our lives.

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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Tastewise, kosher chicken and non-kosher chicken are indistinguishable. When it comes to the price tag, these two fowls are drastically different. The discrepancy in price creates an incentive for unscrupulous restaurateurs. If you can buy chicken at the non-kosher price, and sell it at the kosher price, you can juice your profits by a large amount. This potential for illicit arbitrage is one of the reasons why kosher restaurants must be certified by a kosher agency.

But what happens when things go wrong? What happens when an ostensibly kosher establishment is shown to have deceived its patrons and passed off non-kosher food as kosher?

In light of a recent kosher restaurant scandal in New Jersey, we talked to an expert to find out. Rabbi Nosson Dubin is the rabbinic administrator of HKA, the Houston Kashrus Association, and a renowned expert in all matters kosher. In this wide-ranging discussion, he takes us behind the scenes of a kosher restaurant and reveals to us how the sausage is made (and overseen). We learn about the various safety measures in place to prevent such debacles from happening, about the vulnerabilities and weak points in the system, and we offer some proposals for how to improve measures to lower the risk of another such scandal.

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Please email me at [email protected] with any questions or comments

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DONATE: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!

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TORAH 101

The Jewish holiday calendar is not evenly distributed. Mush of our Festivals are clumped together in one month, followed by a long winter with few special days, none of them of Biblical origin. Our Sages explain that the clustering of the High Holidays and the Festival of Sukkot is no coincidence. These days constitute one, continuous process. Over the course of the Festival season we are building the spiritual edifice in which we will reside for the entire year.

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