Halakhic string theory, part 4

A couple of days ago, I said this episode would deal with considered selection of wires and strings – that is to say, how we assess what parts of our halakhic lives are (or should be) immovable, and which parts are more easily adjusted. But then I thought about some stuff, and actually I want to come at that idea via another route.

Mishnah, Rosh haShana, 4:4
Context: the Temple staff have been counting the days and watching the moon, and they know Rosh haShana is due. But they can’t actually get on with the official business of Rosh haShana until they’ve taken official testimony that the new moon has appeared. So they observe Yom Tov just-in-case, and when witnesses turn up, they can make it official. Okay? Onward.

Originally, they used to accept testimony about the new moon all day בראשונה, היו מקבלין עדות החודש כל היום
One time, the witnesses took their time about turning up, and the Priestly Song was messed up [the witnesses arrived too late in the day for them to make it Rosh haShana]. פעם אחת נשתהו העדים מלבוא, ונתקלקלו הלויים בשיר
So they made an enactment: they would only accept testimony about the new month until mincha-time [roughly mid-afternoon]. התקינו שלא יהו מקבלין עדות החודש, אלא עד המנחה
And if witnesses came at or after mincha-time, [that was too bad;] they kept that day as holy [see above; they had kept the day as holy just in case, but it turned out to be not-needed], and the next day was also holy [i.e. the official Rosh haShana, from which they would start to count the calendar and so on]. ואם באו עדים מן המנחה ולמעלן, נוהגים אותו היום קדש ולמחר קדש
After the Temple was destroyed משחרב בית המקדש
Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai made an enactment: they would accept testimony about the new moon all day. התקין רבן יוחנן בן זכאי, שיהו מקבלין עדות החודש כל היום

I like these Temple examples, by the way, because the taking-away of the Temple was rather like removing a pin from a string-diagram – sudden, and relatively clean-cut.

So, how can we represent this mishnah within the metaphor we’ve been developing? And is that useful?

Originally, they used to accept testimony about the new moon all day which triggered the Priestly Song, which is sort of the trigger for its being properly Rosh haShana.
One time, the witnesses took their time about turning up, and the Priestly Song was messed up and that messed up the accounting of the days – they didn’t know if it was Rosh haShana or not, so they didn’t know which sacrifices to do, and everything went Horribly Wrong.
But Rosh haShana needs to be a stable point. Not a wire, exactly, but wire-like in its stability. So they made an enactment which would protect it, thus:
they would only accept testimony about the new month until mincha-time, and if witnesses came at or after mincha-time, they kept that day as holy, and the next day was also holy. Something like this diagram.
And if you look at it from a bit of a distance, it’s basically the same as it was before, see? But it’s been adjusted to protect Rosh haShana, in that now there will always be time to do the Priestly Song.
This is kind of a big deal, since it affects what day Rosh haShana is. The SAME DATA now gives a DIFFERENT RESULT. But we decide to accept a bit of variation in the possibility of when exactly Rosh haShana officially is, so as to ensure that the Priestly Song never gets messed up.
And indeed the rabbis found this kind of disturbing. Once the Priestly Song was no longer a consideration, because there was no Temple Service, rabbinic Judaism found other ways of expressing “Today is officially Rosh haShana” – and a safeguard for the Priestly Song was no longer needed.
So they accepted testimony all day again: After the Temple was destroyed, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai made an enactment: they would accept testimony about the new moon all day.

(Pin graphic from Just Mousing Around.)

So is this a useful way of looking at the mishnah? Yes, in a limited fashion. I don’t want us to fall into the trap of trying to map out the huge enormous complicated string diagram that would be the entirety of halakha, with its variations for different points in history. I don’t think that would be useful (or feasible). I also don’t think one should generally try to conceive of mishnayot in such terms; this exercise is intended only as a way to see how mishnayot such as the one above fit into the metaphor we’ve been developing, not as a general method of Mishnah-learning.

The useful thing I think we get here is seeing how our texts treat some things as hugely important – not messing up the Priestly Song on Rosh haShana – and other things as less important – being precise about which day exactly the new moon actually was – and how that affects the relationships between other data points in the halakhic universe. Some pins-and-strings we are okay moving; some pins-and-strings we are not okay moving, and the question of which is dependent on the broader circumstances.

