The first initial in the acrostic PaRDeS is peshat (or pshat ) - פשט. The definition of peshat is - "the plain, simple meaning"...

I'm trying to get back in to writing again. After spending several weeks indexing my sources, I thought I was ready to go. But it turned...

Before I switched to a small Jewish day school , I attended a very large, fairly prestigious public high school . I've written elsewher...

In this week's parasha, Yosef gives to his brothers clothing - chalifot smalot - (Bereshit 45:22): לְכֻלָּם נָתַן לָאִישׁ, חֲלִפוֹת ש...

It's clear by now that my indexing is taking much longer than I originally expected. And there have been a number of "distractions...

Almost back to regular posting, but I came across something that I had to ask the readers here about. There is a type of long grain rice cal...

As I wrote earlier, I've been spending my blogging time on trying to index my various sources, to make it easier to find places where a ...

Over the next several days, I'm going to be using my allocated "Balashon" time to better organize my sources. This should hope...

When I first lived in Israel in the early 1990s, it wasn't that easy to make an international phone call. You had to often speak to an o...

I recently received a great gift (thanks!) - the unabridged Even-Shoshan dictionary, which includes etymologies. Flipping through it, I foun...

You may have noticed an unusual word in my previous post . I quoted Yeshayahu 54:12 - וּשְׁעָרַיִךְ לְאַבְנֵי אֶקְדָּח and provided the JPS ...

On the Hebrewts mailing list , the following question was asked: Could there be any connection between the word " Sisma " (a passw...

Treppenwitz has a hilarious post about the Israeli fear of being a freier (sucker, chump), and how he got even at the supermarket. What is ...

We're in the shmitta (sabbatical) year, so let's talk about a word related to it. According to the Torah, all debts are canceled in...

Sukkot marks the change of seasons in Israel. In the past, we've discussed kayitz קיץ - "summer" and aviv אביב - "sprin...

Last year we discussed the origin of etrog . But I've recently found out that not only was the etrog used for a mitzva on Sukkot, but al...

This year for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I bought new machzorim, after using the same ones for the previous 15 years. One of the main reaso...

On Yom Kippur, one of the prohibitions is neilat hasandal נעילת הסנדל - wearing of a sandal. Clearly the word sandal has the same meaning i...

In the spirit of the season, I'll open with an apology: I'm sorry I didn't finish all of my simanim posts before Rosh Hashana. ...

My friend, the blogger and bee-keeper Treppenwitz berated thanked me (and others) for sending him a link discussing the discovery of beehi...