West Deal Torah Center

Mr. Sammy Saka hosts classes on Zoom Tuesday and Thursday at 12:30PM. Contact Jacob Betesh to be added to the chat. Mr. Saka teaches Pirke Abot 3:13: when people are pleased with a person's conduct, Hashem is pleased with him too. He connects a good name with honesty in business, warmth toward others, and the example we set in daily life. Recalling his father and community founders, he urges later...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. Rabbi Hanon continues Pesahim 63a by comparing three explanations of why the order of mixed intentions might matter when slaughtering the Pesah offering. After reviewing Rava's approach, the class considers whether a person's spoken declaration must match what he intended in his heart. A contradiction from mistaken declarations and...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Rabbi Dana teaches Peah 4:6, asking whether someone who harvests a field before converting becomes obligated in gifts to the poor after conversion. The class first reviews peah, leket, and the two forms of shikhehah: forgotten bundles and standing grain left unharvested. The first opinion...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Rabbi Dana teaches Peah 4:5, which sets three daily times for collecting peah under the farmer's supervision. Morning, noon, and late afternoon accommodate nursing mothers, children, and elderly people who need more time to reach the field. The class explains the disagreement over whether...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Rabbi Dana teaches Peah 4:4, which protects people gathering peah in a crowded field. Open competition can become dangerous when many people are trying to collect their food at once. The Mishnah forbids reaping peah with a sickle or digging it up with a spade, keeping dangerous tools out...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. Rabbi Hanon continues the long Rashi on mixed intentions in a korban, asking whether the first declaration takes effect or the speaker's full statement must be considered. The class reviews an animal designated as an exchange for two different offerings, including the case where the owner intended the combination from the outset. A...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Rabbi Dana teaches Peah 4:3, which penalizes unfair tactics in the field. A poor man who throws peah he already collected onto standing grain to claim it not only fails to acquire it - the peah he legitimately held is confiscated as a penalty and divided among the other poor. One who jump...

In Loving Memory of Bobby I. Dweck A'H - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mr. Sammy Saka hosts classes on Zoom Tuesday and Thursday at 12:30PM. Contact Jacob Betesh to be added to the chat. Mr. Saka teaches Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa's short Mishnah: when a person's good deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom endures; when wisdom outruns action, it fades. Study is indispensable - how else would we k...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. The class wraps up yesterday's story of Megillat Yuhasin, the lost Book of Lineage - forgotten after its author's death, taking with it hundreds of camel-loads of teachings that once sat between just two verses. Back in the Mishnah's dispute over mixed thoughts during shechita, a new question opens the daf: if invalidating the pesac...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Continuing yesterday's discussion of the dangerous trees. Where picking the peah would endanger the poor - a grapevine trained high on a shaky trellis, or a tall, smooth-trunked date palm - the owner must bring the produce down and hand out equal shares. This Mishnah takes up the objectio...

Rabbi Moses Hidary hosts classes every Monday at 8:00 PM at West Deal Shul. The class finishes the long section on why Olam Ha-Ba is never spelled out in the Torah, with the final two of the author's seven reasons. First, even people who could grasp the world to come are best motivated in terms of what matters in their own world, so the Torah speaks in the language of this-world reward. Second, th...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. How peah actually reaches the poor. The basic rule is that it is left attached to the ground for the poor to come and take - the owner may not finish harvesting the field. But there are dangerous exceptions: a grapevine tangled high on a trellis and a date palm must be picked by the owner...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. The shiur opens in the middle of the sugya on a Pesach that has aged out of its first year: if it is slaughtered on Erev Pesach for the sake of the Pesach, or another offering is slaughtered for the Pesach's sake, is it disqualified? The Gemara tests the idea of shema meni - since it would be disqualified on Erev Pesach, why not tre...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. The last halacha in the series of laws where any amount of land makes a difference. A non-Jewish slave owned by a Jew can only go free when his master hands him a bill of freedom - a document that gives him possession of himself. So if a master writes over all of his property to his slave...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Two more laws where any amount of land, however small, makes a difference. A man who writes over his property as a gift while dangerously ill: if he kept back any land at all for himself, the gift stands, because keeping land shows he expected to live. But if he gave away everything and t...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. How much land makes a field obligated in Peah? The Mishnah records a series of opinions. The first requires an area large enough to plant a quarter-measure of seed, learned from the spacing required between mixed crops. The next measures by how much the land yields, about a six-by-six plo...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. The shiur continues the sugya on Pesahim 62a-62b, picking up the back-and-forth over which impurity the verses are discussing - that of the people bringing the Pesach offering or of the meat itself. Working through the whiteboards round by round, the class tests the analogy between the Pesach and other offerings and asks why partial...

Rabbi Moshe Tobal hosts classes daily at 6:30 AM at West Deal Shul. Parashat Chayei Sara holds two negotiations: Avraham securing a burial place for Sarah, and Eliezer seeking Rivka for Yitzchak. Eliezer prays before he acts, while Avraham negotiates first and thanks Hashem afterward - why the difference? Avraham could negotiate with full cleverness while holding complete emuna and bitachon that e...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Peah 3:5 moves from physical separations to legal ones. A single-looking field owned by two people counts as two fields, and each owner gives peah separately. Brothers who inherit land and divide it give peah from each share; if they rejoin the field before the harvest begins, one peah co...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. Pesahim 62a opens with Rav Ashi reframing the entire sugya: the dispute is not about slaughtering the korban Pesach for the uncircumcised, but about shinui baalim, redirecting the sprinkling of the blood from the original owners to an arel. Rava holds the substitution fails because an arel cannot achieve atonement; the opposing view...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Peah 3:4 continues the laws of onions. First, "mother onions" left in the ground long past ripeness until they produce seed: the Sages obligate peah on them because the onion species is eaten, even if these particular bulbs are barely edible, while Rabbi Yose exempts them because the onio...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Peah 3:3 asks whether a crop harvested in two stages counts as one harvest or two. The Mishnah rules that a farmer who plucks the moist onions to sell in the market and keeps the dry ones for storage must leave peah from each batch separately, because the two pickings serve different purp...

Rabbi Joseph Dana records a short daily Mishnah class, working through all of Mishnah a few minutes at a time. Peah 3:2 considers a field harvested in patches as some stalks ripen before others. Rabbi Akiva requires peah from each harvest, while the Sages view it as one extended harvest and allow one peah for the whole field. The Sages agree that separate patches of dill or mustard each require th...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. The class finishes Rashi's explanation of pigul from the day before: a pigul thought is only fixed once the service is completed at zerika without another invalidating thought. The Gemara then asks whether "vechol arel" means all the arelim in the group or any, and Rav Ashi challenges the earlier reading, claiming the word "zot" for...

Rabbi Ike Hanon hosts classes daily at 6:10 AM at West Deal Shul. Continuing the dispute over intent for arelim at zerika, the class follows a baraita that compares orlah with tumah and pigul to ask whether partial invalid intent affects the whole Korban Pesach. The words "vechol arel" and "zot" become the key to distinguishing shechita from zerika, but Rabbah and Rav Chisda read the same sources...