June 14, 2010 – 23:06 | Posted in talmud and halakha | Comments Off on Halakhic string theory, part 4

Halakhic string theory, part 3

Zevahim 107b discusses the concept of Temple zones. The sacrificial cult that was Temple-based Judaism was centred on the Temple. More specifically, the Temple’s courtyards and the walls of Jerusalem define concentric zones in which sacrifices may be offered, particularly holy sacrifices may be eaten, and lesserly holy Temple foods may be eaten (respectively).

History: remember that there were two Temples. The first one was destroyed, then there was some downtime, and then they built another one. But in between times, there were still Jews, and there was time when Jews had access to the Temple precincts but hadn’t yet rebuilt the Temple.

So, Zevachim 107b:

Let’s talk about one who offers sacrifices outside the sacrifice-zone in our day (when there is no Temple). Rabbi Yohanan says he is liable (to punishment for having offered sacrifices outside the zone); Resh Lakish says he is exempt. איתמר: המעלֶה בזמן הזה: ר’ יוחנן אמר חייב, ריש לקיש אמר פטור
Rabbi Yohanan says he is liable – the sanctity of the original sacrificing-zone (in the First Temple) made the zone fit for sacrifice both in its time and eternally. ר’ יוחנן אמר חייב — קדושה ראשונה קידשה לשעתה וקידשה לעתיד לבא
Resh Lakish says he is exempt – the sanctity of the original sacrificing-zone ended with the Temple structure. ריש לקיש אמר פטור — קדושה ראשונה קידשה לשעתה ולא קידשה לעתיד לבא
In other words, what happens if we remove the Temple from the world? To what extent can we – should we – still behave as though there is a Temple? Rabbi Yohanan is apparently saying the Temple’s effects – in this respect, at any rate – are permanent; Resh Lakish is saying that we can’t go around behaving as though the Temple is still there when it isn’t.

Rabbi Yehoshua said, I heard that they made sacrifices even when there was no Temple; and they would eat holy-holy sacrifice-meats even when there were no curtains [temporary structures put up while the second round of building was going on, to define the Temple zones], and they would eat lesser-holy sacrifice-meats even when there were no Walls. א”ר יהושע: שמעתי שהיו מקריבין אע”פ שאין בית ואוכלים קדשי קדשים אע”פ שאין קלעים קדשים קלים ומעשר שני אע”פ שאין חומה מפני שקדושה ראשונה קידשה לשעתה וקידשה לעתיד לבא

Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Yehoshua both seem to be saying, in a sense, that the halakhic system is made not of string, but of wire. (Excuse the wobbliness of the wires in this picture. Wire’s harder to work with than string, and I didn’t take the time to fetch out hammer and pliers. Imagine them beautifully non-wobbly, if you would.)

With wire, when you remove a pin, everything stays in the same place. You can continue with everything pretty much as it was before, and indeed you should. You should offer sacrifices even when there is no Temple. The rules about offering sacrifices outside the sacrifice-zone should apply even when those zones don’t really exist any more.

So, what have we got so far? We have a midrash suggesting that the halakhic system works like a system of pins and strings, and we have a baraita suggesting that really those strings are more like wires. Every halakhic data point has an effect upon every other halakhic data point, of whatever magnitude; we explore the extent to which sudden removal of halakhic data points affects the remaining ones. Rabbi Yehoshua seems to be suggesting that the connections are rigid; even if the Temple is missing, we should behave as though it is not missing.

Now. It is very easy to mock the extreme of that idea. You’ve heard of those strange communities which refuse to admit that their rebbe is dead, and every Shabbat they give him the fifth aliyah, and the congregation solemnly responds “Amen” to the dead rebbe’s inaudible blessing.

But wiry behaviour patterns also help us. Consider justice. Sometimes we witness miscarriages of justice. Our belief in the ability of the judicial system to judge rightly may be rather shaken. But most of us don’t go off and campaign for judicial reform, do we? Most of us prefer to tell ourselves that the Temple is still there, that the miscarriage of justice was a fluke, and continue as before.

Reshaping patterns is hard, and it’s much easier to let the wires hold the pattern for us. More about the considered selection of wires and string required of us as living Jews, tomorrow.

June 10, 2010 – 12:33 | Posted in talmud and halakha | Comments Off on Halakhic string theory, part 3

Halakhic string theory, part 2

Yesterday, we saw a midrash which links the act of adultery to every single one of the Ten Commandments. I said then that this is showing that halakhot are all interconnected with one another in ways you mightn’t expect, and today we’re going to explore a graphical representation of that idea.

