Consider the Source.

We've moved

2011-12-29T10:59:00.002-06:00

Hello there. We've relocated to http://www.considerthesource3.blogspot.com. This location isn't going to be shut down, but it isn't going to be updated any more either. So all our subscribers [chortle] should reset their settings.

Good news for people in Rogers Park, southwest Evanston, and southeast Skokie

2011-11-15T08:23:00.007-06:00

The inconvenient LifeSource location near Old Orchard has been closed for some months now, taking blood donations at various temporary sites. And the day after tomorrow, Thursday, November 17, 2011, a new permanent LifeSource center is opening at Main Street Marketplace, 2436 Main, Evanston (just east of McCormick)--either downright convenient or relatively noninconvenient. (Now that I’m a southeast Skokeleh person, it’s downright convenient for me.) There’s a rumor that the Food 4 Less at the shopping center is changing its name to Food IV Less in honor of the big event.

Before donating blood, remember to hydrate yourself. Also, especially if you’re a female person, iron up. (Personal note: I got a ninety-day ineligibility because my iron was just a little bit below the threshold last time I went to donate. For females, it’s three weeks. The reason is that it’s more unusual for a male to have low iron.)

See you there! February 2, when I’m eligible again. But don’t wait for me.

Geshem and gashem

2011-11-02T09:35:00.017-05:00

This is a reworking of (and I hope an improvement on) an old, now-deleted post.Well, the holiday season is over. Which raises the eternal question that I know is on everyone's mind: "Should I say 'Mashiv haruah umorid hagashem,' or 'Mashiv haruah umorid hageshem'"?

But first, let's discuss pausal forms. Those who know from pausal forms are invited to skip down to the paragraph that begins "Gashem is the pausal form of geshem."

Using the siddur, I noticed some strange stuff some years ago. For example, in the Retzeh paragraph that's added to Birkat Hamazon on Shabbat, we find "kemitzvat retzonékha [new clause] uvirtzon^ekhá haniah ["hanah" in Birnbaum] lanu..." What's with the two different endings for the same word? And similarly in the weekday Amidah, we find "vekarno tarum bishu'atékha [new clause] ki lishu'at^ekhá kivinu..."

And in the post-drinking blessing for wine, what's with all the gefen and gafen? "Gafen" must be the basic way of saying it, right? I mean, everyone's heard "borei peri hagafen." So you look up vine in an English-Hebrew dictionary--it's gefen.

And at the end of Birkat Hamazon, we have "vezar'o mevakesh lahem" instead of "lehem," and in Ashrei "ugdol-hased" instead of "hesed."

What's going on? What's going on is pausal forms. In biblical Hebrew, some words undergo a change if they're immediately followed by a major pause. One pausal form is the "-^ekhá" (meaning "your") that becomes "-ékha" in pausation. Thus lishu'at^ekhá and bishu'atékha. Another occurs in nouns with three consonants and two segols (a segol is the three-dot vowel that sounds like a short "e"), such as lehem, melekh, and hesed; the first segol becomes a qamatz (the vowel that looks like a squushed-down capital T). Thus "vezar'o mevakesh lahem" and "ugdol-hased."

"But wait!," you may be saying. "You said the pausal forms are in biblical Hebrew. While some of the things you've quoted are from the Bible--viz., Ashrei and the verse near the end of Birkat Hamazon--others are not. So, not to put to fine a point on it, one needs to ask 'Wha?'!"

If you're saying this, you're right. Much of Ashkenazi liturgy was recast into biblical style in recent centuries, and we sometimes go hog wild, as it were, with the pausalities. Consider the Berakhah Aharonah: "al Yisra'el amékha, ve'al Yerushalayim irékha, ve'al Tsion mishkan kevodékha, ve'al mizbehékha, ve'al heykhalékha." On this and on this and on this and on this and on this. This is a lot of pausativity. (Although I like this one; it makes it more lively than "on this and on this and on this and on this and on this.") But yes, it’s overdone.

* * *
Gashem is the pausal form of geshem. So which one to use? I used to be a gashemite, to use the word of Dr. Shnayer Leiman. Every siddur I've seen has a full stop after "hag*shem" (either a Western-style period or a Hebrew sof pasuk, which looks like a Western colon and is more or less equivalent to a period). This is true even of those siddurim that have "hageshem." And in general, even those shelihei tzibbur who say "hageshem" also pronounce a full stop. So "hagashem" made sense to me. According to Dr. Leiman, this is in fact the rationale of the gashemites.

There are some who are very intolerant of what they consider the wrong pronunciation. Even if I had no other reason to like the virtual person known as Mississippi Fred MacDowell, I would still be eternally grateful to him for pointing me toward Dr. Leiman. Specifically, to shiur by Dr. Leiman on the history and halakhah of the geshem-vs.-gashem controversy. I recommend the shiur highly, even if you're not a vocalization geeq. It's as much history as it is halakhah, and Dr. Leiman's presentation is fascinating, educational, and entertaining. You don't need a yeshiva background to understand it--I, for example, am an am ha'aretz with no training in rabbinics.

This comment from Siddur Tzelota d'Avraham summarizes both the geshemite position and, so that it can be refuted, the gashemite position (you can enlarge the image by clicking on it):

Morid hageshem: The gimmel takes a segol [i.e., it’s geshem]. This is how it’s printed in all the old Ashkenazic siddurim and mahzorim, and also in the Sephardic siddur that is available to me, as well as in the siddur of the Holy Luminescent Rabbi Who Wrote the Tanya (may the memory of the righteous one be a blessing). I’ve heard that a grammarian in Berlin [Isaac Satanow] published a siddur, Vaye'ater Yitzhak, in which he prints it as "hagashem," in accordance with the rules concerning pauses. And in fact Zechariah 14:15 [sic; it seems to me to be verse 17] ends with "yihyeh hagashem." After Satanow, it was published as hagashem in several siddurim. But this is just a complete scrambling of the old books; there is no pause here at all. In siddurim, it's printed on a line by itself; this is to teach that it's said not all year 'round, but only in the winter. But it is connected to the language that follows it; by making the rain fall (morid hageshem), God kindly sustains the living (mekhalkel hayyim behesed). As the Tur (Orah Hayyim 114) notes, "morid hageshem" supports "mekhalkel hayyim" because the rains provide livelihood and sustenance (kalkalah, which has the same root as mekhalkel). It has nothing at all to do with "mehayyeh hametim" (giver of life to the dead), which precedes it.

Note that in the same siddur that makes this argument that there is no pause at all after hageshem, hageshem is followed by a period. As I was saying. This is why I was a gashemite.

I’m not at all competent to evaluate the halakhic arguments for either position. I have become a geshemite for nonhalakhic reasons. When I started thinking about it, I realized that the phrase is parallel to those that follow--they all begin with participles (or what are in Modern Hebrew called present-tense verbs):

mashiv haruah umorid hag*shem
mekhalkel hayyim behesed
mehayyeh metim berahamim rabim
somekh nofelim
verofe holim
umatir asurim
umkayyem emunato lisheney afar

OK. So it’s associated with the following phrases. This doesn’t necessarily mean it should be geshem. After all, Ashkenazic liturgy is heavy on the pauses--recall the Berakhah Aharonah. Maybe it should be pausal gashem. But note the next phrase; it ends with hesed, not hased. Because I’m claiming that the two lines have parallel construction, I choose to say geshem (which is not the same as claiming that gashem is incorrect).

Judging by Dr. Leiman’s lecture, each pronunciation is advocated by bunches of rabbis, and these guys are always right, so you’re probably OK either way. On the other hand, since some of these rabbis say the other pronunciation is downright wrong, it’s possible that you’re non-OK either way.

Yom Kippur haiku

2011-10-12T12:01:00.003-05:00

Torn skin! Flowing blood!
Fang punctures on our ankles!
The cats do not fast.

Interesting gematria

2011-09-23T14:42:00.001-05:00

Those who like gematria and who assume the Bible gets all its math correct may be interested in M. D. Stern, “A remarkable approximation to π,” Mathematical Gazette 69 (1985): 218-19. Stern quotes (in English) I Kings 7:23, which appears to imply that π = 3. He then describes gamatria and explains the difference between qere and ketiv.

Finally, Stern notes that

the word translated line in its written form has numerical value 111 whereas as read the value is 106. If we take the ratio of these numbers as a correcting factor for the apparent value of π as 3 and calculate
3 x 111/106
we obtain 3.141509 to 7 significant figures. This differs from the true value of π by less than 10^-4 which is remarkable. In view of this, it might be suggested that this peculiar spelling is of more significance than a cursory reading might have suggested.

As a general rule, I agree with all statements whose verbal peachpit is “it might be suggested.”

A D D E N D U M

So yesterday I was having this conversation. Said I, "I came across an interesting gematria. You know that verse in Kings that implies that pi equals three? Well, one of the words in that verse has a ketiv/qere distinction...."

"Oh, I've heard about that one. The Gra found some way of using the ketiv and the qere to show that the verse actually got it right."

"Yeah. When I read about it, it wasn't attributed to the Gra. Hm."

I see two possibilities here. It's possible that the Gra came up with this, and Stern didn't know about it. It's also possible that this is original with Stern and by way of oral tradition it got attributed to the Gra.

Does anyone have any pre-Stern material that attributes this to the Gra? If you know of such a thing, please let us know.

Symposium on Eliezer Berkovits--virtual version

2011-08-03T08:13:00.002-05:00

Back in March, there was a symposium in Chicago on Eliezer Berkovits. And now those of us who registered for it have gotten an e-mail with a link to recordings of the talks. Here's that link.

Back in the days when typesetting was extremely tedious manual labor

2011-06-29T12:47:00.003-05:00

Especially in mixed right-left and left-right text. The final footnote of פנחס‏ מארדעל, אמות ותנועות (Phineas Mordell, “Mothers and Vowels”), Leshonenu 2 (1929-30), p. 256 (click on image to expand it):

BTW, the title “Mothers and Vowels” isn’t as zany as it may sound; Hebrew letters that are used to indicate vowels (such as vavs used as vowels, and final heys that don’t have dots in them) are called imot haqeri’ah, or “mothers of reading.”

His pointless mishnah

2011-06-13T21:07:00.001-05:00

I'm trampling in the Dikdukian's territory here. In Haftarat Beha'alotekha is a place where an ignored dagesh will change the meaning. Zechariah 4:1 ends
אֲשֶׁר־יֵעוֹר מִשְּׁנָתוֹ
meaning, "who is awakened from his sleep." If the dagesh is ignored, it means "whose mishnah is awakened."

Question that some of you may know the answer to, although everyone I've asked doesn't

2011-06-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

Given that one should be very careful when pronouncing shem Hashem, why does the official pronunciation swallow the alef when a prefix is attached? For example, why do we say "hodu ladonai ki tov" instead of "hodu l'adonai ki tov"?

Thank you.

Nietzsche and Jewish tradition

2011-06-01T10:49:00.005-05:00

Notes on a talk by R' Dr. Michael J. Harris. Thank you, Lethargic Man.

Also of possible interest: Allan Nadler, "Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man: Not a Mithnagged," Modern Judaism 13 (1993): 119-47.

Important event

2011-05-05T21:53:00.001-05:00

My shul is hosting a blood drive on Sunday, May 15.(Click on image to expand it.) I'm chairing the event, and I'll be there the whole time. If you have a mental image of the Miker, come on over and find out if you got it right. I'll be the guy hovering around, trying to look important.

In point of fact, I don't care whether you donate at our drive. The important thing is that you donate somewhere or other if you can. If our drive makes it convenient for you, please donate there. If it reminds you that you want to donate blood, that's great too. But if it reminded you last year and you ended up not doing it, please do it at our drive. Check your schedule for Sunday, May 15. If there's anything on there that might be less important than saving three lives, please consider rescheduling it and donating blood instead.

So yeah, I don't care whether you donate at our drive as long as you donate somewhere. But I'd love to see you. If you're a member of Consider the Source's international readership and you're going to be in northeast West Rogers Park that day, drop on in. If you're medically able and you're carrying around a pint you don't need, please donate. If you're not medically able, come on in anyway. Introduce yourself, give the donors orange juice, help me with my hovering around and trying to look important.

On Saturday the 14th, kiddush at the shul will be sponsored by the blood drive committee. In honor of the occasion, we're serving theme-appropriate chowage. Since it's important to be hydrated if you're donating blood, we'll be serving some good old plain old Lake Michigan water in addition to the usual fizzy stuff. I've been drinking Lake Mish water since infancy, and look how I turned out. Also, you should iron up. We've already got a commitment from one of our members to make a spinach salad. If any of you are willing to make either gehakte leberlakh or, failing that, chopped liver in the 'gogulary kitchen Thursday night or Friday day, let me know--dietary laws observed. Also, since it's a (you should forgive the expression) yuppie 'gog, spinach pie might also work. There will even be some regular food.

Last year, the rabbi's dvar on the day before the blood drive suggested that if God gave us more than we need, maybe it was for the purpose of sharing with those who don't have. Af the kiddush after the service, a member of the blood drive committee gave a vort based on this. If God gave us good health and a pint of blood we don't need, maybe we were given that extra pint so that we could give it to someone who needs it.

By the way, there are several versions of the mishnah that's quoted in our poster (above). Some (most, in fact) talk about saving a life miyisrael--a Jewish life. I've been looking into this, and my temporary conclusion is that it may not matter. The saying is based on our descent from Adam, not from Abraham, which means that the logic of it applies to all people, not just Jews. On the other hand, the context of the mishnah is the procedural rules for a beit din (rabbinic court), and only Jews are subject to the jurisdiction of a beit din. Bli neder, I'll post more about this later.

And what is the one thing in the world that's more negligent than not donating blood if you're able to? Obviously, that would be posting about donating blood without including everyone's favorite image re blood donation.

Personal revelations!!!!!!!

2011-04-15T10:07:00.003-05:00

Here's the first one. According to my doc, according to the lab I don't have cancer. But that's not the important one.

Here's the other revelation: I am a crazy person. What?, this isn't a big revelation? But here's the new evidence that I'm a crazy person (not that you need more). Given that the cancer I don't have is something manageable if caught early, the best thing about not having cancer is that I'll still be eligible to donate blood. Speaking of which, yeah, that's right, I'm on the committee for my 'gog's upcoming blood drive, May 15, 9 AM-2 PM, 2706 W. Touhy, Chicago. See you there.

And if you can give blood but can't come to our drive, give it somewhere else. If you've got a pint you don't need and are able to share it with someone who needs it, you should do so.

And here's another great thing about not having cancer. If I die within the next three years (which is when I'm supposed to get checked for it again), it won't be from the cancer I don't have. That is so cool!!!!! (I'm sorry, I shouldn't joke about that, I'm sorry. Honest. I mean, not so sorry that I'm going to delete it instead of belaboring how sorry I am, but I really am sorry.)

Ill-considered

2011-04-04T21:01:00.002-05:00

One of the rules for Passover (Pesach) is that we must not own chametz (or chometz)--leavened materials that are forbidden for the holiday period. We sell our chametz to a Gentile before Passover, usually using a rabbi as our agent. We sign a document giving the rabbi permission to sell the chametz; we ourselves don't get the money. After Passover is over, the rabbi arranges for the gentile to sell the chametz back.

This is a legal sale under the laws of the civil authorities; the document says so. During Passover, we keep the sold chametz locked away in designated storage areas (like cabinets); the gentile owner has the right to inspect the chametz and to take it away. The owner is under no obligation to sell it back after the holiday is over. Nevertheless, we assume they'll sell it back. We're told to keep away from the sold chametz for some period after Passover--usually an hour or so--to give the rabbi time to buy it back on our behalf.

There is a halachic ruling--halachah is Jewish law--about this that I believe is extremely ill-considered. I have heard it before, attributed to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most prominent halachic decisors of the twentieth century. I've now seen it written down for the first time, in a list of Passover laws compiled by Rabbi Shmuel Fuerst of Agudath Israel of Illinois. It appears on p. 16 of AI of I's 2011 Passover guide:

Every Jew must sell their chometz before Pesach. If one knows that he will be eating by relatives after Pesach who do not sell their chometz, one is permitted to sell their chometz without their knowledge or permission. You are able to do this because of the rule that one is permitted to perform beneficial acts for others even without their awareness. After Pesach it will be permitted to eat in their home.

The point of this isn't to pick on either R' Fuerst or AI. R' Feinstein's rulings are considered authoritative. I believe that he was mistaken, and that you should not attempt to "sell" other people's chametz.

Why did I put "sell" in quotation marks? We claim that such a sale is legal under the laws of the civil jurisdiction where it takes place. It seems very unlikely that these clandestine sales are legal. A person who is not legally incompetent and hasn't given you power of attorney owns some property; you sell this property without the owner's knowledge or consent. Just to make it interesting, the owner doesn't get any money from the supposed sale. You've arranged this sale because you don't approve of the owner's religious practices or lack thereof. I doubt that this is a legal sale under the laws of most states. I don't understand why this isn't obvious. I ask any lawyers who might be reading this to comment.

Some Orthodox Jews--a minority, I believe--don't generally consider this an important matter; we have our own laws. But in this case, civil law is religious law; under halachah, this sale has to be binding under civil law. If the Orthodox rabbinate allows or encourages such extralegal sales, it's undermining the rationale for the whole procedure.

Another problem is that it can lead to misunderstandings that may turn violent. It's very unusual for the non-Jew who bought the chametz to visit his purchases, but it does happen. The sale document explicitly allows it. We sometimes share moving stories--stories that may even be true--about a gentiles who visit their chametz because they feel so good about helping Jews observe Passover. So what happens if the gentile shows up at Dad's place--I assume most of those who sell other people's chametz are from non-Orthodox families and decided to sign up for this zany lifestyle--anyhow, the gentile shows up at Dad's place to have a look at the oatmeal that he bought but that Dad didn't sell. Since neither the gentile nor Dad is in on the secret, it could get ugly. Dad might call the police; if one of them has a short fuse, it could get violent.

And what about the gentile who participates in this transaction? Presumably they are well disposed toward Jews; at any rate, they probably don't have any negative stereotypes about the business practices of Orthodox Jews. This Jewish-friendly gentile is in effect made into a receiver of stolen property--Dad isn't the only victim of this deception. If Dad or the gentile found out about the game this rabbi is playing, they would probably surmise that he's either an amoral charlatan or an unwise fool. Maybe both. And who are we to disagree? At worst, the gentile might decide that the stereotypes about Jewish business practices have an uncomfortable amount of truth to them.

