Listener Questions: Elul, Damages, and Israel

Some weeks we pick the topics. This week you picked them for us. The Rabbi opens by informing both of us that the frivolity is over, because Elul has arrived and we have thirty days to get our act together before Rosh Hashanah. Also, he would like an apology for being cut out of last week’s episode (an apology is not forthcoming).Then ChayaLeah tells us about a 6 am Uber ride in Jackson Hole that she was too tired to want, with a driver who would not stop talking about Hashem, trees, and energy, and who turned out to be saying exactly the thing she needed to hear. And then we open the mailbag.In this episode, we get into:Why Elul works like a thirty day notice before the tax bill, what gets added to the prayers, and why teshuvah is a terrible translation of “repentance”The year Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, no shofar on day one, and the headline about 9/11, COVID, and October 7th that nobody needed to see right nowThe five categories of damages in Torah law, and how a family divides one lump sum among kids who were all in the car but not all hurt the sameWhether settlement money is blood money, from an insurance check in America to the fight in 1950s Israel over taking German marksWhere you actually start if you want to engage more with Judaism, why Judaism is a religion of deeds before creeds, and why you will never understand kosher before you keep itWhat to say when a friend, a cousin, or a sibling drops “genocide” at dinner, who is worth engaging, and when to just walk awayYou ask, we answer, whether or not we know what we are talking about. Send us your questions and we will do this again.