Halakhic data points. They might be any of a number of things – biblical verses, perhaps; facts of life (“men cannot give birth”); real objects (“this woman”); theoretical constructs (“love,” “justice”); combinations thereof (“my husband;” “the Temple”). They seem to be pretty independent of one another.
Indeed, you might think you can remove a data point here and there (“this woman,” say, or “the Temple”) and the others will be pretty unaffected, although of course you’ll still be able to see the holes where they were.
This is where we start to get a little abstract. I am winding string around the pins to create string-patterns, to represent the connections that exist between halakhic data points. The connections could be exegetical, or theoretical, or they could just be other halakhic data points. Together, the strings and the pins represent the mass of laws and ideas and facts that together make up the halakhic system, and I am asking you to consider the mashal, the parable, on its own terms, without trying overly hard to work out exactly what represents what. The halakhic data points are all connected, is what we are saying here.
Indeed, they are all interconnected, each one to every other. This is a lesson of yesterday’s Tanhuma. (Now do you get why I titled these posts “halakhic string theory”?)
And if we remove one of the data points – say, “Do not commit adultery,” or “The Holy Temple” – all the things that were directly connected to that certainly go wobbly…
…but so do other things that weren’t apparently connected at all. You wouldn’t have thought adultery would be connected to violating Shabbat, but we make the effort to show that it is, and that’s because we don’t want to forget about all the knock-on effects.
With a bit of tweaking, you can create something that works pretty well, even minus the missing data points. We do this all the time when people die. “It’s not proper Judaism without my parents,” you might say. “Life isn’t the same any more.” And you go through mourning, and you rearrange the remaining datapoints in your halakhic world, and you come up with something workable, and life goes on.

Similarly, the Temple got destroyed, but rabbinic Judaism pulled itself together somehow, nonetheless. It used the flexibility – to use the language of the mashal – inherent in one loop of string twined around pins to create a different pattern, one which still works pretty neatly. Isn’t that valid?

Tomorrow we’ll see a Talmudic text which says no, that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

In the meantime, check this out. It’s the string art of John Eichinger, whose creation features at left. This is what proper string art looks like – not the massively-simplified, crude versions I have above – and halakha is even more complicated than that.
June 8, 2010 – 21:41 | Posted in talmud and halakha | Comments Off on Halakhic string theory, part 2

Halakhic string theory, part 1

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 several weeks ago, but I was busy then and it’s still interesting now), combining as it does the ritual-of-the-suspected-adulteress and the Ten Commandments. Reference: Midrash Tanchuma (ed. Buber), parashat Naso (4).