Finally, if you want to sell your relative's chametz, it's possible you should examine your own motives. Let's look back at what Rabbi Fuerst wrote: If you know you're going to be eating with relatives who don't sell their chametz, it's halachically permitted to sell it for them without their knowledge because you're doing them a good turn. After Passover, you can eat in their house. The obvious question that arises is "Huh?" If it's for their benefit, why limit yourself to those you know you'll be eating by after Passover? In Judaism, the highest kindness is that which you expect no human reward for. And one of the things we get a divine reward for is for making peace between people. So why not secretly sell the chametz of your worst non-observant Jewish enemy, at whose table you have no expectation of eating in the near future?

You should ask whether arranging this fake purchase shows a certain contempt for the beneficiaries of your supposed kindness. If so, maybe you should consider whether you want contempt to be the basis for your relationship with your family. I hope the answer is no; I assume that's the answer in most cases. If the answer is yes, maybe you should find an honest way of expressing your contempt.

My pre-Purim reading

2011-02-16T20:05:00.002-06:00

I just started reading this paper, and so far it's interesting: Avi Sagi, "The Punishment of Amalek in Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem," Harvard Theological Review 87, no. 3 (July 1994): 323-46. If you have access to JSTOR, you can download a copy. If you don't, you can send me an e-mail and I may be able to arrange for a pdf of it to appear in your in box.

In all too many Orthodox synagogues, Parashat Zakhor is an opportunity for a Fifteen-Minute Hate. I don't know how most non-Ortho 'gogs handle it. Some of them may just ignore it. This paper avoids both.

Shoveling snow on the Sabbath, 2010 version

2010-12-24T14:33:00.004-06:00

Almost identical to the 2009 sermon on the subject. And I'm using the cool cybergizmo that I stole from Lethargic Man. Put the cursor on the word "shinnuy" (below). And why it's being done this year by ffiona instead of Michael has to do with difficulties regarding Michael's signing on, but that's OK, since we're both the same person.

Snowy sidewalks are no big deal in themselves, but they become icy sidewalks after they've been walked on for a while, and those things are dangerous.

When it's necessary to shovel on the Sabbath, I always do so, wearing socks on my hands as a shinnuy. I haven't asked a rabbi about this, and this is out of respect for the rabbinate--I want to save them the embarrassment of possibly giving the wrong answer.

As a side note, I once told a friend, former and (I hope) future hevruta, and ethical adviser about this. He (who lives in an apartment where the landlord is responsible for shoveling, so it's not his problem) said he thought this a fine idea. Since it's just me, he said, I should do it without any distinctive Jewish accessories visible. If, however, I were R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz, av beit din of the RCA and the Chicago Rabbinical Council, who lives a few blocks away, he'd advise me to do it looking like I was R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz so everyone would know it's OK. I take his point, although I should point out that if I were R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz, I wouldn't need his advice.

One Sabbath morning in 2009, there was a layer of slush on the sidewalk. I ignored it, since it was the Sabbath, and what would the people coming to lunch think? By Sunday morning, the slush had turned into solid ice with footprints.

So let's imagine that someone had injured themselves on the ice that I piously left there, and let's further imagine that I'd passed away and had to face the Heavenly Tribunal.

Members of the Tribunal (M"T): Well, what about this Mr. McNotzreigh who got injured on your ice?
Me: Sorry about that, but only a little, since I was observing Shabbat.
M"T: Very nice.

(I assume the M"T are Orthodox Jews, among whom "very nice" means "yeah, right, whatever.")

Right. Well, very nice. But from now on, I'm going to do what needs to be done and forgo the after-the-fact teshuvah.

Cybergizmo that I'm going to start using

2010-12-17T08:51:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago, my virtual friend Lethargic Man posted this:

In other news, I was queueing in Kosher Kingdom the other night, and the cashier said to the little boy in front of me: "Spin to win," proferring a dreidel.

"ש," she observed once it had stopped. "שׁוּם דְבַר." Turns out ג would have גarnered a 3% discount, and ה a 5% discount. Sadly the נ did not lead to a 50% discount.

What's very cool about this, besides the post itself, is what happens when you put the cursor over the underlined שׁוּם דְבַר. I copied that feature from his source code, and so now I'm going to use it too. Thank you Lethargic Man.

Torah Jews

2010-12-12T12:10:00.003-06:00

This is very similar to a vort I gave a few weeks ago at kiddush at Young Israel of West Rogers Park, Chicago, on the occasion of the yortzaits of my parents, Martin (Mordechai ben Dov Ber) and Dorothy (Devorah bat Yonah Moshe) Koplow. This post is dedicated to their memory.

My mother sort of vaguely believed in Gkd; my father had little more than disdain for any sort of religiosity. They were both very menshlich people--they treated others with courtesy and respect, they were kind, they were always fair in their dealings with other people.

If you go to enough Orthodox shuls and go to enough vorts, you're going to hear people say that a relative or friend is (or was) not frum, but is (or was) a menshlich person. Why do we say "but"? We've all heard this "but" statement so often that it shouldn't come as a surprise any more. And even without having heard this vort a hundred times, we all know that the world is full of Jews (not to mention others) who are not frum and who are exemplary menshes.

(We should note, by the way, that people in the other Jewish movements talk about us the same way. "I've got this uncle who's Orthodox, but he's a very decent guy.")

So why do we Orthos say "but"? Two reasons occur to me. The first is that we believe, rightly or wrongly, that our religion denies that it's possible for a Jew to be both menshlich and nonfrum. The second reason is a social one. We're afraid that if people hear us go around saying that someone is both nonfrum and menshlich, they might doubt our orthodox Orthodoxy; we say "but" as self-protection. If that's why we do it, it's possible we're not giving each other enough credit.

In chapter 3 of Avot, we have "Rabbi El'azar ben Azariah omer, im eyn torah eyn derekh eretz, im eyn derekh eretz eyn torah"--Rabbi El'azar ben Azariah says, if there's no Torah there's no menshlichkeit, if there's no menshlichkeit there's no Torah. Gkd forbid I should ever be so chutzpadik as to disagree with Rabbi El'azar ben Azariah, but I will say I don't know what he's talking about.

"Derekh eretz," by the way, has several possible meanings. One of the things it can mean is a job, and the compilers of the basic bilingual ArtScroll siddur translate it that way in this context: "If there is no Torah, there is no worldly occupation; if there is no worldly occupation, there is no Torah." Tempting as it is to make fun of ArtScroll--I sometimes indulge in it myself--that reading actually is plausible in this context. The mishnah continues: If there's no wisdom there's no awe, if there's no awe, there's no wisdom; no knowledge no discernment, no discernment no knowledge; and finally, if there's no flour there's no Torah, if there's no Torah there's no knowledge. So derekh eretz, Torah, and flour all go together. Which means derekh eretz and flour--meaning sustenance--go together. A job makes as much intuitive sense here as menshlichkeit.

Nevertheless, most commentators go with menshlichkeit here. Kehati summarizes the near-consensus very well. "If there's no Torah there's no menshlichkeit": One who doesn't learn Torah and doesn't serve the students of the wise is not an ethical person and doesn't have good personal qualities, and he doesn't deal fairly with other people. "If there's no menshlichkeit there's no Torah": The Torah of one who doesn't have good personal qualities and treat other people appropriately is a mess, and he defiles the Torah and makes it an object of contempt.

So let's go back to the first part of that. If a person is ethical and has good personal qualities and deals fairly with other people, it follows that he learns Torah and serves the students of the wise. Which leaves us where we started. As I said earlier, I don't know what Rabbi El'azar ben Azariah is talking about.

So what do we take home from this, given that we have no clue what this means (and Gkd forbid we should say he was mistaken)? Maybe the best thing is to acknowledge our cluelessness. Maybe all the movements should be less smug about who is a Torah Jew and less contemptuous about who isn't.

Books on Jewish journalism that I want to read

2010-12-11T19:35:00.001-06:00

The latest post at the Takeaway, about finding library materials on Jewish journalism, ends with a list of seven books and theses on the topic. Although all sound interesting, the ones I want to read are:

The Creation of a Jewish Cartoon Space in the New York and Warsaw Yiddish Press by Edward A. Portnoy (2008) NC1420 P67 2009

and

Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires by Sara Abrevaya Stein (2004) PN5274 S786 2004

The codes at the end are the catalogue numbers in the JTS library. According to WorldCat, the Portnoy book is a JTS Ph.D. dissertation available in only two libraries, so I'm going to try interlibrary loan. My main fear is that Portnoy's committee forced him to make it boring.

If any of you have read either of these and have any thoughts to share, Consider the Source's international readership would be interested in your book report.

My ethnocentricity

2010-12-09T10:27:00.003-06:00

I'm the proprietor of two blogs: this one and a nonparochial one. I get hardly any comments on any of the posts on either blog. Usually none at all. I try to be provocative, I try to be zany--nothing works. So now I post on some geeqy stuff about Hebrew vowels, and we're at twelve comments and counting. Previous record was eight.

I'm proud to be a member of such a weird people.

PS: I'm having second thoughts about what I wrote about vowels, so a follow-up post is in the works.

Card trick

2010-12-08T07:21:00.001-06:00

While surfing the aether recently, I came across this post on the Than Book blog, in which the author reprints a discussion he participated in in the comments to a post on another blog, regarding Lubavitcher dissembling about Messianism. He concludes the post with a quotation from the host of the blog the discussion took place on:

So it would seem, that there is permission, if not an actual mandate, to hide the truth about Lubavitch messianism. IOW, you can't necessarily believe what they tell you about "Oh, I don't believe in that stuff". They may well, but because it's off-putting to other Jews, they may feel compelled to go so far as to lie about it. The Shi'i Muslims have a word for this: Taqiyya.

I'm disturbed by that last sentence, and by the fact that Than Book liked it enough to title the post "Lubavitcher Taqiyya." What would have been lost if that quotation had ended with "go so far as to lie about it"? Not much. Nothing except the chance to play the Shi'ite card, which seems to be a new variation on the old Nazi card. The illusionist taps his hat, pulls out a card, and goodness gracious, where did Khamenei come from? It looks like in this case the whole idea is to namecall and demonize.

And it's not even well-chosen namecalling. According to the linked Wikipedia article, taqiyya is lying in the face of persecution or other danger. We Jews can be unpleasant to each other, but I don't think we usually rise to quite that level.

Extremely wonderful blog I just discovered

2010-12-01T20:15:00.000-06:00

The Takeaway is a blog in which reference librarians at the Jewish Theological Seminary answer questions that are submitted to them. With citations, of course. It is both a must-read and a must-check-often.

The tzohorayim rule

2010-11-29T20:29:00.013-06:00

I now disagree with what I wrote here. See this post at the blog's new location.
This post has mid-level geeqery. To understand it, you should know how to read Hebrew phonetically. Beyond that I’ll provide all the info you need. I’ll be using alefs to illustrate the vowels.

A. Background info

1. The qamatz gadol and the qamatz qatan are two different vowels, but they look identical--אָ. The qamatz gadol (pronounced “ah” in Sefaradi/Israeli Hebrew/Modern Hebrew) is the long vowel that corresponds to the short vowel patah אַ, while the qamatz qatan (pronounced "aw") is the short vowel that corresponds to the long vowel holam (אוֹ or אֹ). Most qamatzim are gadol. A qamatz is qatan if both (1a) it is in an unaccented syllable and (1b) the syllable it’s in ends with a consonant. These are the classic criteria for a qamatz qatan.

It isn’t always obvious whether a qamatz is gadol or qatan. For example,

חָכְמָהpronounced hokhmá, with a qamatz qatan and a silent sh^eva אְ, means “wisdom,” while חָכְמָהpronounced hakh^emá, with a qamatz gadol and a pronounced sh^eva, means “she was wise.” They appear identical. (Right now, I’m not going into the whole song and dance--more like a Broadway musical extravaganza--about when a sh^eva is pronounced and when it’s silent. Maybe never.)

2. There are three short vowels that have a form that’s shorter than short--so short that they aren’t even considered syllables; they generally appear only under an alef, hey, het, or ayin. These three very short vowels are the hataf patah אֲ, the hataf segol אֱ, and the hataf qamatz אֳ. The hataf qamatz is a hataf qamatz qatan, because the hataf vowels correspond to short vowels.

3. Except for the first syllable of words that begin with an וּ meaning “and,” all Hebrew syllables begin with a consonant.

4. In Modern Hebrew, a rule of pronunciation is that when a letter with a qamatz precedes an alef, hey, het, or ayin with a hataf qamatz, that preceding qamatz is a qatan. I call this “the tzohorayim rule" after צָהֳרַיִםwhich means afternoon and is pronounced "tzohorayim" and not "tzahorayim" in Modern Hebrew. Addendum: In the comments, Dan (Balashon) doubts that this is an actual rule in Modern Hebrew. It seems to be taught as a rule, but I defer to him on this, since he knows much more about it than I do. English rules, I'm much more skeptical about, and I should have been skeptical about this Hebrew rule.

In section B, I’ll be referring to the items in this section.

B. My claim

I claim that the tzohorayim rule is not correct for purposes of tefillah (worship) and qeri'ah (biblical chant). It’s absolutely correct for spoken Modern Hebrew. When I speak of the rule being incorrect, I am not referring to its use in modern speech. Addendum: Not correct? Jeepers, and I always thought of myself as a descriptivist. What I should have said was that it appears to be inconsistent with the classic criteria for a qamatz qatan.

Let’s assume that item 4 applies to tefillah and qeri'ah. Then by item 1b, the first syllable ends with a consonant: צָהּwith the dot indicating that the hey is pronounced. But then the next syllable begins with the hataf qamatz, which isn’t a consonant. This violates item 3. We can remedy this by moving the hey, which gives us הֳרַיִםThis doesn’t violate item 3, and neither does the new first syllable, צָBut now that first syllable ends with a vowel, which means that the qamatz is gadol, and that item 4 therefore doesn’t apply to tefillah and qeri'ah.

C. A quiz

How many syllables are in the Hebrew word צָהֳרַיִם? The answer is the same whether or not you accept the reasoning of part B. The answer appears below.

D. The intuitive appeal of the tzohorayim rule

When a letter with a hataf patah אֲ or a hataf segol אֱ (item 2) is not the first letter in a word, the preceding letter usually has a full patah אַ or a full segol אֶ. For example, in the liturgy, we frequently refer to Gkd as נֶאֱמָן וְרַחֲמָן--trustworthy and merciful. You can find more examples on almost any page of a siddur or Bible. I don't know whether it is a rule that a full patah or segol has to precede the corresponding hataf vowel, but it's very common; I can't think offhand of any cases where this doesn't apply. Addendum: Now that it's Hanukkah and we're saying Al Hanissim, I am reminded of such a case: טׅהֲרוּ. Which means there are a bunch of similar verbs that follow this pattern. But I'm fairly confident that a hataf qamatz or patah is usually followed by the corresponding full vowel. This is a very close analogue to the tzohorayim rule, so I can see the appeal. But there are at least two ways in which a patah and a segol aren't analogous to a qamatz qatan: each can appear in an accented syllable, and each can appear in a syllable that ends with a vowel.

E. Answer to the quiz in section C.

The Hebrew word צָהֳרַיִם has three syllables: צָהֳרַandיִםAs I told you earlier, the hataf vowels don't count as syllables. Hebrew and English reckon syllables differently.

F. Conclusion

If you come to my shul and the sheliah tzibbur says "tzahorayim," come on over and say hi after the davening is over. If the shaliah says "tzohorayim," just look for the weird-looking guy in the back benches.

The first syllable of yichus

2010-11-23T20:15:00.000-06:00

Yichus is inherited prestige--a pedigree. I am told that a pulpit rabbi in Pittsburgh has pointed out that the first syllable of yichus is yich. Well said--I couldn’t agree more.

(My fellow diqduq geeqs will point out that yich isn’t really the first syllable, to which I reply “yeahyeah, whatever, leave me alone, I’m giving a vort.”)

The rabbis of the Mishnah agree with the outlook of this Pittsburgh rabbi and me. In the Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin, chapter 4, halacha 9, the rabbis answer the question, Why was only a single man created? In order to teach that one who destroys a single life is like one who destroys an entire world, and that one who saves a single life is like one who saves an entire world. Furthermore, it was for the sake of peace in the world, so that one won’t say to another, My father was greater than your father. Or, stated differently, the first syllable of yichus is yich.Downloaded from here; cropped from pdf p. 208/434.

So that being the case, why do we say of some visiting rabbi or some source of quotations that he is, e.g., a ninth-generation descendant of the Vilna Gaon and not only that, he’s had ancestors for the last eight generations who were also descendants of the Vilna Gaon? Or a grandson of Rabbi Chaim Brisker? Or whoever. Just curious. This seems to go against the rabbinic principle that we shouldn’t talk about one person’s father being greater than another’s. As well as the principle that we should accept the truth regardless of the source.

That’s the end of the sermon, but while I’m still here, let me point out that the part about one who saves a single life being like one who saves an entire world is the official slogan of the blood drive committee of Young Israel of West Rogers Park, 2706 W. Touhy, Chicago, and that our 2011 drive is very likely to be on May 15. But why wait? You can donate blood before that.

Naivete

2010-11-21T10:30:00.005-06:00

My shul is a Modern Orthodox one. So why is the vort du veek at shalosh se'udot and/or se'udah shelishit given by haredi yeshiva bokherlakh? No clue.

A few weeks ago I had an argument with them. If the rabbi hadn't been out of town, I might have been better behaved. Maybe not. At any rate, they didn't show up for the next two or three weeks. Did I scare them away, or were they otherwise engaged? Again, I don't know.

But anyhow, they were back yesterday. Jacob told Esau he stayed observant in Laban's home. The point was to let Esau know that he was a proud Jew. And that's what we have to do. We might sometimes interact with non-Jews, and we have to let them know we're proud Jews. For example, you might be applying for a job. You let them know up front that because you're a Jew, you work six days a week, but you're not available on the Sabbath. You don't wait until after they've hired you.

I didn't say anything this time because I felt bad about having scared them away (if indeed I did so). So you good reader get to hear my reactions. Two reactions, the less important one first. We interact with non-Jews all the time. We don't need to be given an example in order to see that the very idea isn't far-fetched.

