Reuven Chaim Klein

5 days ago | blogs.timesofisrael.com | Reuven Chaim Klein

The Hebrew language has no shortage of colorful insults and epithets that can be hurled at Jewish heretics and other disbelievers. In this essay, we explore some of those words used in reference to such people — like min, apikores, kofer, meshumad, and mumar — attempting to clarify their exact definitions and how they may differ from one another.

2 weeks ago | blogs.timesofisrael.com | Reuven Chaim Klein

A few weeks ago, I received an inquiry from my friend and noted author Rabbi Shmuel Botnick (whose eloquent words grace Mishpacha Magazine week by week). My esteemed interlocuter wanted to know about the difference between the words terumah and tenufah. Both of these terms are used in reference to the act of “waving” ritual sacrifices, but do these two words refer to the exact same act, or is there some nuance between them that makes them not synonyms?

3 weeks ago | qoshe.com | Reuven Chaim Klein

3 weeks ago | blogs.timesofisrael.com | Reuven Chaim Klein

The Talmud (Shabbat 146a, Yevamot 103b, Avodah Zarah 26b) relates that when the Jews stood upon Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, something miraculous and extraordinary happened: All the Jews were cured of the zuhamah that had infected mankind ever since the primordial snake injected Eve with its zuhamah.

1 month ago | blogs.timesofisrael.com | Reuven Chaim Klein

“It was in the second year in the second month, on the twentieth of the month, the cloud ascended from upon the Tabernacle of the Testimony” (Num. 10:11). On that very day of the year in the Jewish Calendar, my grandfather Dovid (Dezider) Messinger returned his soul to his Maker in the year 2009. He hailed from a small village in Slovakia called Horne Saliby, whence he lived before the Holocaust and to where he returned afterward.