Basics of tum’ah, part 1: what it means

As the current few dappim of Daf Yomi deal with issues of ritual impurity, I thought I would help myself out by organizing the basics of the topic.

The Encyclopedia Talmudit was helpful in putting this together—thank God all the relevant articles start with ט, since the encyclopedia only goes midway through כ. Also helpful was, well, you know.

I'll go through mahshavah in part 1, and then in part 2 I'll outline the halakhot.

The essense of the Shema

I'm pretty busy right now, with my aliyah flight coming in four days. But most of what I do on this blog is regurgitating anyway, so it's no problem to regurgitate something from D.A.F. and Beit Midrash Beit Av (via Daf-Yomi.com).

The second chapter of Berakhot gets into the details of saying the Shema: its content, its structure, who says it, etc. In the course of discussion we find two understandings for what Shema is all about: accepting the yoke of Heaven and Torah study.