The Talmud cites a baraita that adds two answers to the Mishna’s question above: “It has been taught: R. Meir says: [The morning Shema is read] from the time that one can distinguish between a wolf ...

הרב קוקצילום: אוסף התצלומים של צדוק בסן. The celebrated first Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook (1865-1935) is recognized as being among the most important Jewish ...

Everyone knows Ulla’s statement (infra. 14b) “that he who recites shema without wearing tefillin is as though he bears false testimony.” This only pertains to the morning shema as we do not put on ...

One of my earliest memories is of reciting the Shema each Sunday morning in heder. Although I didn’t come from a religious family – we were more your traditional three-times-a-year shul-goers – and I ...

Ever since the yearly cycle of Torah readings was standardised towards the end of the Second Temple era, and the fixed calendar as calculated by Hillel II (Hillel ben Yehudah, Nasi or head of the ...

I grew up praying to a god in a language I did not understand. In particular, as an observant Conservative Jewish American (that is, “Conservative Jewish, not “conservative, Jewish”), I grew up ...

The words of the Shema prayer, arguably Judaism’s most fundamental liturgical statement, are not generally associated with the art of magic. But the arrival of a 1,500-year-old silver armband ...

Shema brings to mind the quintessential statement of Jewish faith which has echoed through the generations, morning and evening, during times of peace and persecution. But where is the deep faith ...