Monica

I've taken classes from Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) before and even written about some of them. The session on self-driving cars and priorities in saving lives still sticks with me (and was relevant in the Hadar class on medical triage). I've just signed up for Beyond Right: The Values that Shape Judaism's Civil Code, which has the following description (stashing here for my future reference in case that link stops working):

Talmudic analysis and mind-bending logic have long been a hallmark of Jewish scholarship. But buried beneath much of the discussion and legalese are core Jewish values that fuel so much of the debate. This course examines a number of key legal issues that disclose fundamental ethical considerations that serve as the engine of Jewish civil law.

1. Beyond Good Neighbors: Most laws are designed to protect the rights of people and their property. But Judaism’s civil code is driven by a different goal. Explore how laws of damages and disputes support a uniquely Jewish view of the human mission.

2. Beyond Restitution: In seeking to restore the rights of plaintiffs, Jewish courts actively assist offenders in achieving full repentance too. Why? Discover the advantage of properly undoing damage over mere compensation.

3. Beyond Taking Offense: You may feel a moral urge to speak up against an offensive action. But might you have a legal responsibility to deter someone from certain behaviors? Judaism says: Yes. In this lesson, we discuss why and when.

4. Beyond Personal Freedom: With 613 commandments in the Torah and myriad rules expounded in the Talmud, can Judaism ever be called “liberating”? Let’s delve into the Exodus, the covenant, and the ways in which laws can lead to the purest human freedom.

5. Beyond Lawful Ownership: Is the claim of ownership anything more than a subjective social agreement? A foundation of Chassidic thought is that material possessions contain spiritual energy that is specific to their owners. Let’s consider the owner’s rights and responsibilities through this lens.

6. Beyond Presumption of Innocence: While a presumption of innocence can protect defendants from liability, it is not quite a declaration of uprightness. Jewish law goes so far as to presume every person’s core goodness. See how this view can lead us to a truly upright world.

Lesson 5 seems a little out of place, just from that description, but we'll see how it plays out.

JLI produces classes but doesn't conduct them directly. I'll be attending a locally-taught class using their materials and syllabus (same teacher as the previous classes I've taken). Past classes have been discussion-heavy and this class offers a Zoom option, so I'm not sure how that'll be managed. We'll see. (My understanding is that people can attend our session via Zoom, not that there will be a separate Zoom-only session.)

Shabbat's torah portion was Ki Tisa, which includes the episode of the golden calf. For those who don't know, each torah portion has an associated haftarah from some other part of the Hebrew bible that is thematically connected (because Roman persecution, originally). The haftarah for Ki Tisa is the passage from 1 Kings 18 about Eliyahu and the prophets of Ba'al on Mount Carmel.

I gave approximately the following introduction before reading the haftarah on Saturday.

There is a famous story in the talmud where one rabbi is arguing against all of the others on a point of law. When he can't convince them with logic, he starts calling on miraculous testimony: if I'm right let that tree prove it, he says, and the tree gets up and walks across the courtyard. The rabbis respond: we don't learn law from trees. Ok, if I'm right then let that stream prove it, and the stream runs backwards. We don't learn law from streams, they answer. Finally a voice from heaven confirms he's right -- and the rabbis answer, lo bashamayim hi, the torah is not in heaven. That is, God gave us the torah and the responsibility to interpret it, and we don't listen to heavenly voices.

The story is funny (and on Saturday most people laughed). Or rather, it's funny if you stop there, which most tellings do. But if you keep reading, the story takes a darker turn; this argument leads to much death and destruction. And if you back up to the mishna that prompted all this discussion in the g'mara, you'll find there's a larger point to the story. It's not really about an oven.

The story of Eliyahu on Mount Carmel makes me think of this talmudic story. We love the Eliyahu story, full of daring and chutzpah and the defeat of Ba'al and the people finally seeming to acknowledge God. It's a great story! But when we read haftarot, excerpts from the rest of Tanakh, it's easy to miss context.

The next thing that happens after this is that Eliyahu kills the 450 prophets of Ba'al, the bad king's bad wife threatens him, and he flees into the wilderness and a different haftarah. Eliyahu's in the wilderness, God sends a messenger to feed him so he won't die, and he finds his way to the cave where God asks him: why are you here, Eliyahu? Eliyahu answers that he has been zealous for God, the people have rejected God and slain all the prophets, and they want to kill him too. God then sends an earthquake (but God was not in the earthquake), a fire (but God wasn't there either), and a wind (ditto), and finally Eliyahu finds God in the still small voice.

