Question: Answer: כשנגלה ד' לעם ישראל בהר סיני גלה כבוד שכינתו, ולכן הזהיר אותם להגביל את ההר בכמה הגבלות. לא תגע בו יד כי סקל יסקל, רד העד בעם פן יהרסו אל ד' לראות, וגם הכהנים הנגשים אל ד' יתקדשו פן יפרץ בהם ד', והכהנים והעם אל יהרסו לעלות אל ד' פן יפרץ בם, הכל…
Question: I light my Shabbos candles with another candle. When I've lit the last one, I’m left with a lit candle that I'd like to extinguish, but I remember learning that once that last candle is lit, it is already Shabbos for me. So what I’ve been doing is lighting the candles with this candle,…
Question: I work in a phone calling center and I speak with gentiles around the world. Many of the workers go by fictitious American names so that the customers can easily pronounce and spell them. For example, my phone name is Mark Shane. If a customer wants to reach me or complain about me to…
Question: A friend of ours borrowed some books and then lost them. She replaced the books at her own expense and a week later found the original ones. She would (naturally) prefer to return the new books to the shop where she bought them, but in the meantime we have written our name into the…
Question: A pigeon has made its nest on the window ledge of my son's bedroom. There are three eggs there. Should we perform shiluach haken? If so, how do we do it and what do we do with the eggs? Do we display them in our living room, as I have heard others have done?…
Question: Would you invite people to your house for Shabbos knowing that they will drive home before Shabbos is over? Answer: The phrasing of a question is very important. The way you phrased it, I am comfortable answering you without putting you in a terrible quandary. You asked what I would do. I would only…
Question: I daven using the Ashkenazi nusach, but sometimes I find myself in a non-Ashkenazi shul. How should I be davening, using the Ashkenazi nusach or the one of the shul? I've heard that Rav Moshe wrote a teshuva saying it may vary with the section of davening (e.g., pesukei dezimra vs. shemone esrei), but…
Question: In your weekly Chumash class, you raised the following question: If Hashem only sends one mal'och per task (see Rashi on Bereishis 18:2), why did the angels tell Lot that "we" are destroying this area (Bereishis 19:13)? In response to your question about "mashchisim anachnu" (in the plural), you mentioned an opinion that the…
Question: What are we supposed to learn from the way Eliezer suggested the shidduch to Lovon? I have been wondering why he put the emphasis on the money and property Avrohom Avinu had promised his son. If we had had to guess what Eliezer said we might have imagined he would have emphasized Yitzchok's good…
Question: A woman on our block is quite a nuisance to all the neighbors. She owns about 20 cats and about five dogs. The dogs are not such a problem, aside from the occasional noise – which doesn't disturb us much, although it does bother her next-door neighbors – and they are locked in her…