In traditional Ashkenazi siddurim, you'll find this instruction, right before Sh'ma Yisrael: "when praying in private, add 'El Melekh Ne'eman.'" Is this a big deal? Well, when you say "El Melekh Ne'eman" you're adding material to k'ri'at Sh'ma (the recitation of Sh'ma and its accompanying b'rakhot), without any authorization in the classical sources, and the halakhah has a big problem with that. It shouldn't be there... but it is! And that fact tells us something about the capacity of Jewish law to change, to accommodate itself to the needs of those who pray. So yes, it is ​a big deal!

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We all know that a minyan, the quorum needed for communal prayer (t'filah b'tzibur), is composed of a minimum of ten adults. Children, who have no obligation (yet) to fulfill mitzvot, don't count in a minyan. But already in Talmudic times and through the Middle Ages, some rabbis wanted to include a child in a minyan, at least as the tenth person alongside nine adults. In this installment, we take a brief look at their arguments and at what they might teach us about the value of "inclusion."

In our last installment, we saw that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled that Reform weddings do not create halakhically valid marriages. In this installment, we'll see that another leading American Orthodox posek, Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, rejects Feinstein's decision in no uncertain terms. Not, to be sure, because he thinks highly of Reform Judaism, but because he tells a very different story about the Jewish community of his time. It makes one think about the role of storytelling in halakhic decision.

Download the source sheet at www.freehofinstitute.org/podcast .