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?

Over the years Jews have developed many unique Jewish foods. The Jewish diaspora has been spread out across many different lands. Some foods are unique to specific communities while others are universal used by all Jewish communities. Many foods developed from local cuisine where Jews lived while others were made for holidays or as part of specific Jewish laws.

A fascinating discussion about Jewish cuisine.

Today, many are concerned with the ethical treatment of animals as pets, in commercial farming, in medical testing and other fields. What rights do animals have in Judaism? How should we be treating animals? Is killing for food okay? Killing for sport? Tests that cause animals pain? Are all animals the same?

In 2003, the human genome project decoded the entire human DNA sequence. As a result, we can now easily read and match any person's DNA quickly and easily. Today, many services provide DNA testing to match people to unknown relatives and match them to ancestral groupings.

Many people discovered through DNA testing that they had Jewish ancestry or that they were closely related to other Jews. Is the DNA test able to establish someone's Jewish status? Can we use it to rediscover Jews who's ancestors assimilated?

A discussion about DNA in Halacha (Jewish Law) and using DNA to determine family and Jewish status.

One of the oldest - and for a long time the largest - Jewish communities in the world is the Jewish community of Babylon in modern day Iraq. Jews lived in Babylon continuously for over 2.500 including a long period where they had a Jewish autonomous state led by their own Jewish King.

Babylon was also a center of Jewish scholarship most notable for the Babylonian Talmud, the central work of Judaism that was composed there in the Fifth Century.

A fascinating overview of the history of the Jewish community of Babylon.

Gambling, betting and lotteries are all old forms of entertainments that have been around for thousands of years. Some societies, frowned on financial risk games while other's encouraged it. What does Judaism say about gambling? Is it permitted? If yes, under what circumstances?

A fascinating discussion about the Jewish view on gambling and other games of financial risk.

Chanukah is a festival of light. Every night we light one more candle in the Menorah to commemorate that miracle of light that occurred over 2,000 years ago. What is the meaning of light? Why do we light candles for eight days adding a candle each night?

Jewish mysticism tells us that the Chanukah lights are very powerful and give us the ability to light up the darkness in our own lives.

What is the meaning of dreams? What causes them? Are they just our imagination gone wild or it there a deeper meaning to dreams? Can dreams guide us or help us know what will happen to us?

Learn what Kabbalah, our Jewish mystical teachings say regarding dreams.

Perhaps the most significant and memorialized of our Matriarchs is Jacob's favorite wife Rachel known in Yiddish as Mama Rochel. After waiting for many years to have children, Rachel died during the childbirth of her second son Benjamin. She was the only Matriarch not buried in Hebrew, instead her tomb is in Bethlehem.

Rachel's unique role as the mother of our people, has made a tradition for Jews to go to her tomb and ask her to pray for us whenever we are in trouble.