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...]

By: Dayan David Englander The Din Torah process in contemporary times It is not uncommon for people to question the Bet Din’s procedures, action, and motives, especially when they are first exposed to a Bet Din as a party to a case. The first step toward understanding how and why a Bet Din acts is to attempt to see things from the perspective of a neutral party. As … [Read more...]