daf bit: Menachot 64

[cellio]

Today's daf discusses the omer (barley) offering. The mishna teaches that it should be brought from what grows nearby, but if the crop near Jerusalem is not yet ripe it can be brought from anywhere. Why this preference? The g'mara says the torah says "fresh grain shall you bring", and if it comes from farther away it will not be fresh. Or, alternatively, because one must not pass up the first opportunity to perform the mitzvah. (64b)

In other Jewish news, the Jewish Life & Learning Stack Exchange site is now in beta. Yes, there are other Q&A and learning sites out there, but the community-driven approach of Stack Exchange is a little different. It'll be interesting to see how this one develops.

Comments

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that the StackExchange site becomes less Orthocentric. I understand that that's its roots, but it has got to broaden, and in a way that's respectful and, as my kids' school calls it, intentionally pluralist.

[cellio]

I agree. Do you have any thoughts on how we could nudge it in that direction?

and so it begins

[cellio]

I received the following edit notification on something I posted: Remove references to Conservative Judaism, which is out-of-scope in a site devoted to, per the FAQ, "Jewish law and tradition". (This comment did not come from the person marked as the latest editor; it was an earlier edit, apparently.)

Naturally I disagree, but there doesn't appear to be a way to respond and I'm not going to get drawn into an editing back-and-forth. (In this case there was a legitimate reason to make that edit; it's the reasoning I disagree with, not the edit.) So I will wait and watch, hoping that this commenter is the exception and not the rule.