🛎️AT Daily! is Sal’s live show (Facebook and YouTube at Accidental Talmudist) based on the Daf Yomi cycle of Talmud study. The cycle began on January 5, 2020 and with God’s help, Sal will elucidate every page of the Talmud (2,711pp) over the next seven and a half years!
Sal generally goes live on Facebook and YouTube at 6pm Sunday-Thursday, 12pm Friday and about an hour after Shabbat ends every Saturday. For Jewish holidays, same schedule as Shabbat. All times Pacific.
The Talmud is a vast reservoir of Jewish wisdom based on the oral tradition which stretches back to the Revelation at Mount Sinai, when God appeared to two million Jews and transmitted the Ten Commandments, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.
-
Topics covered:Chapter 1, Mishna 1How does a wife become a “sotah” – a suspected adulteress? Two witnesses saw her husband warn her not to seclude herself with a particular man, and two witnesses saw her subsequently seclude herself with that …
Topics covered:Chapter 9, Mishna 7Zav and zava – different kind of impurity, gonorrhea like discharge – emissions but not sexual emissions. If he emits ziva liquid twice, any further discharge is also considered ziva. But we check the ask the …
Topics covered:Chapter 9, Mishna 5, 6Ritual impurity of graves does not apply to gentile graves because their impurity is not imparted via a tent (applies to one walking over a grave). Three corpses buried in one spot or discovered for …
Topics covered:Chapter 9, Mishna 4Somebody goes into cave to immerse for one of two reasons: became impure for dead/now immersing to purify, or just to cool off. Then he finds out a corpse was floating in pool. Either way, he …
Topics covered:Chapter 9, Mishna 3, 4A slave can’t take a vow that interferes with rights of his owner. If slave makes nazirus vow that he can’t fulfill and then runs away, does he have to fulfill vow? He’s free, but …
Topics covered:Chapter 9, Mishna 1, 2Gentiles are included in laws of valuations, in that they can be the subject of an erech vow. They can bring an olah offering and they can make a vow to bring that offering. But …
Topics covered:Chapter 9, Mishna 1Laws of nazirus don’t apply to non-Jews. Greater stringency for women than slaves because master can override slave’s nazirus, but a husband or father can’t override for wife/daughter (after allowing the vow to stand initially). Biblical …
Topics covered:Chapter 8, Mishna 3The complex case of a nazir who is uncertain whether s/he became tamei for the dead AND whether s/he contracted tzaraas. S/he will end up observing a quadruple term of nazirus, and the gemara explains why… …
Topics covered:Chapter 8, Mishna 1, 2, 3Men not permitted to shave certain parts of body because it’s like putting on a women’s garment. Cross dressing prohibition depends on local custom of what men & women wear, as well as intent …
Key Dafs
-
Topics covered: Chapter 5, Mishna 2 A spectacular page! Apropos a verse about the end of days which explain why men and women celebrated separately during Sukkot in the Holy Temple, we enter an extended digression on the nature of …
Topics covered: Chapter 4, Mishna 2 Why do we say bless God for commanding us to perform a commandment that was actually instituted by the Sages, and which does not appear anywhere in the Torah? Which blessings do we say …
Topics covered: Chapter 3, Mishna 4 The fine linen garments of the High Priest on Yom Kippur were fine indeed! Apropos the wealth of one High Priest who was also a Sage, Rabbi Elazar ben Harsum, we learn that one …
Topics covered: Chapter 1, Mishna 6 People crowded on the Temple Mount for Festivals, yet they all had room to bow and confess privately. This leads to an AMAZING discussion of the ongoing miracles in the Holy Temple, especially the …
Topics covered: Chapter 6, Mishna 1 What was the Ark of the Covenant? What was in it besides the Tablets of the Ten Commandments? Was the original Torah Scroll inside it too? Was there a second Ark that was carried …
Topics covered: Chapter 1, Mishna 5 What is tumah, ritual impurity? How does to relate to tahara, ritual purity, and kedusha, holiness? How is tumah a acquired? How is it transmitted? What are its degrees? What are the consequences of …
Topics covered: Chapter 6, Mishna 1 The first commandment is “Be fruitful and multiply.” If it only meant “Reproduce,” then “be fruitful” would be redundant. Be fruitful is the secret to life: bearing fruit is what we souls were …
Topics covered: Chapter 3, Mishna 6, 7 KEY DAF! Putting our page in context. What have learned so far in our Talmud journey? Why does the concept of eruv matter? Because we transform space by creating an edifice in …
Topics covered: Chapter 1, Mishna 2 Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel disagree on how to correct an alleyway so carrying is permitted there on Shabbos. A certain student gives his own interpretation of the dispute. Who is this student? …
Load More Key DafsThe Talmud’s core is the Mishnah, written around 200 CE during a Roman persecution so intense that our sage Rabbi Yehuda the Prince feared the Oral Torah would be lost if not set down. The Mishnah is terse and coded, and thus requires interpretation and elucidation in order to be understood. The next layer of commentary was the Gemara, added around 500 CE in the Jewish community of Babylonia, where the centers of learning moved to escape Roman persecution. The Mishnah plus the Gemara equals the Talmud, but the oral tradition never stopped moving forward, with commentaries added in ever century since.
Now Salvador Litvak will attempt to add his own commentary via 40-60 minute live show every day for seven and half years. Sal generally goes live on Facebook and YouTube at 6pm Sunday-Thursday, 12pm Friday and about an hour after Shabbat ends every Saturday. For Jewish holidays, same schedule as Shabbat. All times Pacific.
Sign me up!
Our newsletter goes out about twice a month, with links to our most popular posts and episodes.