Much more importantly, I thought we told potential employers up front that we can't work on Saturdays because we're honest in our business dealings. Naive.

Birkat Hamazon (Amsterdam, 1722-23): a Modern Orthodox bencher?

2010-10-21T19:38:00.010-05:00

In most of today's Ashkenazi benchers and siddurim, Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals) has separate harahaman statements for different places where you eat: at your parents' table, at the table of people other than your parents, at your own table. (The Sefaradi Birkat Hamazon doesn't have these statements.) Married people eating at their own table include a blessing either for "my wife" (ishti) or "my husband" (ba'li). Most old siddurim include only the harahaman for one's parents' table. If they include the harahaman for one's own table, they have only the husband's blessing of his wife; they don't include the wife's blessing of the husband. We're not talking only about old, old, old siddurim: neither the Hertz nor the de Sola Pool nor the Birnbaum siddur includes the wife's blessing; the Ziegelheim bencher, still distributed at some simchas, has only the husband's blessing.

I don’t pretend to know why the wife’s blessing of the husband didn’t appear. I gather it’s a new custom that began in the twentieth century, and that before that it was just assumed that women didn’t say Birkat Hamazon, at least not in Hebrew.

Hebrewbooks.org has recently added a bencher, Birkat Hamazon (Amsterdam, 5483 [1722-23]), to its database. It’s downloadable here. (You can expand the image of the cover page by clicking on it.)It is a bencher (it calls itself dos benshen) because it includes Birkat Hamazon, many other berakhot, Sabbath zemirot, and a Haggadah, but none of the actual prayer services. At a quick glance, it has several points of interest. First, the cover page (above) contains what we can recognize as modern advertising. The cover pages of most Hebrew religious books talk about how great the author is and about all the commentaries that are included. This one says, “We have newly printed the bensher with many more berakhot, laws, and songs…” The “new and improved” aspect gives it a modern feel.Another interesting thing. Most versions of Birkat Hamazon have the phrase “kemo shenitbarekhu avoteynu Avraham Yitzhak veYaakov bakol mikol kol”--as our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were blessed with everything (bakol) from everything (mikol) everything (kol). This drives home the point that they were fairly comprehensively blessed. In this version, the “all”s are distributed among the fathers: “kemo shenitbarekhu avoteynu Avraham bakol Yitzhak mikol veYaakov kol.” The Yiddish notes explain that of Abraham it is written “bakol,” of Isaac “mikol,” and of Jacob “kol.” Seligmann Baer's notes in Seder Avodat Yisrael get more specific, citing Bereshit Rabba (although I needed a concordance for chapters and verses--unusual for Baer). Abraham: "Abraham was old, getting on in years, and the Lord blessed Abraham with everything [bakol]" (Genesis 24:1); Isaac: "And I ate from all of it [mikol]" (Genesis 27:33) (although in this context Isaac doesn't sound like he's feeling particularly blessed); Jacob: "Since God has been gracious to me and since I have everything [kol]" (Genesis 33:11).

And the one that takes us back to our earlier point about my assumption that there was an assumption that women didn’t read Birkat Hamazon in Hebrew. Ignore the highlighting at the top; the part of interest is on the bottom line.

The final words on the page are "ve'al beritecha shehatamta bivsarenu"--and on the covenant that you have sealed in our flesh. Before these words is the instruction that women don't say this. I haven't seen this elsewhere. It does seem to assume that women say Birkat Hamazon in Hebrew.

Expert judges

2010-09-07T05:42:00.003-05:00

In a recent talk on the halakhot of Erev Rosh Hashanah, a rabbi said that the members of the beit din for Hatarat Nedarim need not be experts. So I asked what about "dayanim mumhim" (expert judges) in the petitioner's formula, and he replied that it was probably hyperbole. The next day, he showed me that in the Koren siddur "dayanim mumhim" is in a parenthesis. Interesting.

Surprisingly, Seligmann Baer's Seder Avodat Yisrael seems not to include Hatarat Nedarim. H"N appears in Otzar Hatefillot, with "dayanim mumhim" not in parenthesis and no discussion of the phrase in the notes.

To me this stuff is interesting, so I intend, bli neder, to look further into the matter. But in the meantime, a warning. If I'm a member of your Hatarat Nedarim beit din, I'm not letting you off the hook unless you include "dayanim mumhim."

Just kidding. (About the warning, I mean, not about intending to look into this.) Like the rest of the Consider the Source staff, I wish you a happy and ethical new year.

Requesting peace

2010-09-06T17:42:00.000-05:00

[Originally posted in 2007]

This post starts out looking like just another self-indulgent whine about King James-isms, but please keep reading; it actually has a point that may be worth bearing in mind, especially in this season of reflection.

As we all know--and by "we all" I mean all of us native speakers of English--anyhow, as all of us know, Psalm 34 tells us to "seek peace, and pursue it." It appears that way, with or without the comma, both in King James and and in every English-language Jewish translation I've seen. Although we all know the psalm says this, we can refine it a little and make it clearer. Bakesh, translated in this verse as "seek," usually means "request" or "beg," a specific kind of seeking.

The difference is important. A mevakesh--one who is requesting--is not arrogant (as other seekers may be), at least at the moment of the request. A mevakesh is in a humbled condition. The person the mevakesh is addressing has something that the mevakesh, hat in hand and powerless, doesn't have. If the mevakesh comes with a request for peace, it may be that what the person receiving the request has is justice. To be mevakesh shalom means that you acknowledge that you may not be the good guy in the dispute--that real peace quite possibly may not be on the terms that you want.

This is an important lesson at any time, but it seems especially important this time of year. Going around and asking for forgiveness should not be a meaningless formality. If a true mevakesh shalom makes a random and meaningless seasonal apology and someone replies, "Well, there are some serious things that I need to forgive you for; do you have time to hear them?" the mevakesh finds the time to hear them and to take them seriously.

The entire staff of Consider the Source wish all of our readers a shanah tovah. And since all of our readers won't quite fill a phone booth (especially since phone booths are hard to find in this day and age), we also wish the rest of you, who aren't reading this, a shanah tovah.

Proof that African-Americans are anti-Semites

2010-09-05T00:01:00.002-05:00

I recently overheard a white Jewish guy whom I don't know saying, "Well, I was born and raised in Africa, and I've been a U.S. citizen for a long time now, so that makes me an African-American."

Right. I get it. He's from Africa, and now he's an American, so he's an African-American. What the phrase "African-American" actually means is beside the point.

A few moments later, the gent made it unambiguously and non-euphemistically clear that he hates the Arabs. So that must make him an anti-Semite.

Right. Got it? He hates a large majority of the world's Semites. If those who hate the Jews, who are less than a handful of the Semites in the world, are anti-Semites, certainly those who hate the Arabs are anti-Semites. What the phrase "anti-Semite" actually means is beside the point. If you object to my calling the man an anti-Semite, it's clear that you also object to his calling himself an African-American, since the reasoning is the same.

Assuming this guy is both an African-American and an anti-Semite, and if we want to engage in stereotyping, this is proof that African-Americans are anti-Semites.

Notes on a visit to New York City

2010-08-31T20:20:00.010-05:00

New York! Yorq Hadash! Hatapuah Hagadol! Just spent several days there, overnighting in the presidential palace of our Chicago shul's former president-for-life, now in self-imposed exile in New Jersey. And as a result of this fieldwork, I've now got some anthropological notes. ***New York has a lot of bagel places, but none of them has better product than Skokie's own Bagel Country, also known as Eretz Habeigel d'Skoikeleh. ***A bunch of the kosher places in New York City have a gigantic salad available. A restaurant employee will pour some leafy greens into a big metal bowl, throw in a bunch of whatever toppings you want, and muush the whole thing together. My advice is not to have them throw anything in that gets muushy when muushed up with other stuff (e.g., feta cheese). But that's just me. Other than the problem of the muushage of muushy stuff, the salads are good.

And how many combos of toppings are available at any given eatery? Excellent question, and it all depends on the number of toppings available. If we include a general lack of toppings as an option, and if we let n be the number of toppings, the number of choices available is 2ⁿ. Or put differently, and this is the best I can do in HTML (others can do better), the number of choices is

Σ_{0 ≤ i ≤ n}(_nC_i).For example, we went to a place with 21 toppings--this comes to 2,097,152 possible combinations. New York is an amazing place.

***I showed some interesting sights to the mishp. Since they weren't already interesting--the sights, I mean, not the mishp, who are interesting--, this made it a little more challenging. In Times Square, I pointed out the Starbucks where Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart used to hang out. We walked up some--in New York, using "north" and "south" marks you as a hayseed--we walked up, and hovering just over the Lincoln Square Synagogue is the Starbucks where Abraham Lincoln wrote his speech for the dedication ceremony of the shul that was named in his honor.

Presently, The Boychikl (aka The BoychiKOOL) pointed out the Starbucks where Michael Jordan supposedly hangs out. I sighed and patiently explained that this didn't work, since it's actually possible that Jordan does hang out there. He did a few more similar things. After he showed us the Starbucks where the actors who play Sean and Gus supposedly hang out (we watch Psych, the only show all three of us actually like, on internet streamage), I started explaining yet again the flaw in these tourist sights of his. He said yeahyeah, he gets it, but that's the way he does it. I noted (correctly) that my way is weirder. He said, no, his way is weirder because it's his way.

Kids! I don't know what's wrong with these kids today.

***You know that sort of opaque, but also clear, flexible plastic sheeting? The kind some stores use to cover their freezer cases? The kind where you can see the stuff on the other side, but sort of through a haze, sort of? You know the kind of sheeting I mean? Right. Exactly. So anyhow, in a hood with a lot of Orthos, we saw a store that specializes in ladies' (and I hope the ladies will forgive me for saying "ladies") nonmentionable garmentry. If you see what I'm saying. So in this store window, there were some immodest mannequins--not only were they dressed only in underwear, but the underwear wasn't made of blue denim. Hanging from the window were discreet sheets of that plastic stuff (you know the kind I mean?). The compromise made the entire community happy. ***Seriously now. Stereotypes notwithstanding, we found everyone we encountered in New York--bus drivers, subway tellers, store employees, fellow civilians at the bus stop--everyone was courteous and helpful.

A New Post on My Nonparochial Blog That Has Very Little to Do with Maimonides (But a Book on Maimonides Is the Jumping-Off Point for the Post)

2010-08-29T11:54:00.001-05:00

Here it is.

Slogans

2010-08-16T19:20:00.003-05:00

Here's the text of a bumper sticker you see here and there in the greater West Rogers Park metropolitan region:
ארץ ישראל לעם ישראל על פי תורת ישראל
Eretz Yisrael la'Am Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael.This is the slogan of the Religious Zionists of America, and it means "The Land of Israel belongs to the People Israel according to the Torah of Israel." A slogan like this may be good for rousting up those who agree with you. Nothing wrong with that; roustage is a reasonable purpose for a slogan. But it isn't going to convince anyone else. The Torah of Israel says the Land of Israel belongs to the People Israel? Goodness. And does the Christian Bible say anything about Christianity triumphant? Like Louis the Casablancan Gendarme, I'm more than shocked: I'm shocked--shocked! And what if you're dealing with people for whom the Torah of Israel isn't the ultimate authority?

The Religious Zionists of America is the U.S. branch of the World Mizrachi Movement, whose slogan sounds deceptively similar but is in fact quite different:

עם ישראל בארץ ישראל על פי תורת ישראל
Am Yisrael be-Eretz Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael.Or "The People Israel is in the Land of Israel according to the Torah of Israel."

I'll leave it to others to figure out why they have such different slogans. And there's probably no practical difference. Just thought it was interesting.

Exemplary mappiq-hey

2010-07-02T09:23:00.000-05:00

If you want to hear what I believe to be a very convincing mappiq-hey (a hey either with a dot in it or a sheva under it), you should give a listen to NPR's Seoul correspondent Dualy Xaykaothao pronounce her name at the end of her reports (such as this one). It comes in the middle of her first name.

"Dualy Xaykaothao" is a Hmong name, and it's possible that Ms. Xaykaothao doesn't think of the sound as a mappiq-hey.

Vey'z mir

2010-06-09T12:15:00.002-05:00

Well, I wanted to post a comment to lethargic-man's comment to the previous post, but something glitched. Since I couldn't fix it, I decommented the post, thereby losing LM's comment. Apologies to all, esp. LM, for my technological ineptitude. LM, you said you've been lurking here for a while, and this flatters me. You told me a friend of yours whose name I've lost recommended the blog. I'm flattered your friend likes it enough to recommend it, and I hope he reveals himself, as you did.

Hebrew comes to Greece

2010-05-28T08:31:00.005-05:00

According to this Victor Mair post at Language Log (linking to a post at eCanadaNow), a galligaskins of frogs--an immense millions-strong horde of frogs--has shut down a highway near Thessaloniki. The sliminess has caused accidents. (I don't know what the word for a huge mass of frogs--like "school of fish" or "pride of lions"--is. I was going to use "gallimaufry of frogs," but while checking out its spelling in a dictionary, I came across "galligaskins," which I also like. According to Merriam-Webster's, it means (a) "loose wide hose or breeches worn in the 16th and 17th centuries" and (b) "very loose trousers." Doesn't make sense, but neither do a lot of those other words for bunches of animals.)

So anyhow, why am I mentioning this here at Consider the Source? Because, according to Mair,

I believe that the usual word for "frog" in modern Greek is batrachos, but all of Greece is referring to the current batrachian horde with the Biblical word tzfardei'a. In so doing, I suppose they wish to recall the Biblical plague of frogs that God inflicted on Egypt (the second of ten plagues that he sent against the Egyptians). In fact, the plague of frogs was meant as an attack on the Egyptian frog goddess Heqt, whose job it was to assist women in labor.

So we've got a Hebrew tie-in here. Unfortunately, eCanadaNow gets the language wrong: "All across Greece the frog incident is being hailed by the Greek word 'Tzfardei'a'" (emphasis added by the staff of Consider the Source). It's a Hebrew word.

And eCanada's wording is weird--what do they mean when they say it's being "hailed"? And they never point out that tzefardea evokes the biblical plague of frogs. So the whole sentence is deeply weird: "All across Greece the frog incident is being hailed by a Greek word." OK. So? If it had happened in, e.g., the Czech Republic, people talking about it in the Czech Republic would be using a Czech word. Doesn't seem newsworthy.

But maybe this actually does work, if we accept that the word is Greek (it isn't, but the eCanada people think so). Maybe by saying the people "hail" the event, the writers are evoking the biblical plague of hail, thereby subtly evoking the biblical plague of frogs, which they don't explicitly mention.

I'm not saying this is likely, but it is a possibility.

In a comment on the Language Log post, Andrew Greene points out that if it's going to be transliterated with an apostrophe, the apostrophe should be after the final a instead of before it. Before making the correction, Greene writes, "I have a nit to pick with the transliteration, which I only mention because this is LanguageLog, after all." I'm with Greene on this. I would have mentioned it at Language Log if he hadn't, but I wouldn't have bothered if it was yet another, or yet another, rabbinic scholar writing about "tzefarde'a," "Yehoshu'a," "Besmedresh Gavoha," and so on.

Revisionism

2010-05-26T07:08:00.001-05:00

I've completely rewritten this post.

etrog n.1, and why there's a superscript "1" there

2010-05-24T19:49:00.002-05:00

Here's Sunday's nonseasonal word of the day from the Oxford English Dictionary (and you can subscribe to the word of the day) (the dagger in the first paragraph means the spellings about to be given are obsolete):

(′ɛtrɒg) Also † æthrog, esrog, ethrog, and with capital initial. Pl. -s, ||-im. [a. Heb. etrōg citron.]
a. A citron, the fruit of the tree Citrus medica, used ritually by the Jews in the Feast of Tabernacles (Succoth); the tree itself.
1874 A. Edersheim Temple: its Ministry & Services xiv. 238 The Rabbis ruled, that 'the fruit of the goodly trees' meant the æthrog... The æthrogs must be without blemish. 1903 Jewish Encycl. V. 262/2 (caption) Silver box for etrog. 1941 Universal Jewish Encycl. IV. 186/2 Many Jews import ethrogs from Palestine for use at Sukkoth. 1962 New Jewish Encycl. 136 One of the many traditions as to which was the fruit whose eating was forbidden in the Garden of Eden holds that it was the Etrog. 1973 Synagogue Light Sept. 50/1 Thousands of branches from the olive trees, Hadassim and Esrogim were used as coverings. 1988 Jerusalem Post 7 Oct. ('In Jerusalem' Suppl.) 16/5 The post-prayer lull was tempestuous as young boys scurried around collecting abandoned etrogs to take home for mom to make into jam.
b. attrib., esp. as etrog box.
1938 Hyamson & Silberman Vallentine's Jewish Encycl. 215/1 (caption) Artistic ethrog cases. 1941 Universal Jewish Encycl. IV. 186/2 There are also elaborate ethrog boxes of silver. 1957 Encycl. Brit. V. 728A/1 The fruit of the Etrog citron is used only for ceremonial purposes in religious rites of the Hebrew people. 1975 New Yorker 17 Nov. 44/3 Reb Bendit..had brought the rabbi an ivory ethrog box that was decorated with silver and embossed in gold. 1981 Washington Post 26 June (Weekend section) 5 (caption) A 19th-century silver etrog container.

So why is there a superscript "1" in the main entry? Because OED has another entry for "Etrog n.²":

Now Hist.
(′iːtrɒg) [f. the name of Sorel Etrog (b. 1933), Romanian-born sculptor.]
Any one of the Canadian Film Awards, presented annually between 1968 and 1978...for excellence in Canadian film-making; a statuette after a design by Etrog, commemorating the award.

Let's leave God out of this, please

2010-05-14T10:03:00.006-05:00

Second thoughts, and a public apology

I've deleted this post and now I'm replacing it. Version 1 was very sarcastic about people using "im yirtzeh Hashem" (meaning "God willing") when saying they'd do something, and then failing to do it by forgetting or being distracted. My point was that this strikes me as a serious desecration of the Divine Name (even though, in fact, they didn't actually utter the Name). For example, let's say someone said that God willing, they'd visit a sick person the next day, and then they got distracted by something trivial. "God willing" suggests God wanted them to engage in the triviality instead of visiting the sick. I still agree with this, but I was much too sarcastic about it the first time. Also, after listening around, I now think people generally use "bli neder" (meaning "without making a vow") about things that are largely in their own hands ("I'll do that hospital visit, bli neder") and "im yirtzeh Hashem" when things are subject to unforeseen mishaps, including "acts of God" ("The banquet will be next Sunday, im yirtzeh Hashem"). The whole post was a reaction to one person's desecration of the Name. I don't think it's as widespread a problen as I thought at the time of the original post.

