The way we divide the Torah-readings nowadays, parashat Naso always falls out adjacent to Shavuot, the festival upon which we celebrate the Giving of the Torah, and upon which we read the Ten Commandments. Thus it is that the following Midrash is especially appropriate for the Naso/Shavuot period (thus, yes, I should have posted it […]
Occasionally I dip my pen, by accident, into my tea instead of into my ink. When that happens, I wipe the tea off my pen, and dip the pen into the ink as per original plan. But sometimes apparently I don’t get all the tea off my pen. A tiny drop of it lurks in […]
A post that can be of no possible interest save to the very very few. Thus. On klaf, 8mm lines of 62 yuds (average) are done at 134mm wide, because that’s what works. Therefore, a column of 47 yuds needs to be 102mm wide, one of 66 yuds needs to be 143mm wide, one of […]
The first cup of wine is drunk whilst reclining This, they tell you, is because formal meals during the classical rabbinic period were conducted in the format of the classical world. Diners reclined on couches to take the Meal of Freedom, in the manner of the aristocracy of the time. Nowadays we sit up to […]
Fun times at JOFA yesterday. That’s the intermittently-annual conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, for those not au fait with Modern Orthodox slang. I admit I was rather surprised when they asked me to present, given that I don’t identify as Orthodox, but I said as much and they were still interested, so I […]
(This conversation. The one about Rabbi Barbie.) A question about tzitzit I get a question in my inbox. Hi, Jen. I have a question and I have been told that you might know the answer. I am wondering if there are any rules about what to do with old tzitzit (arbah canfot). I want to […]
Two friends at Yeshivat Hadar are learning about tzitzit, specifically the extent to which women are permitted* to engage in the mitzvah. One of them comes over to me: “We’re learning about women and tzitzit, and whether women are allowed to make tzitzit, and there’s a famous Tosafot, maybe in Gittin, that talks about that…?” […]
The very observant will note that this series has talked a lot about letters, but really not about layout at all. The reason for this is that while letter forms are relatively inflexible and easy to get wrong, layout is relatively very flexible and (these days) pretty hard to screw up, so it’s not part […]
I summarised my attitude towards women writing Torahs by saying that the full citizen, the adult male in good standing, may participate in the transmission of the community’s symbolic centre, and the adjunct classes of women, children, and slaves, may not; today, it is a matter of principle that women not be an adjunct class […]
