The Value of Credibility  By: Rabbi Tzvi Price One of the aspects of the study of Choshen Mishpat that makes it so extraordinary, is the way in which it combines razor-sharp logic and strict legalism, with the swirling emotion and drama that money seems to always engender. The Torah looks into a person’s heart, understands the assumptions, the emotions, the motives that … [Read more...]

Adapted from a shiur by Rav Yosef Greenwald The leaven that left A man we’ll call David was traveling two months ago with whiskey in his luggage. The airline lost the bag. Weeks went by. Pessah came and went. Last week the suitcase, invigorated from having traveled the world, was delivered to his home. May he drink the whiskey? Hachamim (Pessahim 29) forbade … [Read more...]

Adapted from a shiur by Rav Daniel Dombroff Whose oil is it? Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world, estimated in 2017 at 300 million barrels. But its people are starving. No war or natural disaster brought what was once the fourth-richest country on Earth to its knees. The crisis resulted almost entirely from choices and policy … [Read more...]

Adapted from a shiur by Rav Eliezer Gewirtzman Answering the call One Purim some years ago, I was about to begin the Megilla reading when a man approached and placed a cell phone on the bima. He explained that his father lived in a place with no Megilla reading; could he listen to ours by phone? The Halachot Ketanot (2:276) discusses the case of a man reading the Megilla … [Read more...]

Adapted from a Shiur by Rav Daniel Dombroff The case of the overstuffed chair Several Yeshiva boys sat recently in their Yeshiva’s dorm room. One was on an old upholstered chair that another boy had rescued from the trash a couple of years earlier. The chair felt uncomfortable, so he rose, flipped it over, and began to fiddle with it, inadvertently breaking open the … [Read more...]