Apolgies to all.

I thank the anonymous commenter who said the post seemed cynical. I might have come around to that point of view even without the comment, but maybe not

A dyvbuq has taken possession of the bride: on dagesh hazaq in bg"d kf"t letters

2010-05-03T20:37:00.006-05:00

This one is irremediably geeqy. Apologies to the nondiqduqgeeqs who dropped in.

When there's a dagesh hazaq, the degushah letter is geminated--it is repeated, as though there's a sheva nah between the two occurrences of the letter. In Professor Moshe Goshen-Gottstein's Diqduq ha'ivri hashimmushi (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1996), two examples are given (p. 28):

עַמִּים = עַמְמִים
and
שִׁבֵּר = שִׁבְ-בֵּר

The first of these is a little problematic, since Professor Goshen-Gottstein just told us (p. 26) that a sheva between two identical letters is a sheva na, not a nah. Maybe a hyphen, as in the second example, would have helped. But we know what he means, and the first example isn't the one I'm really interested in.

I see the logic in the second example, and it's probably theoretically correct. But assuming you pronounce the dagesh hazaq in tefillah or qeri'ah, does it make sense in real life to pronounce these bg"d kf"t letters as a fricative followed by a stop? Most likely, the person doing this would get corrected. This would be awkward at best. Let's say that during Untaneh Tokef the hazzan sings something about "yom tzom kifpur." A few possibilities arise. Maybe someone could incorrectly "correct" the hazzan. If the hazzan insists on his correctness, it would probably be embarrassing for the correcter, the hazzan, or both. But if the hazzan accepts an incorrect correction, that's not really great either. Even if nobody says anything, the pronunciation would be so unusual as to be a distraction for everyone.

It seems to me that when we have a dagesh hazaq in a bg"d kf"t letter, the best thing is to sacrifice correctness for decorum. But then, who cares how it seems to me?

Off topic: How to pronounce "Eyjafjallajökull"

2010-04-21T09:41:00.005-05:00

Well, here's a post about the proper Icelandic pronunciation of Eyjafjallajökull, along with some Icelanders' jollity at the outlandish pronunciations of us outlanders. Turns out, by the way, that múhaha is Icelandic for "mwahaha."

A person after my own heart. Martin Jamison comments on the linked-to item on April 17 at 7:56 AM; he pronounces it "ayurvedic yogurt."

The danger of pouring the derogatory language on too thick

2010-04-09T07:50:00.001-05:00

Here's a post on my other blog that you may find interesting.

Further proof (as if any were needed) that all other languages are derived from Hebrew

2010-04-01T20:10:00.002-05:00

Consider with me for a moment, if you will, the source of the word father according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

[Com. Teut. and Aryan: OE. fæder corresponds to OFris. feder, fader, OS. fadar, fader (LG., Du. vader, vaar), OHG. fater (MHG. and mod.G. vater), ON. faðer, -ir (Sw., Da. fader, far), Goth.fadar (found only Gal. iv. 6, the ordinary word being atta): OTeut. fader, ?fadēr: OAryan pē tēr (pə ter-, pətr-). whence Skr. pitṛ, Gr. πατήρ, L. pater, OIr. athir.

So it's not just an English thing--it's an Indo-European thing (note the Sanskrit example there) that the words for father tend to have a \f, v, p, or something in that neighborhood\, followed by a \t, d, ð, or something in that neighborhood\, followed by a \r or something in that neighborhood\.

And it's obvious that this root--let's call it \ptr\--comes from the root \ptrn\, found in such words as paternal and paternity. And how do I know, and why is it obvious, that \ptr\ comes from \ptrn\? Because I need it to be that way to prove my point, this is how I know it and why it's obvious.

OK. Now. What is a Hebrew prayer that is traditionally said by a father, and only by a father? It's the prayer the father says at his son's bar mitzvah,

בָּרוּךְ שֶׁפְּטָרַנִי מֵעָנְשׁוֹ שֶׁלַּזֶּה

This means "Blessed is the One Who has exempted me from the punishments due to this here guy here," but that's not the point. The point is that this prayer is said by the father, and it's pronounced "Barukh she-petarani me'onsho shellazzeh."

So it's obvious--obvious--(although bad people may cavil about this) that the root of the word father in the Indo-European languages, which are the only ones besides Hebrew that count, comes from the Hebrew word meaning "[he] has exempted me."

You're welcome.

The world's most misunderstood song lyrics (off topic)

2010-03-25T07:16:00.004-05:00

My last post, which is much more important than this one, discussed a scenario involving Dad and his son the "baal teshuvah." Which reminded me of this song lyric, which I believe is generally misunderstood.

Before I go any further, let me concede that the authors of the song may well share in the misunderstanding. I respect authorial intent; this is not a deconstruction of the lyrics--it is the most straightforward understanding of them that I can think of. If the authors also misunderstand the lyrics, this may be because of a few poorly chosen words.

The song is "The Cat's in the Cradle," written by Sandy and Harry Chapin and sung by Harry Chapin. Most of you have probably heard it. The story has two characters, Dad and Son; it's told by Dad. At the beginning of the song, Dad is a jet-setting workaholic who doesn't spend much time with his family. Son "learned to walk while I was away." In his childhood, Son wanted to be just like Dad. At the end of the song Dad sings, "I'm long since retired," and Son now is an adult with adult responsibilities. Dad wants to have a visit with Son. As Dad puts it, Son says, "I'd like to, Dad, if I can find the time. You see, the new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu." As Dad hangs up the phone "it occurred to me, he'd grown up just like me, my boy was just like me."

Son doesn't have time to talk to Dad, therefore he grew up to be just like Dad. Except he didn't. Why did Son not have time for Dad? Because "the new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu." Son is participating in some way in the care of his sick kids. We can sympathize with Dad; he truly loves Son and now wants to bond. But "my boy was just like me" is just whining--whining about Son, combined with insight into how Son must have felt.

I don't think Dad is a bad person. He loves Son, and a big part of his intention in working so hard was probably to provide for his family. But we have no reason to accept his interpretation of what happened to Son.

No sale, ver. 2.0

2010-03-25T07:00:00.002-05:00

Ver. 1.0, posted about three years ago, has been taken down because the tone was much too sarcastic. Believe it or not, ver. 2.0 is very toned down.

Some Orthodox rabbis allow, or even encourage, members of their synagogues to have their relatives' hametz sold in preparation for Pesah, even without the relatives' knowledge. To me this seems misguided. Why "misguided"? Because I'm being tactful.

Is such a sale really a sale? The certificate that the seller signs usually says that the transaction that's being arranged is a legal sale under both halakhah and the laws of the state that the synagogue is in. I'm skeptical. Would the state recognize a sale in which the seller not only hasn't authorized the sale, but doesn't even know about it? (Lawyers, please comment on this.) Does halakhah recognize such a sale? (Halakhists, you should comment on this too.)

I have heard someone raise the objection that theft might be involved. Dad (for example) might eat the Gentile's oatmeal. That's right--Dad is the thief in this scenario, not the "baal teshuvah" and the rabbi. The rabbi set the questioner's mind at ease: he should still have Dad's stuff sold, since owning hametz during Pesah is worse than theft.

Dad's kid thinks he's sold Dad's stuff, Dad is neither informed nor asked about the sale, Dad doesn't realize a penny from the sale, and this guy has the hutzpah to call Dad a thief. This is a much more serious untethering from reality than mere superstition would be.

And let's say Dad, whom his son loves and reveres because that's what such a pious person does, finds out about this transaction. Dad is an apikoros and therefore unreasonable about such things. "You sold my stuff? What were you thinking?"

"Dad, I did it for your own good. I realize it was wrong of you to steal the goy's food, but owning hametz on Pesah is worse than theft."

"So you're saying that because I have h instead of matzah on Friday night during Pesah, I'm worse than a thief? Although I'm also a thief because I ate food that you think you sold to some shaygetz--maybe even a shvartze." Apikorsim just don't understand what's important (and some of them are annoyed by "goy").

Now let's imagine the "baal teshuvah" didn't tell Dad about the scheme, and the Gentile buyer comes to pick up his purchase, or at least to inventory it. What a surprise for both Dad and the Gentile. Dad and the Gentile have two things in common (in addition to being surprised and not being Torah Jews)--both claim the same oatmeal, and both are probably appalled by this bogus transaction once they figure out what happened. Not only do you think you sold Dad's stuff, but you also think you authorized some stranger to wander into his home. To take his stuff. And what about the Gentile? He probably entered into the deal in good faith, imagining that only the actual owners were selling their stuff. The rabbi and the "baal teshuvah" are acting in bad faith with the buyer by selling stuff they have no right to sell. Also, the Gentile is probably one who doesn't hold negative stereotypes about how Jews do business. And this is how you deal with him? After the encounter with Dad, the Gentile goes to the rabbi and asks what gives. What can the rabbi possibly say that won't sound stupid, cynical, or both?

Another possibility: the Gentile comes over with some deranged-sounding story about having bought Dad's food. Tempers erupt. The police are called. Perhaps the press will print an accurate story about the deal. It would be a fake shandeh. Anti-Semitism on the part of the press!

OK. Maybe Dad finds out, maybe he doesn't. But let's say the "baal teshuvah" has a little bit of common sense left and suspects that such a sale isn't really OK under state law. He asks the rabbi. Maybe the rabbi thinks such a sale is obviously OK under state law because why wouldn't it be? Such a rabbi can be suspected of being short on common sense. On the other hand, maybe the rabbi sees the problem, but encourages the "baal teshuvah" to sign it anyway. Draw your own conclusions.

The Four Sons shop for Pesach--Chicago, mid-twentieth century

2010-03-14T11:09:00.005-05:00

Translation from Yiddish of the back cover (which is actually the front cover):

Be the Wise Son

The Jewish world is divided into four types. The wise one--the intelligent and independent Jew--is conscious of what he's doing and always shops at Lazar's kosher and pesachdik delicatessen just to be on the safe side.

The wicked one, on the other hand, doesn't keep kosher. He doesn't care if he treyfs up his house or his very conscience. With the likes of him, there's nothing to say. With him, you have to do like it says in the Haggadah--set his teeth on edge.

Our greatest consideration is for the simple one and the one who doesn't know how to ask, which is what we call the kind of Jews who are easily fooled and the kind who don't know anything. To them we say, pay strict attention, and don't be ashamed to ask, and don't be afraid to speak up. They have to know that Yiddish signs and Yiddish talk don't make the meat kosher or pesachdik.

To be sure about kashrus, not to mention quality, and on top of that reasonable prices, shop and look for Lazar's pesachdik delicatessen. Come direct to Lazar's factory store, or look in grocery stores and delicatessens.

We take this opportunity to give our most heartfelt thanks to the Jewish people of Chicago for your great trust in our products. We spare no money and no effort to give the finest and kosherest products and best, fastest, and friendliest service.*

We wish our many customers, friends, and the Jewish people everywhere and especially in Israel a kosher, joyous Pesach, good health, and good luck for the whole year.

Mr. and Mrs. Sol Lazar and Family

* סוירוויס can also be translated as "soyvice."

Shabbat shalom

2010-03-08T19:04:00.001-06:00

At a recent Shabbat lunch, one of the other guests, Alef, was complaining about the offensive behavior of his youthful "white trash" neighbors. Nobody there but us Orthos, so it was OK to talk like that.

What are we to make of "white trash"? The most cynical explanation I can think of is that in Alef's opinion, blacks are trash by default and whites are not, so if whites are trash, you need to specify. I reject this explanation because I choose to. Another possibility is that Alef wanted to show his lack of racism--whether or not he actually lacks racism--by making it clear that the people he objected to were white. And since in most contexts it's unusual for us melanin-deficient people to say, "Well, this white person did whatever he or she did," he used "white trash."

Then one of the other guests, Beyt, who used to live near where Alef now lives, asked some questions about the family. Beyt recognized them as the people who moved into her old place. The mother in the family is the daughter of a respected Jewish professional, and she married a non-Jew.

Shock!, tohubohu!, foofaraw!, and balaganism! at the table. These kids are Jewish? These kids are Jewish! Vey'z mir!, gevalt!, shrek! Strong men weeping. Delicate ladies falling in vapours. Jewish people behaving obnoxiously? How can this be? And amid all the chaos, Alef was heard saying (and I'm not sure of the exact words--if I'd remembered my mp3 player, I would have recorded it), "Now that I know they're Jewish, I'm going to treat them better."

So now more questions arise. Had Alef been treating them abusively? If so, how would their not being Jewish have made that OK? Had Alef been reproving them appropriately? If so, why would he stop doing that because they're Jewish?

Another question, of course, is what a supposedly pious person--one who's into all this "image of God" stuff--is doing by calling anybody trash.

And if I'm sounding superior, that's unintentional, because my behavior at the table was unacceptable--I wimped out, didn't object to anything, sat on my mouth. As always.

Why I love kids

2010-02-25T12:40:00.000-06:00

Once again, our guest preacher is Nigel ben Ploni (not his real name). As always, please give him the same respect you give me.

Recently, and who knows why?, Young Progeny and I were talking about yarmulkes. I said I prefer mine big and black, with four panels, one that fits on your head instead of making a weird-looking bump, because that's the kind Moses wore at Mount Sinai. "Really?," YP asked.

This is why I love kids.

Gentilic jargon with probable transliteration inconsistency

2010-02-17T21:00:00.009-06:00

Don't worry. The interesting part isn't as geeqy as it may look from here.

בלע״ז

is the abbreviation for

בלשון עם זר

--pronounced bilshon am zar--which means "in the language of a foreign people." It's used by Hebrew writers on religious matters when they're forced to use a non-Hebrew word (written in Hebrew letters) to make themselves clear. Rashi, for example, would write בלע״ז when using a then-modern French word. I translate בלע״ז as "in Gentilic jargon."

This is all by way of introduction to something interesting (to me). In Sefer diqduq l'Ramhal (The grammar book of Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto), edited and annotated by Eluzer Brieger of Brooklyn (Bnei Brak: Mishor, [1994]), page 25, note 2, we find this:

שפְּעוּלָה היא מה שאנו קורים בלע״ז אקטי״ב, והִפָּעֵל הוא מה שקורים פּעסי״ב

Or, in English, "...פְּעוּלָה is what we call aktiv in Gentilic jargon, while הִפָּעֵל is what we call pessiv."

So why not either both aktiv and passiv, or both ektiv and pessiv? We can sort of guess why each was chosen (and we shouldn't forget that these are guesses). Aktiv seems more scholarly and Continental, and is in fact consistent with the spelling in English; pessiv seems to reflect what I assume to be Reb Eluzer's pronunciation of English. Each makes sense on its own terms, but the combination is interesting. I'm not going to try to get any big meanings out of it.

For the record, although this shouldn't be necessary, I'm not making fun of anything--neither Reb Eluzer's presumed accent nor the apparent inconsistency.

The following was added the next morning.

I spent the night regretting that I didn't include this.

In the comments on pessiv there was an unstated but blatant circularity. Why did Reb Eluzer write pessiv? Because he speaks English with a Yiddish accent. And how do I know he has a Yiddish accent? Because he wrote pessiv. This is such a nice circle that you can use it for your geometry homework.

And how do I even know pessiv reflects a Yiddish accent? Well, I don't actually know that it does. Maybe it reflects a plain ordinary U.S.A. accent. Consider the words "active" and "passive." We don't pronounce the noun in the first syllable like an "ah." We pronounce it æ. It's the sound that we use in "æccent," "æt," and "ænd"; it's the sound BBC news readers use in "Nicarægua" and "Jæck Cheeræck." Yiddish doesn't have (or hæve) the æ sound. Pessiv is as reasonable an approximation of "pæssive" as passiv would be.

And it's still interesting that two different vowels were used in the Gentilic jargon for "active" and "passive."

My other blog

2010-02-02T21:15:00.001-06:00

I've been doing a nonparochial blog for a few years now (and posting on it even less often than I do on this one), and I kept it anonymous because I thought it was prudent to do so. But it probably doesn't matter, and I don't like anonymity, so I've now taken it nonanonymous. So why not give Ed Absurdum a look? I mean, it can't be much worse than this, right? Well, you may be surprised.

Saving gentiles on Shabbat revisited

2010-01-31T19:59:00.002-06:00

The always-menshlich (and I'm not being sarcastic) Brooklyn Wolf posts on the hypothetical question of whether he'd save a Gentile's life on Shabbat (he would, as I knew he would). The comments are interesting--Brooklyn (I take the liberty of using his first name) has more hareidi commenters than I do. He also has more nonhareidi commenters.

I posted on a similarish theme some time ago.

Shoveling snow on Shabbat, '09 version

2009-12-22T09:24:00.003-06:00

I'm copying and pasting a big chunk of the first version of this post. Not because it's so eloquent that it needs to be repeated, but so that I don't have to bother paraphrasing it. There's some new stuff at the end.

Snowy sidewalks are no big deal in themselves, but they become icy sidewalks after they've been walked on for a while, and those things are dangerous.

When it's necessary to shovel on Shabbat, I always do so, wearing socks on my hands as a shinnui. I haven't asked a rabbi about this, and this is out of respect for the rabbinate--I want to save them the embarrassment of possibly giving the wrong answer.

As a side note, I once told a friend, former and (I hope) future havrusa and/or hevruta, and ethical adviser about this. He (who lives in an apartment where the landlord is responsible for shoveling, so it's not his problem) said he thought this a fine idea. Since it's just me, he said, I should do it without any distinctive Jewish accessories visible. If, however, I were R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz, av beit din of the RCA and the Chicago Rabbinical Council, who lives a few blocks away, I should do it looking like I was R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz so everyone would know it's OK. I take his point, although I should point out that if I were R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz, I wouldn't need his advice.

And now the new stuff. This last Shabbat morning, there was a layer of slush on the sidewalk. I ignored it, since it was Shabbat, and what would the people coming to lunch think? By Sunday morning, the slush had turned into solid ice with footprints.

