In honor of Purim, we open up the archives and bring to you some of the classic sheilos rabbanim have been asked this year…
Dear Rabbi,
My cleaning lady (who just happens to have been born in Poland) is not exactly the ‘Windex of cleaning ladies’ if you catch my drift. The other day she filed a report against us at the police station claiming that we were trying to have her fired without pretense. Her proof? A bottle of ‘Polish Remover’ which she found under the sink.
Last week she opened a box of matzah that we had put away for Pesach and she dropped a hamantash into the box. Do we have to put the hamantash away for Pesach or are we obligated to burn the hamantash together with the matzah?
Dear Sophie,
You have to put your cleaning lady away for Pesach. Give her the hamantash so she doesn’t starve until then.
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Dear Rabbi,
I am going a little crazy with my wife, and I really need your advice. We now have subscriptions to every Torah magazine out there – Ami, Binah, Hamodia (Minyan, Binyan, Kinyan, and Pidyon), Jewish Action, Jewish Press, Mishpacha, Yated, to name a few. The problem is that my wife reads each one cover to cover and seems to ingest all the information she reads. She also recently learned (from an article in one of the aforementioned magazines) that when one relates something in someone’s name, he brings redemption to the world. So now every new dish she serves on Shabbos is accompanied by a discourse on which magazine she saw the recipe in, why she chose this recipe over another one, and all the nutrition information about the dish. When we discuss anything regarding our children, I am inundated with the responses of every chinuch article from any of the magazines during the previous 6 months. When one of our children tries to say a vort she jumps up and excitedly tells us in which magazine she read that same vort. When we try to talk about current events we are bombarded with the viewpoints of every columnist out there.
The worst is when I tried explaining to her why I was so frustrated and annoyed with all this, she began telling me what the Rebbitzin’s column had to say about working on your middos and not becoming frustrated or angry. Should I stop all her subscriptions or is this something I must learn to live with?
Dear Harried in Boro Park,
That’s really a great question. I think you should submit it to the Yated Roundtable. Your wife will tell you what they say.
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Dear Rabbi,
Yesterday, my neighbor told me an amazing insight into the Megillah which I never heard before: He noted that the Megillah alludes to the source of Achashveirosh’s wickedness. The root word “chama” (literally meaning “anger”) appears three times in the Megillah in reference to Achashveirosh (1:12, 2:1, 7:7). In Hebrew, the word “Chamoso” refers to one’s mother-in-law. If the word is written three times in the Megillah, we must conclude that Achashveirosh had three mothers-in-law. Well, what would you be like if you had three mothers-in-law?!
This got me thinking, if we are obligated to reach a level of sublime joy on Purim am I allowed to have my mother-in-law at my Purim seudah?
Dear Shlomo,
That’s why there’s a mitzvah to drink on Purim, to help ease the tension. But if you have drunk so much that you can no longer tell between your mother-in-law and wife, then, for heaven’s sake, stop drinking!
