Saturday

[cellio]

Yesterday we went to the bar mitzvah of the son of friends. Dani went with me, which was very nice of him (he doesn't really do religion). I noticed that he was comparing the English and Hebrew in the siddur; Gates of Prayer is pretty bad about that, and this seemed to provide him with some amusement.

During the Torah reading, when we got to the part about Chava telling the snake that not only was she not permitted to eat the fruit but she wasn't even permitted to touch it, I leaned over to him and said "this may be the oldest g'zeirah" (fence around the Torah), and he had to stifle a laugh. Oops. :-) (A fence around the Torah is when the rabbis rule that you can't take some otherwise-permitted action because it might lead you to a forbidden one. For example, on Shabbat you are not to handle matches; the actual forbidden act is kindling fire. That sort of thing. In this case, God told them not to eat but didn't say anything -- at least that got recorded -- about touching.)

Dani asked me where the tradition that the fruit is an apple comes from. I don't know; I do know that there are Jewish sources that argue for other fruits. (I've heard pomogranate and I think date.) Dani argues for chestnuts on the theory that Mark Twain can't be wrong.

The luncheon was very nice, and several people made a point of thanking Dani for coming (including my rabbi). I was able to steer us toward people he would enjoy talking with, and we lucked into a couple more at the table we sat down at, so I think it went well.

Last night we went to a gaming session. While this wasn't planned, the theme turned out to be robots. When we arrived there was a game of Ricochet Robot in progress, so we joined in. (It's adaptable that way.) I'm not fast enough with that kind of visual reasoning, it appears. Then we played a long game of Robo Rally. I started off doing poorly with navigation -- combination of bad cards and not wrapping my brain around some of the hazards on the board (conveyer belts, gears, pools of slime, that sort of thing). But I recovered and at one point was in the lead, though another player who had been close behind me managed to slip past and win. The last flag was in a really hard spot to reach, and he had a gadget that allowed him to tag it from nearby rather than having to land on it. It was a fun game, though not one I'd play often.

We had exactly seven people, so before we settled on Robo Rally someone proposed Diplomacy. I felt bad about vetoing it under near-optimal conditions (you want exactly seven people), but I really hate that style of game. Sorry, guys. I hope they'll find a seventh and play some other time, because Dani enjoys it and hasn't played in a long time.

(My objection to Diplomacy is all about the politics and not at all about the world conquest, by the way.)

Comments

[goljerp]

How does one reconcile that with support for a halachic system that includes many such fences? I mean, doesn't that mean that fences do harm because they lead people to either violate them or, by keeping them, add to the torah?

Well, that is a tension in the text. I'm not sure how the Rabbis explain this contradiction. It's possible it just isn't mentioned, which works because it's "just" midrash. A sexist response might be that fences made by women lead to violations, but I don't think that anyone actually says that - although one could (only slightly less obnoxiously) say that fences made by non-Rabbis are bad. Now that I think of it, I think the halachic party line is something like "Rabbinic fences are not an addition to Torah; they're Oral Torah, so it's OK." Nowadays (especially among some Orthodox groups) people seem to be keen on erecting new fences and not worrying about these counterweights. Which I think is a pity. In my opinion, Halacha is, has, and should be continually evolving - but the evolution shouldn't always be to a more restrictive practice.