So let's imagine that someone had injured themselves on the ice that I piously left there, and let's further imagine that I'd passed away and had to face the Heavenly Tribunal.

Members of the Tribunal (M"T): Well, what about this Mr. McNotzreigh who got injured on your ice?

Me: Sorry about that, but only a little, since I was observing Shabbat.

M"T: Very nice.

(I assume the M"T are Orthodox Jews, among whom "very nice" means "yeah, right, whatever.")

Right. Well, very nice. But next time, I'm going to do what needs to be done and forgo the after-the-fact teshuvah.

A great stochasticity happened there

2009-12-16T10:09:00.002-06:00

I temporarily turn this pulpit over to my neighbor, whom I'm calling Nigel ben Ploni even though that isn't really his name. Please give him the same respect you give me.

A few years ago on Shabbat Hanukkah, Young Progeny (not her real name) told me that if you start spinning a dreidl with the gimmel facing you, it will land on a gimmel. I asked where she heard this; she said it came from friends of hers. I asked if she was sure; feeling a lesson coming on, she hedged. I asked if she'd like to try it. She agreed, realizing she didn't have much of a choice.

So we got a dreidl, and Young Progeny spinned it thirty-six (two hai) times, and we used raisins as counters. Each letter came up roughly the same number of times, with gimmel coming in third. Admittedly, we should have tried spinning from other letters and using other dreidls. But hey! (not to mention nun!, gimmel!, and shin!), it was Shabbat.

We would have submitted our results for publication, but one of the researchers ate the data.

Thank you, Nigel. Inspiring, as always.

Reference books

2009-12-04T14:14:00.007-06:00

It was recently pointed out to me that the well-respected nineteenth-century biblical grammar Maslul, by R. Hayyim Kesslin, lists four properties of a proper noun. A proper noun:

does not take plural endings. You don't say "Avrahamim" (Abrahams).

does not take the prefix "ha," meaning "the." "Ha-Avraham" (the Abraham) is not OK.

does not take possessive suffixes. "Avrahamkha" (your Abraham) doesn't work.

is not the nonfinal element in a semikhut. A semikhut is one or more nouns following one another. The first noun is the actual item; each noun other than the first has some relationship to the one(s) that precede(s) it. For example, "magen Avraham" means "shield having to do in some way with Abraham." "Shield of Abraham" and "Abraham's shield" both seem like reasonable renderings. (B"N, IY"H, I'll soon be writing more about semikhut in a posting about l*shon hara.) According to this final rule, a proper noun cannot be a nonfinal element in a semikhut. Thus, the Bible doesn't have such usages as "Avraham Yerushalayim" (in the sense of "Abraham of Jerusalem"). A preposition would be used.

1892 ed., hebrewbooks.org/7124, pdf p. 121

The list makes sense. The problem is that the second rule has several exceptions, at least when it comes to names of places (which the Maslul includes in its definition of proper nouns). The Bible is full of references to "ha-Levanon" (Lebanon), "ha-Gil'ad" (Gilead), and "ha-Yarden" (the Jordan). There may be others as well.

So there are several exceptions to the rule, and those exceptions appear throughout. I don't mind exceptions (I like to think of myself, and of you my readers, as exceptional); the problem is that the Maslul gives these rules without telling the reader that there are exceptions. The larger point is that, as Ed Absurdum has pointed out, we need to read critically. Reference works are invaluable; some of us would be helpless without them. But we shouldn't blindly accept everything they say--we need to use our own judgment.

Thanks, guys

2009-10-22T09:59:00.003-05:00

Well, I've finished the eleven months of kaddish for my mother. Underestimating, we have twenty-two minyanim a week (which includes Shabbat mussaf, but none of the mussafim for other special days, or ne'ilah), four weeks in a month (an underestimate for ten of the eleven months), and eleven months. This comes to more than 968 minyanim. Vey'z mir. Why do I mention this? Because I don't think I was ever in a minyan that included ten people saying kaddish. In other words, kaddish is made possible by people who show up who aren't saying kaddish. Thank you, fellers.

In the past, I mostly davened at home except for Shabbat and yom tov. I'm now going to daven in shul more often. Not with the same sense of urgency as in the eleven months, but several times a week.

Thanks again.

Lulav mnemonic

2009-10-05T10:48:00.002-05:00

This is my mnemonic for putting together a lulav. It’s too late for this year, but you’ll remember it in the future because it’s a mnemonic, and it works for me.

You start out, of course, with the spine facing you. It’s important to know that the Hebrew word for “left” (as in the side where most of us have our hearts) is smol. Now, it’s obvious that the English word “small” comes from the same Hebrew root as smol. But English and Hebrew are read in opposite directions. So the branches with the small leaves go on the right.

You’re welcome.

Word of the day

2009-09-18T08:11:00.003-05:00

If you don't subscribe to Oxford English Dictionary's "word of the day," why not?

Today's word of the day is "tashlik."

tashlik, tashlich

(tæʃ'lik) [Heb. taʃ'līk 'thou shalt cast', future Hiphil of ʃālak to cast.]

A symbolical custom, popularly in vogue among Jews, of repairing, on New Year's Day, to a stream of running water, and repeating certain biblical verses indicative of sin and forgiveness, specially Micah vii. 19, 'Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea'.

1880 Jewish World 30 Sept., Tashlich...a simple fad of mediæval rabbinism, of late date and origin, and wholly unknown to our ancient sages. 1902 Daily Chron. 2 Oct. 7/1 They have imported with them from their native ghettos the singular practice known as 'Tashlikh', which is performed by the side of a stream of running water or on the seashore... A favourite resort for the purpose of 'Tashlikh' is the Custom House Quay, and the front walk of the Tower.

A few things are noteworthy here. First, although the OED gives "tashlik" as the primary spelling, it isn't used in either of the illustrative quotations. Second, the vowel given for the first syllable is æ, pronounced like the vowel in "back." Makes sense--these are the fellow countrypeople of the BBC announcers, who talk about Nicarægua. Third, the person writing for the 1880 Jewish World may have been right, but it's the place to meet and greet. Fourth, in the etymology, the OED uses a symbol regarding vowel length that I omitted since I can't figure out how to reproduce it. It looks like two solid triangles, one on top of the other, pointing at each other but not touching. If any of you can tell me how to reproduce that, I'd appreciate it.

The entire staff of Consider the Source wish all of our readers a shænah tovah--a healthy and happy year.

The power of gematria

2009-09-14T19:07:00.002-05:00

Regarding this first item, please save your superior comments until you've read the whole post.

This last Shabbat I was trying to figure out some gematriatical wisdom from the name of a recent bahur bar mitzvah named Refael Mordechai. (As it turns out, my son's Hebrew name is Refael Mordechai. Is this a coincidence? If you ask, you must be an apikoros--there is no such thing as coincidence. So it must be a miracle.) Anyhow, I calculated that "Refael" has a gematriatical value of 301. And 301 = 7 x 43. The 7 was easy--that's the number of days in a week. And 43--well, I couldn't get much out of 43. But then I decided to think of some phrase that has the initials mem-gimmel or gimmel-mem (which spells the Hebrew word for "also," but that didn't help much). Not being able to think of anything in Hebrew, I turned to Yiddish. Menshlich...menshlich what? Finally I gave it up and settled for "menshlich guy." So there it is--Refael Mordechai is a menshlich guy every day of the week. This was at the 3rd se'udah at the shul, and everyone there was very impressed. The power of gematria.

*~*~*~*

A month or two ago, it occurred to me that next year will be shenat Lubavitch--5770--which has nothing to do with the theme of this post. And then it occurred to me that the gematria for 770 is tav-shin-ayin. And tav-shin-ayin spells the Hebrew word for 9. Therefore we learn that 770 = 9, from which it follows that 761 = 0, from which anything follows that you want to follow. The power of gematria.

*~*~*~*
At night on motzaei Shabbat, lying awake while waiting for the alarm to awaken me for Selihot, I was reviewing my gematriatical sermon on the name "Refael." It occurred to me that I didn't need to rely on the English "menshlich guy." "Guter mensh," "groyser mensh," "gantser mensch." And on further review, I realized that the correct gematria for "Refael" is 311, not 301. But I got a vort out of 301, and nobody challenged it, even though the whole basis for it was incorrect. Herein lies the true power of gematria.

One or the other

2009-07-07T12:29:00.001-05:00

Well, I'd been thinking of writing about the two versions of item 9 in "Rabbi Yishma'el omer," but now I don't need to, now that the good folks at Hirhurim wrote what I was going to, except they did a better job than I would have. So you can take this as a recommendation that you read it. And although the excellent title they gave it should have been obvious, I probably wouldn't have thought of it. But I've taken the liberty of paying tribute to it in the most flattering (to them) way that I know ("stealing" is such an unpleasant word).

(Honest, I really was going to write about it.)

Yiddishkeit and Hebreishkeit in Toronto, Canada (respectively)

2009-06-25T11:22:00.011-05:00

This seems odd to me. The title page of R' Abraham Price's Canadian edition of Sefer Hasidim twice refers to Toronto, Canada, as

טאראנטא קנדה.

The reason this seems, as I was just saying, odd to me is that "Toronto" is spelled in Yiddish style, and "Canada" is spelled in Hebrew style.

Anyone out there have any idea why they might have done things this way?

Cambrio-Hebraic fact that you should know

2009-03-31T10:36:00.003-05:00

I've been fond of the Welsh language (Cymraeg, related to "Cambrian") ever since I came across the name Llwyd somewhere or other some decades ago, and this was only enhanced when I found out that the word for "Luxembourg" in Cymraeg is Lwcsembwrg.

Anyhow, you'll be pleased to know that "Wlpan is the name of an intensive Welsh course for beginners used by the University of Wales. On the course, basic patterns are taught in as short a time as possible."

Since they're not doing some sort of touchy-feely (as it were) ecumenical religious discussion, this must be OK

2009-03-12T10:45:00.002-05:00

Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children. (from Paul Vitello, "Religious Leaders Battle Abuse Bill in New York," New York Times, March 11, 2009; free registration may be needed)

Tip o' the yarmulka to the ever-informative Religion Clause for this post.

Hear hear

2009-02-10T15:44:00.004-06:00

Professor Haym Soloveitchik, writing in the Tradition Seforim blog:

Intellectual engagement entails reciprocity of exposure. To criticize others behind a shield of anonymity is to my thinking craven and unworthy of a scholar or talmid hakham.

Oxymorons

2009-02-06T09:57:00.001-06:00

While waiting for a minyan recently, I heard someone say "'Frum Conservative Jew' is an oxymoron." I looked up long enough to see what looked like a satisfied smile from the utterer.

Yeahyeahyeah, I've heard it all before. "Reform Judaism" is an oxymoron, "Conservative Judaism" is an oxymoron, "Orthodox Judaism" is an oxymoron, "religious non-Orthodox Jew" is an oxymoron, "Modern Orthodox Jew" is an oxymoron....

This isn't an argument; it's a slogan. (I use the singular since they're all the same.) It's not an enlightening slogan; it won't win anyone over, all it will do is get the speaker a pat on the keppeleh--sorry, the keppi--from those who already agree. And it isn't a clever or original slogan; it's just a cliché (sorry).

It's sad that we're in attack mode so often, and "oxymoron!" as slogan is used in no other mode. And it's incredibly lame.

And yes, I know this isn't just a Jewish thing.

Mishnaic political insight in Kabbalat Shabbat

2009-01-26T10:15:00.004-06:00

Our rabbis foresaw everything, and if we but knew how to read them, we too would foresee a lot of stuff. Vicariously, I mean. For example, we are specifically told not to kindle our new president:

ובמה אין מדליקין׃

You're welcome.

(If you point out the flaws in this, I promise to chortle quietly instead of guffawing loudly and unbecomingly.)

Delicately stated

2009-01-25T10:49:00.005-06:00

A devar Torah that I heard this Shabbat ended with something like this (and this isn't a direct quote, but I'm pretty sure I got all the key stuff right): Every life is infinitely precious. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the recent war, and we grieve for all of them. And we thank Hashem that there were no more deaths than that.

Every life is infinitely precious--how beautiful, how very enlightened. A speaker with less delicate sensibilities might have said that every Jewish life is infinitely precious.

I'm reasonably sure this might count as anti-Semitic

2009-01-16T08:44:00.002-06:00

Often, I see nothing more than verbal carelessness or social clumsiness where many of my fellow Jews see anti-Semitism. On the other hand, the New Republic web site has a blog post regarding Madoff, which drew this comment from iambiguous (I just love that anonymity stuff!), which seems not to be ambiguous at all:

From Matthew, chapter 19, verse 24: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the kingdom of God."

Not all editions of the Bible have that Book, of course.

Hanukkah candles in hotels

2008-12-25T20:54:00.003-06:00

I was recently at a shul for the period between Minhah and Ma'ariv. Instead of giving the usual Mishnah shi'ur, the rabbi opined that you should probably not leave unattended lit Hanukkah candles in hotels. I was dismayed by the quality of the objections that people shouted out. Not being much of a shouter, nobody heard me in the free-for-all. So since I have this widely read blog, I'm going to give my objections to some of the most ridiculous objections here. So blaaaah to them.

An objection: Shabbos candles and Hanukkah candles aren't dangerous.

My objection to this objection: Well, here in West Rogers Park, at the southwest corner of Sacramento and North Shore, is the former home of some friends of ours. They no longer live there because it was burned out by Shabbos candles. Fortunately, nobody was injured in this case. Yep, this stuff happens.

A continuation of the first objection: And since we do it in our homes, why shouldn't we do it in a hotel.

My answer: Because you should be more careful about risking burning down someone else's building than you are about not burning down your own. Because it isn't yours.

Someone in the shul who thinks lighting in a hotel is a bad idea: But the hotel is liable if your candles start a fire.

An objection to this: Sure they're liable. But they're also liable if you get burned by the hotel's hot water.

Rolling my eyes: I've heard some pretty good bad analogies, and this must be one of the best bad analogies I've ever heard. You see, if the hotel is liable for burning you with its hot water, there's a certain justice because it's their water. But if it's your flame and the hotel is liable, that justice isn't there. And hot water doesn't, you know, spread the way a flame does. Test it and see. On second thought, don't.

Final comment: Whatever.

Avinu Malkeinu version 1.2

2008-09-28T20:55:00.002-05:00

Per a request, I'm republishing this post from a few years ago with a few minuscule, almost invisible tweaks.

The Ten Days of Teshuvah approach. During that time, we dwell on our sins. We also say Avinu Malkeinu, which ends with a well-known song that contains the phrase "eyn banu ma'asim"--we have no deeds or acts or the like. More literally, it means we have no deeds in us--the usual way of saying "we don't have" is eyn lanu, not eyn banu.

But what does that mean? We're saying we have no deeds at the same time that we're listing all our bad deeds. English translators of siddurim recognize the problem and fix it incorrectly--they English it as "we have no good deeds" or words to that effect. The problem with this translation is that it makes no sense. Instead of quarreling with it or citing texts about the delicate balance of good deeds and bad, we'll just say it's obviously false.

To figure out what "eyn banu ma'asim" means in this context, let's divide Avinu Malkeinu into seven sections. In fact, we only need the first five sections for our purposes; sections 6 and 7 are bonus sections.

Section 1

Section 1 consists of the first three lines. It's just an introduction--it's us, we've sinned, for the sake of your name forgive us.

Section 2

Section 2 is a wish list of things we want from God--a good year, the ripping of the unhappy decree, good health, and so on. Note that all of these are things that aren't entirely under our control. We can improve our chances--don't eat crap, don't start fights--but we're asking here for results that we can't guarantee for ourselves. Section 2 takes up most of Avinu Malkeinu.

Section 3

In section 3, we're no longer asking for things--now we're referring back to the list and telling God why he should fulfil these requests. In the first through third of the four lines that make up section three, we ask God to do these things for the sake of our martyrs: "Act--do it--for the sake of those who were murdered for your holiness. Act for the sake of those who were slaughtered for proclaiming your unity. Act for the sake of those who went into flame and water sanctifying your name." Each of these three begins with 'aseh--act, do it. Fulfill our requests for these reasons.

In the fourth line of section 3, we ask God to avenge before our eyes the spilled blood of his servants. Thematically, it's part of section 3, although its structure is like that of the requests in section 2.

Section 4

In the first line of section 4, we realize that maybe we were being a little hutzpehdik in section 3: "Act--'aseh--for your sake if not for our sake." The remaining three lines all also begin with 'aseh. "Act--'aseh--for your sake and save us. Act--'aseh--for the sake of your great mercy. Act--'aseh--for the sake of your great, mighty, and awe-inspiring name, which we call upon."

Section 5

In section 5, we finally get to the well-known song, up to the words we've been trying to figure out, eyn banu ma'asim: we have no deeds, or we have no deeds in us.

Ma'asim (deeds) and 'aseh (the imperative verb meaning "act" or "do it") have the same root. For those who don't know any Hebrew, this is ma'aseh, the singular of ma'asim, printed without vowels:

מעשה.

This is 'aseh:

עשה.

The similarity should be very clear.

What does one do ('aseh)? One does deeds (ma'asim). The ma'asim we're talking about are the requests in section 2, which we're asking God to do ('aseh). And why are we asking God to do them? Because these are things that we can't get for ourselves. They are deeds that we don't have it within us to do--deeds about which we can say "eyn banu ma'asim."

Section 6

Well, now we've figured out what the heck "eyn banu ma'asim" means. Section 6 is the first of the two bonus sections. The song continues with "'aseh 'imanu tzedakah vahesed"--treat us with charity and lovingkindness. I propose an alternative reading, based on ignoring idiom and translating it verbatim. 'Imanu literally means "together with us." Translating this word by word, we get, "Together with us, do charity and lovingkindness." Under this reading, we're no longer dwelling on what we can't do; we're now volunteering to what we can--to collaborate with God on charity and lovingkindness. Actually, we're inviting God to collaborate with us on this.

Section 7

Avinu Malkeinu concludes with "vehoshi'enu"--"and save us." Saving us is still in God's hands, like all the items in section 2. And, not presuming to read God's allegorical mind, why shouldn't he save us, given what we just volunteered for in chapter 6, assuming we use the alternative reading I propose?