Our Sages said in the name of R. Hanina, father of R. Aha: The adulterer and adulteress violate all ten commandments of the Decalogue. אמרו רבותינו בשם ר’ חנינא אביו של ר’ אחא הנואף והנואפת עוברים על עשרת הדברות
They said to him: “Nine of them, we understand. But the Sabbath??! How? אמר להם על תשעה אנו מודים, אלא על השבת כיצד
I AM THE LORD THY GOD. Whenever anyone commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, it is as if he has denied God, as it is written, they denied God, saying, it is not (H)he על אנכי, שכל הנואף אשת חבירו כאילו כופר בהקב”ה, שנאמר כחשו בה’ ויאמרו לא הוא (ירמיה ה יב)
THERE SHALL NOT BE ANY OTHER GODS BEFORE THEE. In this commandment, it says: The Lord thy God is a jealous God, and the parasha of the Sota mentions the husband’s jealousy twice? Why twice? Once for himself, and once for God. As it is written: For it is a minhath qena’oth, a meal-offering of jealousies [plural], two jealousies. לא יהיה, שכתוב בו כי [אנכי] ה’ אלהיך אל קנא (דברים ה ח), ושני פעמים אמור בסוטה ועבר עליו רוח קנאה וקנא את אשתו (במדבר ה יד), ולמה שני פעמים, שהוא מקנא להקב”ה ולבעלה, שנאמר כי מנחת קנאות הוא (שם שם /במדבר ה’/ טו), שהיא שתי קנאות.
THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN. For the adulterer commits his act, then falsely swears that he has not done it. לא תשא את [שם] ה’ אלהיך, שהוא נואף ונשבע על שוא שלא עשה.
HONOR THY FATHER. For the adulterer impregnates the Sota, and she gives birth, and she tells her husband that it is his child; the embryo grows [into a child, and the child into an adult], who honors the Sota’s husband, thinking this to be the father, and expresses dishonor to the adulterer when seeing him in the street, thinking this not to be the father. כבד את אביך, שהנואף עם הסוטה מתעברת ממנו, ואומרת לבעלה ממך אני מעוברת, והעובר גדול, ומכבד לפני בעלה, סבור שהוא אביו ואינו אביו, ועובר בשוק ומבזה את הנואף, שסבור שאינו אביו.
THOU SHALT NOT KILL. For the adulterer enters the house on the understanding that if caught, he will either kill or be killed. לא תרצח, הנואף נכנס על מנת שאם נתפס או יהרוג או יהרג.
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. Well, this one is obvious. לא תנאף, וודאי שהוא נואף.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. For he steals his neighbor’s vagina, as it is written: Stolen waters are sweet… לא תגנוב, שהוא גונב מקור חבירו, וכן הוא אומר מים גנובים ימתקו וגו’ (משלי ט יז).
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. For the Sota lies to her husband, saying: I am pregnant from you. לא תענה ברעך, שמעידה עדות שקר [לבעלה] ואומרת ממך אני מעוברת.
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE. For anyone who commits adultery covets all that belongs to his neighbor. How so? He impregnates the Sota, and leaves, and she gives birth. Her husband thinks that this is his son. When he is about to die, he writes a will, and leaves everything to the “son”, who thus inherits everything, not realizing that he is not the son. Since the adulterer’s act has led to all this, we see that he has coveted all that belongs to his neighbor. לא תחמוד בית רעך ולא תחמוד אשת רעך, שכל מי שחומד אשת חבירו ונואף עמה, חומד כל אשר לחבירו, כיצד כשהוא נואף עמה והולך לו, והיא יולדת ממנו, סבור בעלה שהוא ממנו בא, כשבא להיפטר מן העולם, סבור שאותו הבן שלו, וכותב לו דייתיקי מכל נכסיו, ומורישו כל מה שיש לו, ואינו יודע שאינו בנו, נמצא שהנואף חומד כל מה שיש לו לחבירו
So, R. Hanina, we understand nine. But the Sabbath?! How does the adulterer violate that?!! אמרו לו לר’ חנינא הרי אמרנו תשעה, [זכור את יום] השבת כיצד עובר עליו
He said to them: Sometimes, a common Israelite commits adultery with a priestess, the wife of a priest. She gets pregnant from him, and everyone thinks that the child is the son of the priest, and thus a priest himself. So he goes and serves in the Temple, and sets up firewood and burns it on the Sabbath, and thus violates the Sabbath. [A priest may do this on the Sabbath as part of the Temple work. A non-priest may not.] אמר להם אני אומר לכם פעמים כהן שיש לו אשה כהנת, ישראל נואף בא עליה, והיא יולדת ממנו, סבורים בו שהוא בנו של כהן, ועומד התינוק ומשמש בבית המקדש, ועורך עצים ומעלה בשבת, ונמצא מחלל השבת
Thus, the adulterer and the adulteress violate all ten commandments of the Decalogue. הרי עשרת דברות שהסוטה עוברת עם הנואף

(Translation courtesy Gabriel Wasserman.)

So this is interesting as a text, but it’s the more interesting for the meta-message, I think. What’s it saying? That everything is connected. Sometimes the connections are obvious. Sometimes they’re not obvious. But, because halakhot are all interconnected, messing with one thing is going to have an impact on other, apparently unrelated, things.

Yes, you might say that the example above is so unlikely as to be preposterous, and it’s true that in general we don’t stretch ourselves to accommodate rampantly unlikely possibilities. But that’s not the point.

The point is not that you should not commit adultery lest your offspring come to serve erroneously in the Temple (not that I am endorsing adultery, you understand); the point is that everything in the halakhic system has the power to affect everything else. More about that shortly.

June 7, 2010 – 21:54 | Posted in talmud and halakha | Comments Off on Halakhic string theory, part 1

Tags on tefillin

So – recently, someone sent me these tefillin, and as you can see, they have these little tags wired onto them. Funny, eh?

Tefillin with little tags wired onto them
Here are close-ups. They’re little seals, stamped into blobs of lead. One side reads “כשר” and the other side reads “הרבנות הראשית ת”א-יפו” – kosher: chief rabbinate of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo.

I didn’t know one could do that to tefillin – put little tags on them like that and still have them be okay to wear. But this interests me very much.

Part of the reason I dislike checking tefillin is that when I put them back together again, they become non-kosher for non-egal Jews (i.e. mostly Orthodox ones) but indistinguishable from ones Orthodox Jews could wear. That is like sneaking lard into cookies labelled “kosher” and putting them out at kiddush – not something I want to do. But what if I made little tags that said “NOT KOSHER FOR ORTHODOXIM” or something?

