High Holiday Custom Minifig

 In honor of the upcoming yom tov here is a custom minifig I built using Cinema 4d and Bricklink Studio.

Happy Tu B'Av!

On this day the Temple completed its annual harvesting of firewood. It was known as the Day of the Breaking of the Hatchet.

לבי במזרח ואנכי בסוף מערב

A quote from Yehudah HaLevi (poet and philosopher, 1075-1141) as we approach the 1,950th Tisha B'Av still on the western side of the Wall.

Rebuilding A Personal Jerusalem

 During this time of the year as our hearts and minds turn to Jerusalem and the Temple, I have been working on rebuilding our holy city in my own small way. Brick by brick, over 3,000 in all, I assembled a microscale Lego® model of the Old City of Jerusalem as it would have looked during the heyday of the pre-Herodian Second Temple era.

New Temple Mount Model

It has been nearly two thousand years since Mount Moriyah has seen a Jewish Temple, but thanks to the efforts of Yitzy Kasowitz and jbrick, we can now see the Temple and surrounding areas in miniature. As a follow-up to jbrick's successful Holy Temple model they are now offering an add-on model of the entire Temple Mount.

Yom Kippur Avodah Slideshow Excerpt

During this past Aseres Yemei Teshuvah I was invited by Rabbi Abba Zvi Naiman to bring my Yom Kippur Avodah slideshow to the Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh. In this presentation I walk through the daily schedule of the Beis Hamikdash on Yom Kippur and show what happened and where.

How NOT to Make Ketores

My slideshow about preparing the Temple Incense is now available.

The Miracle of Chanukah

On Chanukah we celebrate the miraculous defeat of the Syrian-Greeks by the Chashmonaim. Part of the miracle was that the Jews found a single flask of oil still sealed with the mark of the Kohen Gadol. Opinions vary as to where this flask was actually discovered.

SRO in the Azarah on Erev Pesach

     Once upon a time, toward the end of the Second Temple era, King Agripas wanted to take a census of the Jewish people. He told the Kohen Gadol to keep track of how many Pesach offerings were brought that year in order to estimate the number of people. The Kohen Gadol collected one kidney from each offering, and at the end of the day they found that they had counted six hundred thousand pairs of kidneys (1.2 million in total), which was double the number of people who left Egypt. Even this was not an accurate estimate, because it did not count those who were tamei or who were far away from the Beis Hamikdash (and did not participate in the korban Pesach). Furthermore, this was only a count of the korbanos, not the people, for there was not a single korban that did not have at least ten people in the group that was going to eat it. They called that year the “Crowded Pesach” because there were so many people.

(summarized from Pesachim 64b)

This Gemara indicates that on one particular year, over one million korbanos were processed in the Beis Hamikdash on erev Pesach. In this post I would like to examine how many people could reasonably fit in the Azarah at one time and how to reconcile the result with our Gemara.

חג כשר ושמח

Wishing all of our readers a very meaningful and enjoyable yom tov.

Narrowing Windows in Lego®

The windows of the Sanctuary Building in the First and Second Temples were built backwards — they were wide on the outside and narrow on the inside. In this post I show what that might look like in Lego®.

LEGO® Model of the Minor Sanhedrin Courthouse

Now that I finished revising the minor sanhedrin courthouse I used Bricklink Studio to put together a Lego® version as well. Even though the Lego® version is just for fun, it did bring to light an important Kessef Mishnah in Hilchos Sanhedrin that sheds light on the seating arrangement of the court.

Meet the Maker: Jbrick Comes to Baltimore!

It's not that often that I get to see Lego® and the Beis Hamikdash come together (outside of my own house, that is). Last week Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore was honored to host Yitzy Kasowitz of Jbrick and his Second Temple Lego® model. I stopped in to meet Mr. Kasowitz and see his impressive model for myself.

Supernatural Protection

The Temple was a place where miracles occurred on a daily basis. Although the physical structure of the Temple was taken from us, the supernatural essence of the Temple can still be accessed today.

Updates to the Sanhedrin Courthouses

In the last post I explained that something was not quite right about how I depicted the judicial scribes of the Temple's sanhedrin courthouses. Here are two updated images.