Badoomp-Clang

2008-09-09T08:52:00.001-05:00

Shmoozing in shul (not during the davening), a gentleman told a story about a relative of his who played in a traveling band in the 1930s. Most of the musicians were Jewish; one was black. They called the black one "Shvartze." One day the black musician asked the storyteller's relative what "shvartze" means; the relative answered that it means a person with good rhythm. So the black musician went around telling people, "Hey, I'm a shvartze." The storyteller went on to say, "My ancestor was--."

"Not a nice person," I said, trying to help out.

"No, he was a very nice person. He just sometimes liked to make nasty jokes."

I'm not going to waste my electrons or your time explaining that this was just pure nastiness and not a joke. I only note that this story was considered perfectly acceptable, and downright funny, in an Orthodox synagogue.

Zimmun in Pseudo-German

2008-06-29T21:32:00.075-05:00

In Dr. Seligmann Baer's Seder [Siddur on the binding of the recent Israeli reprint] Avodat Yisrael (Rödelheim 1868, 1901), most of the instructions and comments are in Hebrew. Some--but very few--of the instructions are in German transliterated into Hebrew letters, with an orthographic system almost identical to that of Moses Mendelssohn's translation of the Bible. Most of the Hebrew comments are in Rashi script. Words in Hebrew or Aramaic that are meant to be uttered are in block letters, sometimes menuqad. The German, whether or not it's meant to be uttered, is in a font that I haven't seen before and is very hard on my old eyes. Addendum: Thank you, Mississippi Fred MacDowell, for pointing out in a comment that this font is called Vaibertaitsch. In my comment to his comment, I said I think I thought otherwise (at least I think so), but I now believe Fred was right. B"N, a post on this topic will follow.

Warning: Before you go any further, I disclose that this is all based on the assumptions (1) that the German I learned in high school in the late 1960s is reasonably similar to the German of Dr. Baer and his contemporaries and (2) that I remember any of it correctly. Supporting assumption 1 is the fact that both were a long time ago.

The introduction to the German zimmun in Dr. Baer's siddur is interesting in that it isn't really in German, either in vocabulary or in idiom. The words (with one or two--literally either one or two--exceptions) are German, but the phrasing is a direct translation of the traditional Yiddish zimmun. In what follows, Rashi script is the default, [block letters are in square brackets], {and the German with its odd font is in curly brackets}. Exclamation marks are in the original (following the German style for imperatives). Italics (added by me) indicate words that are incorrect, idiosyncratic, or with an ambiguous letter but nevertheless definitely not correct German.

Here is what appears before the zimmun in the siddur (p. 554):

שלשה שאכלו כאחת חייבים
בזמון. וכיצד מזמנים? המזמן
אומר [הב לן ונברך!] או בל״א [רבותי] {וויר
וואָללען בענטען/בענשען!}׃

בל״א is an abbreviation for bilshon ashkenaz, "in the language of Ashkenaz." It's a little misleading; in more traditional siddurim it means in Yiddish, while here it means in German.

The zimmun itself follows, with embedded instructions regarding a minyan in Hebrew only. After the zimmun we have

יחיד מתחיל. {ווער פֿיר זיך אַליין בעטעט פֿאָנגט היער אַן.}׃

כאחת should be ונברך. כאחד is usually פֿאָנגט. ונבריך represents the German fängt. In the Hebrew-lettered German of Mendelssohn and Baer, אֶ is used for both ä and ö. So this is an actual error: פֿאָנגט should be פֿאֶנגט. This orthographic system doesn't deal with umlauts well. The same character is used for both ä and ö; for ü, they simply used a yod, as here in פֿיר (für). (Mississippi Fred MacDowell recently reproduced a manuscript of a letter to Julius Fuerst [Fürst] with an umlauted vav in the greeting. It appears in the last word in the first line of the manuscript reproduced in this post.)

I point out these errors only because they show that we shouldn't assume that the slashed and italicized בענטען/בענשען is correct in German. To me, with the combination of a smeared character, a difficult font, and my eyes, the fourth letter is ambiguous. If the fourth letter is a shin, then we have בענשען (benshen) here--a non-Germanic Yiddish word. If it is a tet, there are two possibilities: (1) the tet is supposed to be a shin, in which case it would be a misspelling of בענשען; or (2) the first nun could be superfluous, in which case it would be a misspelling of בעטען (beten), German for "to pray." Given that the German following the zimmun has the correctly spelled word בעטעט (betet) (3rd sing. present of beten), I'm prepared to textually emend the German introduction to

רבותי וויר וואָללען בעטען! ׃
רבותי, wir wollen beten!

(But only if we assume it's German, which we're not assuming. See below.)

Wir wollen beten! means "We want to pray," or, less likely, "We intend to pray." (Contrary to what your high school German teacher and mine taught us, wollen doesn't only mean "to want"; it can also mean "to intend," according to the big dictionary I recently looked it up in. But our teachers' main point, that it doesn't indicate future tense, was correct.) Be that as it may, I'm not prepared to say that "Wir wollen beten!" is an incorrect way to say "Let's pray"--my knowledge of German is far too limited to have any confidence about that. But I am reasonably confident that a more conventional way of saying it would be "Beten wir!"

So why would Dr. Baer have written "Wir wollen beten!" instead? Possibly for the same reason that רבותי appears in an allegedly German phrase--it's a verbatim translation (except for the first word, which isn't translated) of the familiar Yiddish

רבותי מיר וועללען בענשען! ׃

And it's possible that my emendation to beten was incorrect. After all, it was based on the assumption that the phrase is German. But it may not be. Perhaps Dr. Baer was as reluctant to part with בענשען as he was to part with רבותי. Or with the Yiddish zimmun in general.

***

Besides the question of whether the German is really German, another interesting matter is why some of the instructions are translated into German and some are not. The mezammen is told to say "Let's benedict" in German, and the lone eater is told in German where to begin benedicting, but the instructions to the mezammen to say "Elokeinu" only in the presence of a minyan are in Hebrew only. If it's assumed that some users of the siddur will need the German for "Let's benedict," why not also assume they need to be told in German when to change the wording if there's a minyan?

Obligations

2008-06-29T18:16:00.009-05:00

This is a true story about my acquaintance Arbuthnot (not his real name), who asks that I spread the word on this.

Arbuthnot is a member of a small Shabbat-and-holiday-only shul with no office staff, and in fact no office. Everything that's done is done by volunteers, and Arbuthnot's job is to check the voice mail. Sometimes he's quite conscientious, checking the messages every day. Most of the time there are no messages, and most of the messages are junk mail--someone wants to sell something to whoever is at the phone number. He often lets a day or two slide by, and no harm is done.

Friday, June 27, after a few days of not checking, Arbuthnot phoned in for the voice mail. There were a few messages from Wednesday, June 18; more days than he'd realized had gone by. A gentleman was calling for Rabbi Ploni. His mother was dying; she used to attend the shul, and she wanted the rabbi to officiate at the funeral.

Had Arbuthnot gotten the message in a timely way, he would have contacted the rabbi immediately. Since it was already nine days later, he called the gentleman instead. Arbuthnot apologized, said he was the voice-mail person from the shul, and asked how the man's mother was. The man said his mother had died, and he had managed to get in contact with the rabbi.

Arbuthnot's message to the readers of Consider the Source is that it's important to be scrupulous in fulfilling one's obligations.

Rabbi Hertz and Professor Leibowitz on loving one's neighbour

2008-06-19T06:43:00.015-05:00

Rabbi Joseph Hertz and Professor Nechama Leibowitz both claim that the commandment "Love thy neighbour¹ as thyself" (וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ) ( Leviticus 19:18) applies to our treatment of non-Jews as well as to our treatment of Jews. I want to agree with them, but their reasoning is flawed. As Rabbi Hertz puts it,

One need not be a Hebrew scholar to convince oneself of the fact that rea means a neighbour of whatever race or creed. Thus in Exodus XI, 2--'Let them ask every man of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, etc.'--the Heb. word for neighbour cannot possibly mean 'fellow-Israelite', but distinctly refers to the Egyptians. As in all the moral precepts of Scripture, the word neighbour in Lev. XIX, 18, is equivalent to 'fellow-man', and it includes in its range every human being by virtue of his humanity.²

The problem becomes clearer if we use an ellipsis and some square brackets on this quotation:

One need not be a Hebrew scholar to convince oneself of the fact that rea means a neighbour of whatever race or creed. Thus in Exodus XI, 2…[rea] cannot possibly mean 'fellow-Israelite', but distinctly refers to the Egyptians.

That "Thus" just doesn't work. If rea in all its occurrences refers to any fellow human being, then it would apply to the Israelite fellow human in Exodus 11:2. But as Rabbi Hertz correctly points out, it doesn't do so. He says that rea means fellow human "in all the moral precepts of Scripture." This doesn't apply to the verse in Exodus--it was a one-time request, not a moral precept--so it's strange that he'd use this as an example.

Does rea refer to any fellow human of any group in Leviticus 19:18? I want to think so. Rabbi Hertz and Professor Leibowitz claim that this is true based on the verse in Exodus, but the claim doesn't work--in this verse, the meaning of rea is clearly restricted by the context. If rea's meaning in the verse in Leviticus is restricted by context, then it seems to refer only to fellow Jews there. If the meaning isn't restricted by context in Leviticus--if, as Rabbi Hertz claims, it's universal in all moral precepts--well, that's the conclusion I want, but the verse in Exodus has nothing to do with it. And it's always possible that this particular verse doesn't command us to love our gentile rea as ourselves, but some other verse does.

***

1. I blather about my objection to neighbour as the translation of rea here.

2. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. and with commentary by J. H. Hertz (London: Soncino: 1993; originally published 1937), 563. I quote this instead of Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Vayikra (Leviticus), vol. 1 (Brooklyn: Hemed, 1995), 366-67, because the contradiction is clearer in Rabbi Hertz's version and because Professor Leibowitz doesn't make the statement about "moral precepts" that's referred to later in this post.

Shoveling snow on Shabbat

2008-02-26T04:29:00.004-06:00

On a neighborhood e-mail list that I subscribe to, a thread has begun in which people are protesting against those neighbors who don't shovel their sidewalks. One writer links to Ask Chicagoist, which quotes the Chicago municipal code (and I haven't confirmed this quote):

The snow which falls or accumulates during the day (excepting Sundays) before four p.m. shall be removed within three hours after the same has fallen or accumulated. The snow which falls or accumulates on Sunday or after four p.m. and during the night on other days shall be removed before ten a.m.

I agree with the code, and with my fellow e-mailers, on this. Snowy sidewalks are no big deal in themselves, but they become icy sidewalks after they've been walked on for a while, and those things are dangerous.

When it's necessary to shovel on Shabbat, I always do so, wearing socks on my hands as a shinnui (and this was before I saw this quote from the code). I haven't asked a rabbi about this, and this is out of respect for the rabbinate--I want to save them the embarrassment of possibly giving the wrong answer.

As a side note, I once told a friend, former and (I hope) future havrusa and/or hevruta, and ethical adviser about this. He (who lives in an apartment where the landlord is responsible for shoveling, so it's not his problem) said he thought this a fine idea. Since it's just me, he said, I should do it without any distinctive Jewish accessories visible. If, however, I were R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz, av beit din of the RCA and the Chicago Rabbinical Council, who lives a few blocks away, he'd advise me to do it looking like I was R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz so everyone would know it's OK. I take his point, although I should point out that if I were R' Gedalia Dov Schwartz, I wouldn't need his advice.

Season's geeqings

2007-12-24T16:27:00.007-06:00

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm rereading Marc Shapiro, "Torah Study on Christmas Eve," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 319-53. It's an interesting read; if you're a member of a library that subscribes to EBSCOhost Academic, or if you're a student or employee of a university whose library subscribes to it, you can probably download a PDF of it. (I'm not attaching a PDF to this post, since that would probably violate my library's terms of use.)

Before I get into the promised geeqery, let me point out two things. First, I intend to learn Torah tonight. Shapiro doesn't find any rabbinic support for the custom of not learning Torah on Christmas Eve, and he questions the antiquity of the custom. Second, the point of all this is going to be that even if you believe in gematria, you should examine the statements that are claimed to be gematriatically equivalent, even if they add up.

Anyhow, on p. 326 Shapiro cites R' Moses Grunwald, Arugat ha-Bosem, vol. 2 (Brooklyn, 1959), p 146a, as claiming that

עת לעשות לה׳ הפרו תורתיך

and

זו שעה שתקופת טבת נופלת בו

are gematriatically equivalent. I won't explain the phrases, because the explanations will require explanations, and you'd be better off reading Shapiro's paper. And my topic here is the gematriatical equivalency, not the content. The first of the phrases contains an abbreviation for "Hashem." If we use the gematria for the Tetragrammaton (as I always call it) instead of that of the abbreviation, both phrases do indeed have a gematriatical value of 2,659. If I got the gematriot wrong, please comment.

My Hebrew is minimal, but I'm pretty sure both phrases are incorrect in ways that render the claim of equivalency incorrect.

The final word of the first phrase is either an unusual but correct way of spelling the word for "your Torahs [plural]" or an incorrect way of spelling "your Torah [singular]." To me, the incorrectly spelled singular seems more likely. If it is the incorrect spelling, it's understandable--at the end of a phrase, "torat^ekha" is pronounced "toratekha" (with the underlining indicating the accented vowel). This -ekha ending is used in the plural and takes a yod, but the yod isn't used in the singular. If this were meant to be the plural "torotekha," it would usually take a vav after the resh, although it isn't strictly required. But it's unusual without it. And what would "your Torahs" mean anyway? It might make sense--the written and the oral Torahs--but it just rings oddly to me. On the other hand, I'm new in this neighborhood.

If I'm correct and the singular was intended, we can fix the phrase by deleting the yod, which would reduce the gematriatical value to 2,649.

In the second phrase "sha'ah" ("hour") is a feminine noun. Two of the other words referring to it, "zo" and "nofelet," are also feminine. But "bo" is masculine.

If "bo" is incorrect, we can fix it by changing it to "bah." The change causes a net loss of 1, making the corrected gematria 2,658.

In short, if I'm right that either phrase is incorrect, the gematriatical equivalency is incorrect. Put another way, the equivalency depends on incorrectness--it fails if the phrases are corrected. If I'm right about all this stuff, that is. Even if you believe in gematria, you may have reason to reject this particular equivalency.

More generally, even if you believe that something works, you should still read instances of it carefully. This is the real topic of my sermon.

Unsatisfactory

2007-12-21T05:30:00.006-06:00

Boro Park Pyro (ak"a "Steg" and "King o' the Goblins") recently had a post describing a discussion that he and his hevruta had with some racist yeshiva bahurim. The Pyro and his hevruta challenged the bahurim, and kol hakavod, yasher koah, and kudos to them for that.

More interesting to me was Kylopod's comment on the post. Interesting because his reaction to Orthodox racism, when he's a witness to it, is very much the same as mine:

When this kind of thing happens to me, I don't feel outrage anymore. I'm beyond that. I've developed a sort of weary cynicism about the whole matter.

I'm still outraged by it. But what I actually do about it is what Kylopod does.

I can't stand that so many Orthodox Jews are bigots, but for me it's a personal thing. Every time I hear a racist remark from a frum person, and how natural they make it sound, as though it were so obvious that everyone present should agree...

Indeed. I used to go to shalosh se'udot at my shul. I stopped after a while for the reason Kylopod describes: "Nobody here but us Orthodox Jews, and we can speak freely, and obviously we're all in on the hilarious jokes we're about to share."

...I think to myself, "Why am I hanging out with these people?" Nowadays I rarely challenge it directly unless it comes from a friend, but I make sure never to make it seem like I'm agreeing with them.

That's what I do too. "'Why am I hanging out with these people?'" Good question. Another question is whether this passive non-agreement is a satisfactory substitute for active disagreement. I don't know Kylopod's answer; to me, it's completely unsatisfactory. If we heard that some other group had a bunch of members who were openly bigoted--the bigotry might even be anti-Semitic--and the nonbigots just sort of kept quiet and didn't actively agree with the bigots, how would we feel about it? Would we let the quiet nonbigots off the hook, or would we do some pious tut-tutting about how the nonbigots have an obligation to disapprove? And if these quiet non-Jewish nonbigots have an obligation to object to bigotry, don't we as well?

And what are we to make of this anecdote?

Gerald Blidstein recalls the following conversation with R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: "I remember that in Israel there was a real problem, do you save a gentile on the Sabbath? One evening during this time I was with the Rav [Joseph B. Soloveitchik] and he said 'I have been in Boston many years and I always rule that one saves the lives of gentiles, because if we don't permit this, they won't save our sick ones.' I asked him if this reason satisfied him from a moral standpoint, and he replied, 'No, from a moral standpoint it does not satisfy me.'" (Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1884-1966 [London: Littman, 1999], 182-83 n. 47, citing Gilyon [Heshvan 5754 (1993)]: 25) (bracketed material in Shapiro)

Should we be satisfied with the Rav on this point? Why didn't he give what he would have considered a morally satisfactory reason? I understand why some of us don't want to be socially ostracized or don't want to be confrontational. I understand why a young man on a rabbinic track doesn't want to jeopardize his career. I don't understand why a leader and innovator like the Rav was so timid (perhaps this is the wrong word--comment, please, if you disagree with it) about making what he himself would have considered a morally satisfactory statement. Dare we assume that it was OK because he was the Rav, and if he (being the Rav) did this it must have been OK? It's tragic that such a person hedges on this, and it makes me worry for Orthodox Judaism. I honor Blidstein for asking the Rav this question.

I would hate to see us Modern Orthos treat the Rav the way ArtScroll treats hareidi "gedolim." But that horse may have left the stable long ago. Which is another topic.

Allah

2007-11-20T06:23:00.000-06:00

First, some disclaimers. I don't know Judeo-Arabic, and I don't know Arabic that isn't Judeo, and my knowledge of Hebrew is very minimal.

Now on to the story. You may have heard that the god of the Jews is not the same as the god of the Muslims. Our god is God, and their god is Allah. You may also have heard someone reply that "Allah" is simply Arabic for "God" and is used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians.

Mr. Mississippi F. MacDowell's always excellent blog On the Main Line (at least it's always excellent when it isn't over my head) recently published a 9th- or 10th-c. passage in Judeo-Arabic with English translation. It's in Hebrew script. Take a look at the second word from the right in the second line. It appears to be "Allah," and it appears to mean "God." This "appears to" stuff isn't meant to be snide--I actually don't know, so I don't want to make a more definitive statement. But I'm reasonably confident about it.

