Month: May 2017

Are ‘Early Bird Specials’ against Halachah? As the summer approaches, one cannot open a magazine without coming across an advert for a summer camp or hotel resort. Many of these offer an ‘early bird special’, which entails a cheaper price for those participants who pay early. Is this a problem of ribbis?

There are certain mitzvos in the Torah are very well known for the rewards that they provide. We all know of the arichus yamim promised for shiluach hakan and kibud av’ v’em. Obviously, there are also lessons meant to be learned not only from the mitzvos themselves, but also from the rewards attributed to them. However, in certain cases, what seems to be a reward may not be quite the positive it appears to be at first glance, and the very fact that we receive that reward may indicate a lacking in our own behaviour. The lesson, therefore, becomes even more important. We learn in this

"ויאמר ה' אל משה אמר אל הכהנים בני אהרן ואמרת אלהם לנפש לא יטמא בעמיו" "And Hashem said to Moshe, 'Speak to the Kohanim, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, they are not to become spiritually impure on account of contact with a dead body'".

There is one word, a value, that is entirely missing from public and private discourse in contemporary society. There are no public debates about its identity, relevance and meaning, no academic journals, no conferences. You can’t study it in University (only incidentally as part of theology or religion), there isn’t a single TED talk on this topic. In short, it just simply does not feature at all as part of our cultural milieu.