In the Passover song, Echad mi yodeah, there are thirteen questions ("Who knows
One?" through "Who knows thirteen?") . Here is a combination of thirteen
trivia questions and brain teasers:
1. When can a person be called to the Torah for 3 successive aliyot on the same day?
2. Someday, if they colonize the moon and there is a Jewish community, what blessing
will they be unable to recite?
3. How can you have a mixture which is dairy, and when meat accidentally falls in, the
mixture becomes parve (neither meat nor dairy)?
4. What is the explanation of the following? "Shmini B'Shmini Shmini Shmini."
5. One morning there were three people attending the same minyan. Each finished the
silent amidah at the same time, yet, during the repetition of the amidah, one responded
"amen" 26 times, the second only 22 times and the third only three times. Can
you explain this? (By the way, none of these people fell asleep or failed to respond amen
as required.)
6. What is the shortest word in the Torah?
7. The year 2000 is generally thought to have no particular significance to Jews, yet,
the year 2000 is special in one respect: there is a particular commemoration that will not
be observed in that calendar year. What day is it?
8. On what date in the Jewish calendar do we sometimes recite Hallel while, in other
years, on the same date, we recite Tachanun?
9. Triplets and their cousin are born within two hours of each other. Yet their
circumcisions are on four consecutive days. How can this occur? (No consideration need be
given to the international date line or any possible health related issues.)
10. Twins are born on the same day, Shabbat, yet their circumcisions are NOT on the
same day. (The health of neither baby is an issue.)
11. Generally because Jerusalem is in an earlier time zone, rituals are performed
earlier there than in New York. What celebration occurs earlier in New York than in
Jerusalem.
12. What single verse (i.e. the same verse, not different verses with the same words)
is read publicly from the Torah most often?
13. We read the next regular Shabbat weekly Torah reading at Shabbat mincha. What
weekly parashah is read at Shabbat mincha in Israel but NEVER in the diaspora?