God then asks again, why are you here Eliyahu? And Eliyahu gives the exact same answer, word for word. God tells him to go back and appoint Elisha as his successor (among other things).

Eliyahu doesn't exit the story at this point; he's still around as a prophet. But it feels to me like this encounter was a pivotal moment, set in motion by the showdown with Ba'al. It feels to me like Eliyahu was supposed to learn something from the encounter, about how the still small voice can be more powerful than the earthquake and fire -- that these encounters were supposed to change Eliyahu. I would expect a changed Eliyahu to give a different answer the second time God asked the question. It feels like a missed opportunity for a stronger relationship with God -- like Eliyahu failed a test.

I still love the story of Mount Carmel, but knowing what comes after casts the story in a different light for me, like reading on in the talmud changed my understanding of the rabbis and the voice from heaven.

I'm so excited!

Last Wednesday, an active user on Mi Yodeya asked on meta about trying out Codidact. By the end of the day it has something like 18 votes, which is a strong show of community support on this site.

On Thursday (by which time it had picked up a few more votes), this same user proposed it on Codidact's "site proposals" section. Several people participated in that discussion, including Isaac, the founder of Mi Yodeya (who is one of the moderators there). Isaac also posted an answer on the Mi Yodeya meta question commending my involvement.

On Friday it was pretty clear to us on the Codidact team that the proposal had the support it needed to go forward. We tested Hebrew fonts and the lead developer added a Hebrew keyboard for typing posts, adapted from a userscript a Yodeyan had written for use there. (Eventually Stack Exchange took that script and built it in, so not having it would be a regression for our users on Codidact.) We tried to figure out what to use for a logo.

Saturday night after Shabbat we talked about some final details. Sunday morning we launched the site.

Monday I had a brief conversation with somebody at Sefaria about their source linker, a server-side package that finds citations (like "Genesis 1:1") on web pages and turns them into links to source texts on Sefaria. After a bit of poking and a code review we turned that on. Much excitement on our site ensued.

It's now been a few days, and Judaism Codidact is going great so far! We're still having some initial meta discussions, including what data to import from Mi Yodeya and whether to broaden scope in certain ways, but that doesn't stop us from asking and answering questions right now, which people are doing. People I miss from Mi Yodeya are showing up, and I hope in time more will. I've missed my friends. I've missed being part of this community.

We asked Isaac to be an initial moderator on the Codidact site, and he wrote a thoughtful explanation of why he accepted on Mi Yodeya. This is the model of collaboration and cooperation. Online Jewish learning is not a zero-sum game; Mi Yodeya and Judaism Codidact can exist side by side, working together to spread knowledge and build community. I'm delighted to have him on Codidact along with Mi Yodeya.

Working from home seems to be mostly going ok for my company. We have several standing "coffee break" video chats each week for the human connection and are using video more for other meetings. We have learned how to add custom background images to Microsoft Teams and this is a source of amusement. (I would like to find some from Babylon 5, particularly images from (a) Minbar and (b) inside the station, but have had no luck so far.) My team has a new person who started a few weeks ago, so he started in quarantine and hasn't yet been to the office. I'm his mentor, so I'm trying to make sure he's getting all the support and human connection he needs. The situation seems roughest on the people who live alone, though the ones with small children at home have challenges too. I'm fortunate to have Dani and the cat.

I have read a little more fiction than usual, some of it made available for free by authors because of the quarantine. Thank you! One that I just finished is Dragon of Glass by Zoe Chant, a delightful, lightweight novel about a transplant from another world and the woman who released him; watching him try to fit into our world is a lot of fun. Tor is making the Murderbot novellas available this week for free (leading up to a novel release next month); I'd read the first a while back but hadn't read the others yet, so this is good timing. I also have a gift waiting from a Kickstarter for a different book (while you're waiting and stuck at home, here...). I also just read (not free) The Body in the Building, a novella by a friend and fellow SE refugee. The point-of-view character is an architect who discovers problems with a major project, and then discovers that those problems were only the tip of an iceberg of bigger problems... I figured out the mystery before the reveal but also fell for some misdirection, so neither too easy nor too hard.