Then maybe I could check tefillin for egal Jews without feeling bad about it?

(I really like these photos, by the way. Just as photos. Don’t you? I think they’ve got lovely composition.)

June 5, 2010 – 18:55 | Posted in tefillin | Comments (3)

Ink Is Not Tea, Tea Is Not Ink

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 the barrel, and when I’m not expecting it, it trickles down and lands in my writing.

Thus.

Tea and ink, not mixing

Tea and ink, not mixing

The three little dots are the gleams from my desk lamps, and the other gleam is the light from the window.

Blue sky and clouds.

Blue sky and clouds.

June 4, 2010 – 21:47 | Posted in calligraphy, La vie soferet, torah | Tagged | Comments Off on Ink Is Not Tea, Tea Is Not Ink

parcels which come in the post

SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST SEND ME TEFILLIN

SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST SEND ME TEFILLIN

and they coil madly out of the box! and I get to sort them into pairs! and have them fixed!

And Emfish says to recite the blessing Lehaniakh, tefillin!, or “Lie down, tefillin!” so I will do that later and they will all uncoil themselves and behave perfectly.

June 3, 2010 – 21:24 | Posted in La vie soferet, tefillin, women's tefillin loans | Comments (1)

tefillin gemach

I keep sets of tefillin for loaning to women. Women, because men have an easy time of it if they want to borrow tefillin. A woman who wants to borrow tefillin – because she wants to try the practice before committing a few hundred dollars to tefillin, or because she hasn’t got that sort of cash – she has a hard time. It is for these women that I started collecting spare sets of tefillin.

The tefillin I have – thanks especially to Rabbi Ben Kramer, hi Ben! and also to Rabbis Abby and Juan, hey guys! – all need checking before I can send them to people. The more decrepit sets need actual repair, also.

I prefer to get this done by men, for many and varied reasons, and this doesn’t always happen as fast as I’d like.* I’ve just started to make some progress on the most recent lot, and I’ll make more progress before very long, but at the moment, I’m in a bit of a checking-backlog.

But hopefully, before too many more weeks have passed, I’ll have some more nice kosher tefillin to loan to more people.

* Because. The men I know who are willing to work with me fall into two categories – the grasping sort, who insist that These Tefillin Cannot Be Repaired Let Me Sell You A New Set, and the accommodating sort, who will sort them out eventually but have other things on their plates and take their sweet time.

June 2, 2010 – 19:28 | Posted in tefillin, women's tefillin loans | Comments Off on tefillin gemach

line widths for Torahs

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 75 yuds needs to be 162mm wide, and one of 90 yuds needs to be 195mm wide.

It is not particularly ideal to have columns of such very varied width, but it is not per se problematic.

June 2, 2010 – 17:54 | Posted in torah | Tagged | Comments Off on line widths for Torahs

Ketubah drafting part 3 – word processors

In an ideal situation, then, you have your .doc file, with the names and everything neatly filled in.

Next to the portable drafting board, the most awesome tool in the ketubah artist’s kit is – VARIABLE MARGINS!

Yes. You open your .doc file in Word*, and you mess with the margins. It’s great.

I’ve learned – it doesn’t take much fiddling about to learn with what fonts this trick applies to you – that with the aforementioned Broad nib, my usual ketubah script and Times New Roman’s Hebrew letters are spaced about the same. That is, if Word wraps Times New Roman text in a particular way, my writing is going to want to wrap at about the same point.

The other thing I’ve learned is that with a B nib, when I write the first line up to “alafim,” the line occupies 18cm. So in Word, I tweak the margin so that the first line wraps at “alafim,” and then all the other lines are wrapped for me! nice and neat! and I know that if I make all my lines 18cm wide, I won’t have any nasty surprises when things won’t fit.

Especially if you don’t fully-justify the text, you just right-justify it, so you can see which are the Short lines and which are the Long lines. Then you know which ones to stretch and which ones to squish so it’ll all look beautifully planned.

Then you say to Word, display line numbers please! and it shows you that there are 30-some lines (depending on precise text). So you know how many lines to write, as well.

* or proprietary or open-source equivalent, yes, blah, shut up, Word is the Kleenex of word-processors, generically ready to soak up tears and bogies whilst being challenged by cheap alternatives that will make your nose red. Um, what?

June 1, 2010 – 17:34 | Posted in calligraphy | Tagged | Comments Off on Ketubah drafting part 3 – word processors