Stay updated with breaking news from Moshe Alshich. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
My family immigrated to America from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, when I was 14. Samarkand was my ancestral city since 586 BCE, when Jews were exiled after the destruction of the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem. We came to America to freely...
From the blog of Lazer Gurkow at The Times of Israel
From the blog of Michael J. Lawrence at The Times of Israel
The Torah forbids a Jew from performing any melacha on Shabbat (Ex. 20:10; 32:14-15; 35:2; Lev. 23:3; Deut. 5:14). Similarly, the Torah reports that when G-d finished creating the world after six days, He rested on the seventh day from all forms of melacha (Gen. 2:2-3). The word melacha is typically translated as “work” or “labor,” but in the laws of Shabbat it takes on a more exact meaning that bans 39 specific categories of work, but does not forbid other laborious activities. In this essay we seek to clarify the exact meaning of the word melacha by comparing it to its...