As always, comments are invited, and comments from those of you who actually have a clue on this are especially welcome.

Thank you.

Liberty enlightening the world

2007-11-04T04:25:00.000-06:00

American Pizza's [a restaurant in Ramat Beit Shemesh A] sign shows the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Asked why, Mr. Shmueli said he consulted his rabbi. "The rabbi told me that the Statue of Liberty is a problem, spiritually speaking," he said. Liberty is "chofesh," which implies pure freedom. "Haredis don't have chofesh," he said. "We are servants of God."

--from Steven Erlanger, "A Modern Marketplace for Israel's Ultra-Orthodox," New York Times, November 2, 2007 (free registration may be required to see this online)

***

The first question that occurred to me was why they didn't translate "Liberty" as "herut," which we generally consider a good thing. And sure enough, in Israel the Statue of Liberty is called "Pesel ha-herut" (at least according to Hebrew Vikipedia).

It seems to me that a better reason for not displaying the statue is that it's a statue of a person. To make matters worse, it's a statue of an XX-chromosomal person with her (you should forgive the expression) right elbow exposed.

No excuses

2007-10-17T06:09:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of Parashat Noah, we're told that Noah was righteous and perfect in his generations (bedorotav) (Genesis 6:9). Noah lived in a corrupt generation. Rashi points out that among the rabbis, there were two conflicting interpretations of the qualifier "in his generations." Some held that even in his corrupt environment he managed to be righteous--imagine how surpassingly righteous he'd be in a better generation. The other school held that Noah was righteous only by the standards of his corrupt generation--had he and Abraham been contemporaries, Noah would have been considered a nothing.

The sermons I've heard on this topic all claimed that Noah was exceedingly righteous by any standards. I vote, with respect and reverence for Noah, for the second option--Noah the ordinary guy.

What do we learn--and I don't mean Torah learning, I mean for our own lives--what do we learn if Noah was the most righteous person ever? We learn that if you're the most righteous person ever, you can save the world.

What do we learn if Noah was an ordinary guy? We learn that ordinary guys like us can rise to the occasion and save the world. We're not anything special? I mean, look at Abraham and then look at me? No excuses, says God. Yes, we're ordinary, and so was Noah; yes, if the occasion comes up, we have to save the world, or at least try, just like Noah.

Noah (and I'm being literary now, so don't bother me with chronological quibbling about who came first) followed the advice attributed to Hillel in Avot: in a place where nobody takes responsibility, try to take responsibility. Indeed. Noah was in a corrupt and irresponsible environment, and he took responsibility and saved the world.

The boogeyman; or, Pessy's wager

2007-10-07T14:51:00.000-05:00

Overheard (the quotation marks are gisties, not verbatims):

"I told my friend who got a Conservative conversion that maybe this conversion is OK, we'll find out when Mashiah comes, but do you really want to take the chance that you're wrong?"

Too true. We don't know how things will be when Mashiah comes. Maybe those who humbly try to do the best they can will get preference over those who go around saying "Mashiah's going to get you if you don't watch out."

A bisseleh teshuveleh

2007-09-03T07:15:00.000-05:00

In a post in late July, I implicitly accused "a hareidi person" of bigotry. The fact that he was hareidi was irrelevant. You find this sort of stuff among all kinds of Orthos.

I apologize for the hareidi bashing.

I didn't intend to do bash on people I disagree with (and I'm not making excuses, so please read on). I wanted to show off my own liberality by letting it be known that I'm on friendly terms with a hareidi person. In other words, my intention was self-congratulatory; this isn't quite on the same level as intentional bash, but it still isn't exactly noble. But the point is that my intention here doesn't matter.

I apologize to all.

Side dish

2007-08-07T08:05:00.001-05:00

My more devoted readers--including you, good reader--will recall that I recently indulged in some pious speculativities inspired by the Oxford English Dictionary entry for vermicelli. I was, I confess, a little confounded by hehassid Sir William Davenant's use of the word "intermets," and many of you shared in my anguish.

I love the OED for at least two reasons. First, because it's wonderful. Second, its customer service is excellent. I'm not talking in terms of sales or technical troubleshooting, since I have no experience with that part of it. But when you point out a typo or ask a question about content, they get back to you quick. Friday, August 3, I sent them an e-mail asking about intermets, and I got a reply Monday, August 6--the next business day.

The OED has never taken the view that every word in the illustrative quotations must have its own dictionary entry. In this case, as Davenant's other culinary terms are French I suspect that INTERMETS is his version of French ENTREMETS, for which there is an OED entry.

I shall note your comment in the OED revision file, to ensure that this variant spelling of ENTREMETS is considered by the editors when they come to work on the entry.

Entremets means side dishes. I'm glad I can bring some relief to you in your confoundment.

Staying on message

2007-08-05T20:17:00.001-05:00

Recently an acquaintance of mine was at a dinner in honor of volunteers for a Jewish hesed organization; there are both Orthos and non-Orthos among the volunteers. Many of the organization's clients are non-Ortho.

(BT"W, I consider this acquaintance's report reliable, but what do I know?) (But it sounds credible.)

The coordinator of volunteers gave a moving talk about the very big effects that very small actions can have on the lives of others, for better or for worse. Next, a dedicated longtime volunteer was called front and center to make the public Hamotzi. You could tell he was non-Ortho because he was wearing one of those shiny yarmulkehs from the box at the registration table and, more importantly, because the volunteer coordinator was coaching him ("Now don't say anything until you've eaten a piece of the bread"). As he was walking back to his table, someone said loud enough to be heard by my acquaintance, and probably by the baal Hamotzi as well, "He didn't wash."

(We note for the halakhic record that there were washing stations for those who wished to use them, so nobody needed to rely on the public Hamotzi.)

The person who noted the nonwashing must have arrived late and missed the volunteer coordinator's speech. I hope he or she has better control over his or her yap when dealing with the organization's non-Ortho clients.

Little worms

2007-07-30T20:48:00.003-05:00

For one reason or another, I recently looked up vermicelli in the Oxford English Dictionary. (And don't worry, there will be two Orthodox Jewish tie-ins [one of them fake] later.) I noticed that the first illustrative quotation was from Sir William Davenant's The Man's a Master: A Comedy (1668, although a 1669 edition was being quoted): "Vermechulli shall my Palat please, Serv'd in with Bisques, Ragous, and Intermets." The obvious question, and the reason I bring this up, hoping that you my readership will help me, is "What are intermets?" This is the only appearance of the word in the OED. If you can help, please comment.

***

It's obvious that the surname of Sir William Davenant, the author of the quotation, is Norman French for "one who davens."

(That was the fake Orthodox Jewish tie-in.)

***

And here's another Ortho tie-in that isn't intentionally fake (you may be able to convince me that it's ridiculous). Vermicelli means "little worms" in Italian. How come nobody's declared vermicelli nonkosher because someone might think it's OK to eat little worms? The scary part of this one is that I'm actually not joking. Or has vermicelli in fact been forbidden somewhere for that very reason?

***Back when I was a youngster, nobody--or at least nobody non-Italian (at least as far as I know)--talked about "pasta." We used the word "noodles." I'm proud that Jewish food manufacturers have to some extent held the line on "noodles."

Half isn't enough

2007-07-29T10:38:00.000-05:00

On a recent Shabbat, a hareidi person who seems very menshlich and whom I like a lot told me about a person who had taught him many life lessons and been an important and good influence. He began the story by telling me that this person had died recently; in fact he mentioned it several times near the beginning. Each time he told me, I said "I"m sorry" because I didn't know what else to say. After the last "I'm sorry," he said, "Well, don't be too sorry--he wasn't Jewish. [Pause.] I'm sure he's happy wherever he is."

Update, September 3, 2007: The fact that he's hareidi is irrelevant to the story, and I apologize for mentioning it, both here and here.

Later I asked a companion who was with us at the time, and who knows him much better than I do, whether he was joking. Maybe it was an embarrassed joke about how his gog-mates look at things, maybe he was tweaking my liberality. My companion estimated that he was half joking.

Shiddukh

2007-07-29T09:22:00.000-05:00

But don't belligerence and anonymity make an attractive couple!

Michael Miner

I hadn't planned on preaching a sermon on this right now, but I saw this excellent statement (in a completely different context), I just couldn't resist. And before I continue, it's important to point out that there are some bloggers out there who give anonymity a good name. As it were.

I understand that some of the anonymous folks in Eretz ha-Cyberut (Fake Hebrew for "the CyberWorld") are hareidim who are afraid of destroying their families or making their children unmarriageable if they make their true opinions known under their own names. I feel very bad for these people.

Nevertheless, when I read praises of the freedom of speech that anonymity affords, I don't join in the cheers. Anonymity all too often means freedom from accountability. The shiddukh between belligerence and anonymity isn't just attractive; to many of the anonymous, it seems downright irresistible. At this point, they lose my sympathy. They corrupt their claims about freedom of speech and reveal themselves to be mere cowards.

It's easy for me to give advice, since I'm Modern Ortho in a shul that tolerates some diversity of opinion (and I'm probably pretty marginal in the shul at that), and so I don't have much to lose. Nevertheless, I'm not sure this freedom of speech is really that free if you have to hide all the time, or that the things being risked are always worth keeping. Imagine you make it known that you fail one or more of Maimonides' litmus tests for the true faith or that if you had a choice, you'd wear a six-panel yarmulkeh instead of a Toireh-miSinai-dikeh four-panel yarmulkeh. And now it's shiddukh time. A wonderful young person won't marry your child because his or her parents won't allow it because of your forbidden thoughts! Vey'z mir! And I'm not being sarcastic with the V"M—it must be a very painful situation. But on the other hand, does your child really want to marry someone who's so dominated by narrow-minded parents? Do you really want such makhutonim?

Well, as I said, it's easy for me to give useless and obvious advice, and the advice took me off topic. My real point is that abusive speech is bad, and doing it anonymously makes it worse.

Disingenuous

2007-06-29T06:30:00.000-05:00

At kiddush, a friend was telling me about a neighbor whose legally parked car got seriously crunched in her absence. Not at all the fault of the neighbor, who had liability insurance, but no insurance for damage to her own car. The neighbor is very nice--my friend likes her. The neighbor has a lot of problems besides the destroyed car--debts, troubles with her kids by different fathers, neither of whom she was married to.

My friend said, "She once said to me, 'Why does all this stuff happen to me?' I wanted to say 'Because you don't do Torah and mitzvot,' but I decided not to."

I replied, "Yes, it sounds like it was a good idea not to say that." Pause. "Is she Jewish?"

"No."

"Well, I guess the Torah and mitzvot thing doesn't really apply to her anyway."

***

My first reaction to this was "this is the kind of stuff that makes me seriously consider switching to the Reform shul that's walking distance from home." I mean, jeepers, come on. I mean.

My second reaction to the conversation--or, if you prefer, my first reaction to my first reaction--was that I'm being disingenuous here. Ovadiah Yosef traced Hurricane Katrina to the lack of Torah and mitzvot among the shvartzes, but this isn't quite the same, for the most part. There was nothing the victims of Katrina could have done to prevent the hurricane. In the case of my friend's neighbor, this is true only of the destruction of the car. The children out of wedlock and the debts are probably at least in part the fault of the neighbor--there may have been some bad decisions along the way. Talking about lack of Torah and mitzvot could just be another way of talking about responsibility and good decisions. As I discussed in my very first post on this blog, we Orthos sometimes talk about non-Jewish things in Jewish terms--Presbyterian shuls, Muslim yeshivas, and so on. The difference is that my friend wasn't being self-consciously and annoyingly cutesoid.

My third reaction to the conversation--or my second reaction to my first reaction, or my first reaction to my second reaction--is that this is a person who probably would have said "lehavdil!" if using "Torah and mitzvot" to mean all-purpose commonsense good decision making. Which means my friend probably did mean that the problems were caused by a lack of mamash Torah and mitzvot. In which case the Reform shul is starting to look good again.

My final reaction (at least for the moment) is that I should give the benefit of the doubt--go into dan lekhaf zekhut mode, as we say--to my friend rather than to my disingenuous self. Doubt benefits are fine, but it sometimes turns a little dishonest when you apply it too generously to yourself.

Considering the sources

2007-06-06T05:38:00.002-05:00

Of Noam Chomsky, Alan Dershowitz, and Norman Finkelstein (see this New Republic item and this Chicago Jewish News item), the one I fear most is Finkelstein. This is because he's in Chicago and thus is the one I'm least unlikely to come into contact with. Their behavior would be unacceptable from an eight-year-old. Such behavior from an eight-year-old would need to be corrected, lest the youngster grow up to be a well-educated and sophisticated adult like Chomsky, Dershowitz, or Finkelstein.

(The New Republic link requires free registration. Unfortunately, you need to be a paid subscriber to comment at the site, so I'm commenting here.)

Says Dershowitz,

What passes for Finkelstein-scholarship is charging me, and virtually every other pro-Israel writer, with plagiarism for citing material to their original rather than secondary sources. Anti-Israel as well as pro-Israel scholars use the same citation method because it is the one preferred by the Chicago Manual of Style and other authoritative sources. For example, Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer repeatedly cite primary sources for material they found in secondary sources. I proved this and challenged Finkelstein to level the same charge against these anti-Israel writers as he did against pro-Israel writers. He refused, because his is not scholarship; it is propaganda.

At first I had no clue what "citing material to their original rather than secondary sources" meant (or what the plural "their" referred to). I guessed he meant doing research in primary sources, but it seemed like a weird basis for a charge of plagiarism. He then tells us that this is the citation method "preferred by the Chicago Manual of Style and other authoritative sources." Fine, but he doesn't tell us what he actually means until the next sentence: "cit[ing] primary sources for material . . . found in secondary sources."

Before I get into what is going to end up being my main point, let's look at Dershowitz's style of argument: (1) This technique is OK; (2) if it isn't OK, then tu quoque anyway; (3) someone who doesn't like me called me names for doing it but didn't call other people who did it names.

"Tu quoque" is Latin for "I'm rubber and some other given personage (hereinafter referred to as "OGP") is glue, everything said OGP says bounces off of me and sticks to the above-ref'd OGP"; some translate it as "I know said OGP is, but what am I?" or "But said OGP did it too!!!!"

Back to this scholarly practice that Dershowitz advocates. Let's put aside the question of The Chicago Manual of Style for a moment and just use our own common sense. Imagine a law student in one of Dershowitz's classes who cites Roe v. Wade when he actually is quoting a book called This Is My Opinion on Abortion, and Everyone Who Disagrees with Me Is a Bad Person--a book he doesn't cite. Can we assume Dershowitz would find this OK? And I imagine Finkelstein quotes Dershowitz. Would Dershowitz be satisfied with scholarship that cites Dershowitz while quoting Finkelstein?

This type of research may or may not be plagiarism--this is a legal question that I'm not competent to answer--but it is dishonest; the researcher (or "scholar," as Dershowitz says) is pretending to have read something that he has not read. And it's also foolish--what if the secondary source got it wrong? Dershowitz says he "proved" that Walt and Mearsheimer did this. I don't know how he'd prove this short of surveilling them. Most likely he found that they'd repeated someone else's misquotes or typos. Which should show him why such a research technique is a very bad idea. Some day, I may look up Dershowitz's proof and report back to you. Or maybe I'll read what someone else wrote about the proof and pretend I read the proof itself.

Dershowitz says his method is "preferred" by The Chicago Manual of Style, and indeed the manual usually does use the language of preference. What does the manual actually say about Dershowitz's approach? According to the 15th edition (section 17.274, p. 727),

To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in . . .") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed. (ellipsis in original)

"[M]ust"? Yes. As I said above, the manual usually talks about its preferences. When it gets worked up about having to point out the obvious ("authors are expected to have examined the works they cite"), it sometimes resorts to "must."

So Dershowitz's statement about the manual was a falsehood. That hypothetical student who cites case law when actually quoting some screeching screed may meet Professor Dershowitz's standards, but not those of the Chicago manual. Maybe Dershowitz was lying, but it seems more likely that he was just citing the manual while actually quoting someone who claimed to be quoting the manual. This would be a fitting punchline to an otherwise unfunny joke. On the other hand, maybe the New Republic was misquoting him. Or something.

What do we learn from this? First, if something makes no sense, that may be because it isn't true. (We religious fanatics, of course, should disregard this statement. Why? Because it makes no sense.) And read everything skeptically, even if you and the author are on the same side. After all, both Dershowitz and (if Dershowitz is to be believed) his opponents--people on opposing sides--use the same silly and dishonest research method. Dershowitz has published at least one falsehood, documented here, possibly because he used this method.

Second, if you actually look things up, that's excellent. If you don't, you should at least be honest with yourself and others. If you read Dershowitz's proof of Walt and Mearsheimer's foolishness, or if you figured it out yourself, go ahead, tell people about their goofy research technique. If you read the New Republic link or some similar chunk of primary Dershowitz, you can reasonably say, "According to Dershowitz, Walt and Mearsheimer are as lazy as he admits to being." Otherwise, you should say, "I read on some [self-conscious snickering and rolling of eyes] blog that Dershowitz admits to this silliness and implicates these other guys, so consider the source." Always a good idea.

Unfortunate King James-ism

2007-04-29T10:47:00.000-05:00

וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ

--Leviticus 19:18 (copied and pasted from here)

The King James Bible translates this as

but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
--(copied and pasted from here)

With "thy" or "your," with British or U.S. spelling of "neighbour," this has become part of the English-speaking world's shared vocabulary. The problem is that רֵעֲךָ doesn't mean "your neighbor": it's more like "your associate." But because the phrase is so well known, everyone just knows that the Bible says to love your neighbor.

Interestingly, if you're interested in such things, which I am, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) makes it sound like this usage of "neighbor" was never part of ordinary speech. Definition A.I.1.a, the first definition, is "A person who lives near or next to another; a person who occupies an adjoining or nearby house or dwelling; (more widely) each of a number of people living close to each other, esp. in the same street, village, etc." The first four citations are undated and in Old English. The first dated citation is from c. 1175. Definition A.I.1.b, the second definition, is "In echoes of biblical passages teaching responsibility, etc., towards others (such as Matthew 19:19): a fellow human. Usu. with possessive adjective." All the examples given are either biblical translations or allusions to the Bible or attempts at biblical style. One of the examples given is the King James Bible ("1611 Bible (A.V.)"): "Thou shalt loue...thy neighbour as thy self." The citation is to Luke 10:27, not to Leviticus.

