Torah Cafe

Vaccines have been administered across the world for decades as a way of building immunity to viral infections. While vaccines have limited the spread of disease and saved millions of lives, in recent years certain groups have organized against vaccines.

Does Jewish law and values encourage vaccines? Should we require everyone to get vaccinated? What should we do when people refuse to vaccinate their children?

Animal Sacrifices were a central part of Jewish practice when our Temple stood in Jerusalem. Though we no longer practice sacrifice since we have no Temple, we still study the rules of the sacrifices and pray for the temple to be rebuilt and for sacrifice to be restored.

Learn about the different types of sacrifices, the process of offering a sacrifice and the logistics of how large amounts of sacrifices were offered in Temple.

The greatest miracle in our history and the greatest event in the Exodus from Egypt was the splitting of the Red Sea when the Children of Israel crossed the Sea while the Egyptians who followed them into the sea drowned.

We celebrate the great miracle of the splitting of the sea on the holiday of the 7th day of Passover, the anniversary of the great event. 

Learn about the great miracle of the Splitting of the Sea and what is means for us today.

While we never imagined that we would experience the total shutdown of society due to a virus, our ancestors have dealt with plagues of different forms repeatedly throughout our more than 3,000 years of history.

Learn how our ancestors responded to plague and how we can learn from them to alleviate our own challenges in dealing with the Novel Cornavirus today!

In ancient Hebrew, letters and numbers are interchangeable. Words can be written in number format and numbers are written with letters. Every word has a number value and certain numbers have unique meaning.

Esther was the unlikely heroine of the Purim story. She used her forced marriage to the Persian Emperor and position as queen Persia to save her people from annihilation.

Listen to the full story of Esther, her background, ascendance as queen, her role in the Purim story and her impact on Jews in the Persian Empire.

One of the unique rituals practiced in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was the twice daily offering of incense. The incense had a unique recipe that was used only in the Temple and was the most sought after ritual in the Temple given the great power and blessings ascribed to it. .

Learn all about the Ketoret (incense) in the Holy Temple, how it was made, the blessings is contains and how we can invoke its great blessings today.

Techelet was a blue dye made from a creature called Chilazon that the Torah commands us to use in making Tzitzit strings worn on four cornered garments such as a Tallit. It was also used in the temple for the priestly garments.

More than 1,500 years ago we lost the techelet and therefore no longer dye out tzitzit blue. Can the Techelet and the Chilazon it comes from be found today using Torah sources, archaeology and knowledge of biology and ancient dying techniques?

A fascinating journey of how different scholars and researches attempted to find the mystery Techelet over the past century.

Many ancient societies worried about the evil eye that could somehow harm them or their families? In Jewish Ashkenazi culture, we used terms like keinahora to ward off the 'evil eye'.

Do Jews believe in the evil eye? If yes, what exactly is it? What are its powers? And how do we avoid the harm coming from the evil eye?

G-d is often referred to in scripture and our prayers in masculine form or as our Father. But is G-d really masculine? Is G-d not beyond gender? Could G-d be female? Both genders?

A fascinating discussion about G-d and gender.