The Beraita towards the end of today’s daf (Yevamot 11b) tells us about a very particular situation where a couple – let’s call them Sara & Yossi – are married, they then divorce, then Sara marries another person but they then divorce or he dies, and then Sara and Yossi remarry.Significantly, the Torah (see Devarim…
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Purim Sameach! Yesterday’s daf (Yevamot 9a) contained an insult said by Rebbi about his student Levi – כמדומה לי שאין לו מוח בקדקדו, ‘it seems that he has no brain in his head’ – because Rebbi felt that Levi should have invested more effort in his Talmudic reasoning, and in today’s daf (Yevamot 10a) we…
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Today is Ta’anit Esther and though – from afar – today’s daf (Yevamot 9a) has little to say about this day and the overall message of Purim, I would like to highlight how contains a teaching whose reasoning is core to Judaism and is powerfully expressed in the Purim story. We are taught in a…
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Towards the end of today’s daf (Yevamot 8b) is a brief statement which should agitate anyone with a moral compass. As you may recall, and as explained in my remarks on Yevamot 3b (see https://rabbijohnnysolomon.com/yevamot-3/), we learn from Devarim 25:5 that when a husband dies without children then an automatic partial ‘marriage’ is established between this…
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In its pursuit of finding proof that a positive commandment (מצות עשה) can override a negative commandment (מצות לא תעשה) carrying the punishment of karet (i.e. proof for the halachic mechanics of the mitzvah of yibum), today’s daf (Yevamot 7a) invokes one of the thirteen principles taught by R’ Yishmael that, כל דבר שהיה בכלל…
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