a man with one watch knows what time it is

[cellio]

My congregation tries to have recent b'nei mitzvah do the torah readings on the high holy days, but they sometimes need adults to fill in and I usually get tapped for this. So it was no surprise to get a piece of mail on Thursday with a portion. They don't need to mail me the portion (just telling me the verses would be fine), but it's easier on the office to mail things out to everybody, I'm told. So now I have another piece of paper that I can't recycle because it contains the divine name; into the stack it goes, and someday I'll make that stack someone else's problem. So far so good.

Then today came the audio CD, which I also don't need, but it's easier on the office... But what I am to make of the one-verse offset between the written passage and what's on the CD? Oops. (It's written on the CD, else I never would have noticed because I never would have played it.)

I can handle it either way (in fact, I've already negotiated the boundary with the person before me, whose CD was also off by one), but I hope this doesn't mess anyone else up. Or rather, I hope the other readers are also observant enough to notice the problem before they get too far. Maybe I better call the office on Tuesday.

Comments

[cellio]

I don't think there is a problem with digital representations; enough people use digital prayer books on their PDAs that I think I would have heard if there were a general objection there. I mean, I'm sure there's someone in Mea Shearim who objects, but I'm not aware of a mainstream objection.

So now I wonder what the understanding of the digital case is: is it that the name was never "written" in the first place if it's only digital so it can't be "erased"? That's the best I can do right now, but it's purely a guess.

As for the DOS attack, I remember some concern a few years ago when someone (forget who, forget context) ran an ad in a major newspaper (NYT?) that contained the tetragramaton. I remember discussion about people trying to collect those pages so they wouldn't go into the trash. (I didn't get the relevant newspaper so I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the details.) So for your DOS attack you don't even need to come to my door, it sounds like, though I hope you will use this new knowledge only for good.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I wouldn't think there would be a mainstream objection to deleting digital versions because it would be crippling: you could not use spam filters just in case something was accidentally deleted. That's one of the things I enjoy about your posts about religion, though: rules should (in my opinion) be discussed and evolve in interpretation as the world changes around them. That's something that is missing from many branches of Christianity.

And of course I only use knowledge for good purposes. Mwa ha ha... ;-)

[geekosaur]

My understanding is that digital reproduction is ephemeral (both CRT and LCD screens need to be "refreshed" multiple times per second to retain their contents) so it doesn't apply.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that the Kindle would fall somewhere in between a printed page and a CRT / LCD (as I understand it, once the image is presented, it remains until explicitly erased - doesn't use any energy to maintain ... kind of like "etch-a-sketch" - the image stays until shaken)?

[richardf8]

I have downloaded Mechon Mamre's bible onto my PDA. It contains Names. Their counsel is don't bring it up on the screen in the privy. From this I would infer that stored digital representations don't count and that what appears on the computer screen isn't really writing, and therefore is not susceptible to erasure but respect due a Name should be afforded it while it is up.