short (and medium) takes

[cellio]

Yesterday I heard two songs (one from a psalm) from a group with the unlikely name "Ooolites" (or perhaps technically "Malcolm Dalglish and the..."). Very skilled singers (no vibrato! do you know how hard that is?!), nice harmonies, pleasant sound. They seem to have two albums. I don't know how representative these two tracks are of the albums, but I think I'm going to have to find out.

From Slashdot by way of siderea: the "why your anti-spam proposal won't work" form letter.

At last night's board meeting I had a wording quibble (a matter of precision and clarity) over a proposed bylaws change. One of the other board members suggested that I was being overly picky because I'm a technical writer. Hello? This is a matter of law. Law should be precise and clear. I happen to be in a profession that emphasizes that; this is an asset. (We have a couple lawyers on the board; I'm surprised one of them didn't speak up.) Sheesh -- amateurs. :-)

Speaking of law, I'm reading from Mishpatim tomorrow morning -- the "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" section. We are used to thinking of this as being harsh (sharia, anyone? no thanks), which is why the rabbis reinterpreted it to monetary damages. But with that interpretation, I wonder if this is actually lenient. Consider civil damages today in the US, where payments sometimes seem to be way out of proportion to actual damage, and are wildly inconsistent. And we distinguish based on who the victim is; the torah does not.

Twice within the past couple weeks I've been approached by people on the streets selling raffle tickets. Both conversations began with "would you like to buy a raffle ticket?" and "what for?"; then they diverged. One said "for Hillel Academy"; the other said "for a $5000 drawing". (The latter was from a veterans' group.) I knew intellectually that Judaism (and hence, Jewish culture) approaches charity differently from the world at large (or at least its US instantiation), but it's been a while since the difference has been that obvious. In the Jewish world (at least the parts I've seen), the cause is the important thing. In fact, the word usually translated as "charity" -- "tzedakah" -- doesn't really mean that; it's closer to "justice". I actually haven't even looked to see what the prize is for the Hillel raffle ticket I bought. In the broader culture, though, you have to sell the prize; it's assumed, I guess, that people won't just buy a ticket to support a good cause and you have to make it worth their while. Which partially explains the deluge of mailing labels, calendars, stuffed animals, umbrellas, and such that appear in my mailbox (and serve as anti-motivators).

I particularly like this take on the rainbow meme, shamelessly stolen from xiphias:

My God says "Justice, justice shall you pursue", wants people to work toward a fair and equitable world, and believes in love, honor, and respect. Sorry about yours.

Comments

[mishtaneh.livejournal.com]

the "why your anti-spam proposal won't work" form letter

Hm, it approaches but doesn't quite include "I cast PKI; your plan founders".

We are used to thinking of this as being harsh (sharia, anyone? no thanks), which is why the rabbis reinterpreted it to monetary damages. But with that interpretation, I wonder if this is actually lenient.

I'm under the impression that that was the idea; the rabbis preferred to give the benefit of the doubt in order to avoid gross miscarriages of justice. (See also how they effectively legislated away almost all of the death penalties specified in Torah by setting the requirements so high that they couldn't be met.)

(Also, I get the impression that harshness was only part of it; several of the Talmudic arguments against its literal interpretation pointed out that e.g. "an eye for an eye" doesn't work literally when the offender is blind.)

raffle tickets

For several years now I've strongly preferred giving only in ways that don't involve returns: I don't generally do raffles (if it's a good cause I'll offer a no-strings-attached check instead), I don't take "premiums" when donating to PBS/PRI/NPR stations, etc. They need the money; they have enough overhead as it is; they shouldn't be wasting money on thanking me, they have better uses for it.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

I always thought of tzedakah as "righteousness" more than "justice." That may be somewhat self-serving; I see tzedakah as related to mercy, and I see mercy and justice as antonyms. After all, no one just convicted throws himself on the "justice" of the court. :-)

[sethg]

The main difference (relevant to the discussion here) between US tort law and the law of nezikin in halakha is that US tort law allows punitive damages and halakha doesn't.

But halakha also does not recognize the existence of limited-liability corporations, and it reallocates everyone's real estate every fifty years. (The latter was especially significant during the times when real estate was virtually the only kind of wealth worth having, those times being between the invention of agriculture and the Industrial Revolution.)

If the US tort law were reformed to eliminate punitive damages, but the other laws of property remained intact, then a large corporation could foist all sorts of dangerous crap onto its customers, employees, and neighbors, and treat the occasional damage suit as a cost of doing business. (This is basically the way big brokerage houses treat SEC regulations.)

In a state run entirely by halakha, anyone committing a tort would risk losing a big chunk of his or her wealth in a damages suit, even if they didn't have to pay punitive damages.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I remember a fairly recent discussion where the leader was saying that the eye for an eye thing was actually about mercy and making punishments fit crimes. He (I think it was a he but I'm completely failing to remember the actual context) was saying that part of it was an effort to prevent escalation and feuds caused by retribution. I had never thought about it in that way. I'd think that method of justice usually sounds harsh to someone looking at it from our times. Things like this help bring home the point to me that scripture needs to be interpreted with knowledge of the context in which it was written.