מנחות – Menachot
Mencahot 37a ~ Conjoined Twins
Which head wears tefillin? And an eyewitness account from Rabbi Yaakov Hagiz.
Menachot 42b ~ How Do You Make Techelet?
How Pliny the elder made blue dye, and the modern rebirth of an ancient Jewish tradition.
Menachot 64b ~ Cursed Be He Who Raises Swine
Archeological remains reveal that in the biblical northern kingdom of Israel, people ate pork.
Menachot 70b ~ The Chemistry of Chametz
Grains contain beta-amylase, but rice doesn’t. Which is why rice cannot become chametz.
Menachot 84b ~On the Content of our Dreams
They don’t predict the future, but we’d be dead without them.
Menachot 93a ~ The Relationship between Hearing and Intelligence
The sages of the Talmud deemed the deaf not “mentally competent.” We know better.
Mencahot 106a ~ Gauss, Tosafot, and the Sum of Consecutive Numbers
As Tosafot stated, it is S= n(P+1)/2.
Determinism in a mechanical universe, and why quantum physics don’t help.