Accompanying this second definition is a cross-reference to definition C.2 of "next" ("neighbor" and "next" are etymologically related). This definition, labeled obsolete, is "one's neighbour; one's fellow human." One of the quotations for this definition is from Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt (1340): "Loue þine nixte ase þi-zelue." If you read "þ" as "th" and "u" as "v," it starts looking familiar. ("Ayenbite," or "ayenbyte," is an obsolete word that in, oh, let's say about 1340 or so, meant "remorse." "Inwit," or "inwyt," also now obsolete, meant conscience or intellect [which makes sense--the word comes from "in" + "wit"]. Or, as Wyclif's selected works (c. 1380) puts it, "þese ben also þy fyve inwyttys; Wyl, Resoun, Mynd, Ymaginacioun, and Thogth.")

Be all of this digressive stuff as it may, this definition of "next" is obsolete--the most recent citation in the OED is from c. 1485. And I suspect (which should immediately make you say "who cares?") that most people who use "neighbor" to mean one's fellow-human are thinking (and how would I know this anyway?) that it really means one's neighbor and they're just being poetic.

Ethical standards

2007-02-18T16:54:00.001-06:00

For the sake of full disclosure, I'm going to do a preliminary rant before I get to my main rant. Bernard Stone is the alderman (Chicagospeak for city council member) of the 50th Ward, which includes West Rogers Park, home of most of Chicago's Orthodox Jews. I consider ~~him~~ his behavior as an alderman and as a public figure an embarrassment and a disgrace. That was the full-disclosure statement. I think I'd be annoyed by the following even if I liked Stone.

And now the main rant. The Parashat Yitro issue of Likutei Peshatim, a local Orthodox community newsletter, carried this ad: "Congregation [Whatever] would like to thank our Alderman, Bernard Stone, for his many years serving our community, and in particular, for all of the help and support he has given to our shul over the years. We wish you continued success in all that you do for our neighborhood."

For now, I'll overlook the joke about all that Stone does for the hood. Election day is February 27, and Stone has a fight on his hands for the first time in years. This notice from Congregation [Whatever] is clearly an endorsement, which is one of the things a synagogue can do if it wants its tax status to be reconsidered. If we were to point this out to the people in charge of the shul, they could reply that it's not an endorsement--it's just a thank-you note.

Right. What a coincidence that a few weeks before an actually contested election, a congregation wishes the incumbent "continued success." "Continued success"? But that means he should keep on doing what he's been doing. And what he's been doing is drawing an aldermanic paycheck. What annoys me more than the endorsement is that the shul is working in the world of plausible deniability, which involves both sleazy morals and treating people as though they're stupid. I'd like to think a synagogue would hold itself to higher standards, but I can't always do what I'd like.

Hasdei avot

2006-12-20T13:52:00.003-06:00

Taken down for retooling. Watch this space for version 2.0.

Proof text

2006-11-14T13:06:00.000-06:00

As anybody who spends much time with Orthodox Jews knows, it's forbidden for a Gentile to keep the Sabbath. The source for this is Sanhedrin 58b, near the bottom of the page:

ואר״ל עובד כוכבים ששבת חייב מיתה שנא׳ ויום ולילה ישבותו

And Resh Lakish said, "A non-Jew who keeps the Sabbath is subject to the death penalty, and the biblical proof text is 'And day and night they shall not (do some verb that obviously has the same root as "Shabbat").'"

"Shabbat" is

שבת
.

The verb that they shall not do is

ישבותו
.

You can see the letters of the word "Shabbat" in it.

Whether חייב מיתה (subject to the death penalty) is meant literally is interesting, and the other words for "non-Jew" that appear in other editions of this text are interesting, but they're not what I want to talk about now. Out of its biblical context, this proof text looks pretty good. But let's look at it in its context, which is Genesis 8:22:

עֹד, כָּל-יְמֵי הָאָרֶץ: זֶרַע וְקָצִיר וְקֹר וָחֹם וְקַיִץ וָחֹרֶף, וְיוֹם וָלַיְלָה--לֹא יִשְׁבֹּתוּ
.

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

(Copied and pasted from here.)

When we think about Resh Lakish's proof text, we notice two things right away: it has nothing to do with Shabbat, and it has nothing to do with non-Jews. We also note that he changed the meaning of "night and day"--in the proof text, it's an adverb saying when they shall not keep Shabbat; in the original verse it's a noun, listing some of the things that shall not cease.

I understand that Resh Lakish was operating in a different environment than we are. If you tried pulling this, I'd accuse you of being dishonest in your use of the verse.

So, a few questions, none of which I claim to know the answer to. Does it seem likely that Resh Lakish intended this to be an actual halakhah? And are contextomies like this usually considered valid as proof texts?

Many of us Orthodox Jews say things like "If only our non-Orthodox siblings would learn Torah with us, unless they're just being contrary, they'd choose Orthodoxy." Indeed? Among ourselves, we're more honest. If we point out something that's distasteful in Torah, we might get the response "It is distasteful. But it's Torah! What can you do!" To those who haven't accepted what we consider Torah, "But it's Torah" isn't a very convincing argument.

Anyhow, let's imagine someone decides to put us to the test--they decide to try learning Torah with Orthodox Jews. Let's imagine they happen into a discussion of the prohibition on Gentiles keeping the Sabbath. And let's imagine this person sort of generally accepts the Bible but has doubts about rabbinic Judaism--a typical religious non-Orthodox Jew (you should forgive the expression). So in this discussion, this person hears that Gentiles are subject to the death penalty if they keep Shabbat. Distasteful. But there's a biblical proof text. Interesting. Now let's imagine they check the proof text at home and discover that the text has been distorted. Why should this proof text that was good enough for Resh Lakish be good enough for a person living in our culture? "But he was Resh Lakish, and this is just some apikoros (I mean, we'd call this person a tinoq shenishba--a kidnapped infant--if they weren't so obviously an apikoros, which they obviously are, since they object to this proof text)." Well, OK, but we're claiming that an open-minded kidnapped infant is going to accept Orthodoxy if they learn Torah with us. If we claim that such a person is somehow being perverse by not accepting Orthodoxy after open-mindedly learning Torah with us, we're doing a petitio principii, as I always say--we're assuming the truth of what we were setting out to prove, which is logical cheating.

The injured party

2006-11-07T12:50:00.000-06:00

This is from an adult who occasionally supervises some Orthodox Jewish day school students on a volunteer basis (AWOSSOJDSSOAV"B).

Relatively big male child (RBM"C): She scratched me!

Relatively small female child (RSF"C): He was saying things that annoyed me.

AWOSSOJDSSOAV"B: [to RBM"C] Stop annoying her. And [to RSF"C] it is absolutely not OK to physically hurt someone because they're annoying you.

RSF"C: He did this to me [indicating one of those wrist-twisting things].

AWOSSOJDSSOAV"B: [scandalized] Did you really do that?

RBM"C: Not while you were here.

AWOSSOJDSSOAV"B: It doesn't matter whether I was here or not. That's never OK. The whole idea of that is to inflict pain--it's not an unintended consequence. [I don't think that's the exact language AWOSSOJDSSOAV"B used when telling me the story, but that's the idea.--mk]

RBM"C: [to RSF"C] Thanks for doing loshen horeh on me

We could dismiss that last remark as childish snottiness (which in fact it was), and we can snorkle over the fact that the whole episode started with RBM"C telling on RSF"C, but let's not. It actually reflects pretty well the adult O"J attitude toward L"H. He inflicted pain on her, but because she told on him, he became the injured party. Obviously, malicious gossip, and even nonmalicious gossip, is a bad thing, but the O"J ethic on L"H as applied in real life sometimes amounts to nothing more than the schoolyard's "nobody likes a tattle-tale" with rabbinic window dressing.

Krum as a Bagel had an excellent post on lashon hara some months ago.

Happy birthday (or maybe not)

2006-10-22T21:51:00.000-05:00

A few months ago (I guess), in a comment on another judeoblog, I mentioned that James Ussher, a seventeenth-century Irish Anglican archbishop, had calculated the date of the Creation as leil October 23, 4004 BCE ("BCE" being an anachronism in a discussion of Ussher)--more correctly, he publicized the calculation. By doing this, I rekindled my interest in Ussher.

I didn't do the research on Ussher that I'd hoped to do for this post, but I didn't want to let the birthday go by. But is this in fact the birthday? How are dates BCE reckoned? Does October 23 follow October 22, and October 24 follow October 23? Or are they like negative numbers on a number line--October 23, then October 22, then October 21? In the latter case, the date one year after October 23, 1 BCE, is (I think) March 11, 1 CE. (There was no year 0.) That is, October 23 was the 70th day in a "negative" year (preceded by December, November, and eight days of October). So the anniversary of October 23, 1 BCE, would have been the 70th day of 1 CE--March 11 (I think).

More importantly, it's important not to make fun of Ussher. He was, in fact, using the most sophisticated knowledge available to him, just like the rabbis and those of us today who choose to do so.

Here is an excellent 1991 article by Stephen Jay Gould about Archbishop Ussher (except for the very reader-unfriendly virtual pagination, which isn't Gould's fault); here is a Christian Creationist web page that summarizes Ussher's chronology. It might be interesting to compare Ussher's chronology to the one that we follow, which I sort of planned to do. Maybe next birthday. Whenever that is. Bli neder.

Gematria and national security

2006-10-13T05:29:00.001-05:00

This week, someone I know was traveling by airplane, and the three-foot-long opaque hard plastic cylinder in which he was carrying his lulav was "misplaced" by the airline (it was delivered in the wee hours the following morning, and he didn't miss any benching).

Isn't it obvious what happened? Of course it is. It's so obvious that I'm reluctant to put virtual pen to paper to explain it, because it's, as it were, so obvious. Do you see what I'm saying? Of course you do! I mean, it's obvious!

"Lulav" (two lameds, a vav, and a bet) has the gematriatic value of 68. And what is 68? Obviously, as all we b'nei ha-boom know and as all you young folks have heard from us b'nei ha-boom, 68 was the year when all the apikorsim tried to overthrow everything.

Isn't it obvious what happened here? These airline people, they probably don't know from lulavs, they probably don't know from gematria. And yet! And yet the power of the gematria of that lulav made them realize, on some level that they didn't realize they were realizing--i.e., they had a realization, but not a metarealization--as I think I was saying, the gematriatic force of the lulav made them realize on some ineffable level that that opaque plastic cylinder might perhaps maybe be, as they say, "of interest."

You see? You need to pay attention to gematria. So esoteric, and yet so obvious.

Anna Politkovskaya, 1958-2006

2006-10-11T07:40:00.001-05:00

Anna Politkovskaya, זצ״ל (this, this, and this), was assassinated last week. No surprise, I guess. Politkovskaya dedicated her adult life to reporting on human rights abuses in Russia, especially in the second Chechen war. She was a spokesperson for the ordinary oppressed Chechen (and Russian), and she condemned all the oppressors, both in the Russian government and among the Chechen rebels. She got many well-deserved awards from human rights and journalistic organizations; closer to home, she got jailed, poisoned, and threatened with death.

On a personal note, I had the privilege of playing a minor bolt-tightening role in preparing the English translation of one of her books, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, for publication.

People like Politkovskaya put me to shame. I'd like to do more for other people, but it's sometimes inconvenient, and I have more important concerns, like the kashrut of Lake Michigan water.

Distorted quotation

2006-10-10T07:29:00.000-05:00

Warning: this post is nonparochial.

Richard Byrne's "A Collision of Prose and Politics," in the October 13, 2006, issue of Chronicle of Higher Education, is a discussion of some Edward Said-ian criticisms of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. Byrne writes that

Paul Berman (who supported the invasion of Iraq) uses Reading Lolita in Tehran as a case study in how writers respond to totalitarianism--and specifically, he writes, to "Islamism [note the word] as a modern totalitarianism."

Byrne goes on to say (in his own voice, no quotation marks),

it is such readings of Ms. Nafisi, linking her work and personal story to views of Islam [note the word] as totalitarian, that do alarm some observers.

Some other observers, including yours truly, are alarmed by the misquotation. You may believe Islam is totalitarian. Maybe, maybe not, but that isn't what Berman said. I don't know whether Byrne himself is responsible for the misquotation, or whether some editor at the Chronicle, working in a pompous and uninformed mode, decided that "Islamism" isn't really a word. Either way, it's alarming and unacceptable.

Avinu Malkeinu

2006-09-10T06:43:00.000-05:00

Section 1

Section 1 consists of the first three lines. It's just an introduction--it's us, we've sinned, for the sake of your name forgive us.

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Section 5

In section 5, we finally get to the well known song, up to the words we've been trying to figure out, eyn banu ma'asim: we have no deeds, or we have no deeds in us.

מעשה.

This is 'aseh:

עשה.

The similarity should be very clear.

Section 6

Well, now we've figured out what the heck "eyn banu ma'asim" means. Section 6 is the first of the two bonus sections. The song continues with "'aseh 'imanu tzedakah vahesed"--treat us with charity and lovingkindness. I propose an alternative reading, based on ignoring idiom and translating it on a word-by-word basis. 'Imanu literally means "together with us." Translating this word by word, we get, "Together with us, do charity and lovingkindness." Under this reading, we're no longer dwelling on what we can't do; we're now volunteering to what we can--to collaborate with God on charity and lovingkindness. Actually, we're inviting God to collaborate with us on this.

Section 7

Kashrut

2006-06-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

In a comment to a post by Orthomom about bullying in schools, Fox wrote,

I don't go around like the "niceness police", but I do make it a point to support people and institutions that value kindness to others. I only shop where I am treated nicely, and I don't eat in homes where a well-known hechsher is served with a dose of unkindness. My husband, by the way, thinks I'm crazy. But why would I trust the kashrus of people to whom human dignity means so little?

I've wondered about this too. Fox's approach takes it out of the aesthetic realm ("these people make me want to puke") to a halakhic one. Also, it correctly treats the situation as the problem of the nasty folks instead of a problem of the people who want to avoid them ("it's my problem, I puke too easily").

So what's the halakhic situation? We're not supposed to trust the kashrut of people who aren't shomerei mitzvot. The criterion is usually that apparent shomerei shabbat are trustworthy on kashrut. Can we use other criteria?

An anecdote. I once had Shabbat lunch by the Whoevers (not their real name); one of the Whoevers and some of their guests spent a lot of time griping obnoxiously and maliciously about some neighbor of theirs who in nice weather spends the day sitting on the porch with her bare feet on a chair. In the uplifting version of the story--a version I never tell anyone because it didn't happen that way--I say, "Who cares? It's not like you're saying she spends her time doing malicious gossip or something that's actually serious. And this is all lashon hara anyway. You persist in your gossip? A bentcher if you please. Good day to you [harumph]."

But that's not what happened. (These quotation marks are gisties, not verbatims.) After a bunch of this stuff, one of the gossipers said, "And remember when the Ifyouwills' son's bike was stolen? We were all sure her son"--the son of the object of the gossip--"had taken it. It turned out someone else did. But we were so sure her son did, which just goes to show you how disreputable she is." At this point I finally protested. "Excuse me, but the fact that some people were sure her son stole it doesn't reflect badly on her; it reflects badly on those who hate her so much that they assumed this about her. And the really sad and absurd part is that some people are still using this as some sort of indictment of her."

I didn't respond until this hoohah had reached a high threshold of absurdity, and I was responding more to the absurdity than to the malice in the air. I don't come off well in this story.

I wasn't invited back, which is good because it saved me the trouble of coming up with wimpy excuses for declining the invitations. But the question that's been bugging me is similar to the one that Fox eloquently raises--"Why would I trust the kashrus of people to whom human dignity means so little?" Fox makes it into a halakhic issue, not a matter of mere dislike.

I am not a halakhist, so all I can offer is a bunch of questions. As Hillel said in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic. "If you can't take it, don't dish it out." Yonatan paraphrases this and uses it as his gloss on ve'ahavta lere'akha kamokha--love your associate like yourself. In what I believe is a nonhalakhic statement, we're told this is the most important law of the Torah. Does the behavior described above violate ve'ahavta lere'akha kamokha? If so, does the violation of the most important law render questions of shemirat Shabbat irrelevant? I mean, it means they're not shomer mitzvot on the most important mitzvah, right? But OK. Let's say the ve'ahavta lere'akha kamokha approach is a nonstarter. We hear that there's not supposed to be hostile talk on Shabbat. Is this halakhah, or is it just pious stuff that we say to each other? If it is halakhah, is malicious gossip (or any other malicious speech) a form of chillul Shabbat, in which case we can distrust their kashrut on Shabbat grounds after all?

If you have insights into any of this, I'd appreciate your comments. Don't worry, I understand that you're not my local Orthodox rabbi and I won't take your word as law.

Lehavdil!

2006-05-08T08:43:00.000-05:00

As you go through my archive of previous posts, you may be asking yourself, "How come this Mike guy doesn't use 'lehavdil!' more often?"! I'm glad you asked. Although in this case "more often" means "at all."

Among us Orthodox Jews, "lehavdil" (literally meaning "to separate" or "to distinguish") is used to mean "God forbid anyone should think you or I mean to make such a comparison." For example, if you said "Orthodox services are for those Jews who like the Latin Mass," you might well follow this with "lehavdil!"; if you don't, one or more of your listeners might say it for you (if you're foolish enough, and I know such a person, to say it to actual listeners). Or if you decry what Muslims seem to be learning in many of their yeshivas ("lehavdil!").

I don't use "lehavdil" (except as a verb meaning "to separate" or "to distinguish"). When I take it seriously, I see it as an attempt to micromanage someone else's speech to make sure it doesn't deviate from the communal orthodoxy (with a small o). It also assumes people don't know an analogy when they hear one. When I take it less seriously (and indeed it is often used jokily, especially when people use it to comment on their own speech), it strikes me as very self-congratulatory. "Ah, it's us, 'us' as in 'we,' meaning we who would never use such an analogy without saying 'lehavdil!'!" I guess one more self-congratulatory communal tic among us OJs is no big deal; on the other hand, who needs it, since we have plenty of them already?