I have been spending more time in the kitchen. Yes I'm cooking all our meals at home aside from very occasional takeout from local restaurants, but also: with the food supply being sometimes erratic, I've upped the produce deliveries and am doing some low-key preserving. I've never canned and don't have the equipment, but I'm pickling things (to refrigerate, not shelf-stable). So far I've pickled eggs, beets, cauliflower, and jalapenos, and will do some carrots next. I also plan to dry some fruit, dried fruit not requiring refrigeration. (I'm trying to keep the fridge full.) I haven't been able to get bread flour since Pesach ended, so I guess I'll try making bread with all-purpose flour. (Also haven't been able to get rye flour.) I would like to get some more seedlings for container gardening, but I don't know if I want to go to Home Depot for them and nobody delivers. (Insert rant about how Home Depot gets to sell plants because they sell stuff for home repair, but local nurseries had to close.)

Someone I know indirectly from Mi Yodeya suggested a book and a series of videos on Reb Nachman that look very personally relevant. (I've read one chapter of the book and seen one of the videos so far; more soon.) I joined an online talmud class (by R' Ethan Tucker of Hadar). A friend pointed out to me that since we're all stuck at home anyway, synagogues in other cities are just as available to me as my local ones. There's one in DC that seems like a good fit for me. Closer to home, my synagogue's two rabbis and cantor each hold a weekly open chat on Zoom, so I'll get to see my rabbi that way tomorrow.

Our choir director sends out daily music selections with accompanying (short) history essays. I'm enjoying these.

I have barely watched any TV.

The torah, originally addressed to a more agriculturally-oriented community, has laws about livestock. First-born (male) animals of kosher species are to be given to the temple. First-born male donkeys, though not kosher, are specifically to be redeemed from the kohanim (priests). This reminds us of the killing of the first-born in Egypt.

(There is an analogue of this for first-born sons, called pidyon ha-ben, which observant families do.)

The obligation of pidyon petter chamor, redeeming the first-born donkey, still applies today, but is rarely done. A local rabbi wanted to perform this mitzvah, so he arranged to purchase some donkeys that were pregnant for the first time. (It only applies if a Jew owns the mother and thus the offspring at birth.) He did this through Kollel, who allowed people to buy shares in the donkeys and thus be able to participate. The last of the three donkeys produced an eligible foal.

I attended the ceremony today. (When am I likely to ever see this again?) The young donkey -- named Jacob -- was of course present, as was the sheep that would be used to redeem him. The basic idea is this: the donkey belongs to the kohanim by virtue of being a first-born male, but the owner of the donkey can pay a kohein to be allowed to keep his donkey. The torah-specified price of the donkey is a lamb or kid. The kohein can then do whatever he wants with the animal he receives.

Here is a video explaining the proceedings in more detail (7:52), and here is the video of the ceremony (2:15) minus the first few seconds (sorry).

( pictures )

A friend of ours organized a private showing of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 for 60 or so of us this morning. (Apparently if you show up with enough people and don't take away a prime showing time, some theatres will actually do this. Our showing was at 10:30AM.) We haven't seen the first movie, but we wanted to go for the social aspect at least. Reading the plot synopsis of the first one on Wikipedia was sufficient to be able to follow this one. We probably missed some in-jokes, based on when people were laughing when we weren't, but that's ok. Groot (Groot II? Groot Jr?) was very entertaining, and they had some fun schtick with him in the credits. (Do watch the closing credits.)

Instead of tickets we were given buttons, each of which had one of the characters. I didn't know these characters in advance, so I traded my "blue guy" for a "cute raccoon". My comics-reading friends tolerate me anyway. :-)

In completely other news... one of those "Jewish things" you might occasionally hear about is pidyon haben, the redemption of the firstborn. The idea is that firstborn sons "should" serve in the temple, but God instead assigned that duty to the tribe of Levi. Nonetheless, if a woman's first-born child is a male, the father needs to "redeem" the child by paying a kohein (a priest, a subset of Levi) a few silver coins. There's a ritual for it, which I have never seen.

The torah commands this not just for sons but also for certain first-born livestock. I remember, back when I first learned about this, asking a friend who is a kohein, "so, in principle if I have livestock I can make you take my first-born goat instead of paying you for it?". Funny, but he was reluctant to give me his shipping address after that. But anyway, this is a real thing (pidyon peter chamor), but most of us don't have livestock and never see it. But it's a mitzvah. So I learned today that a local organization has purchased three pregnant donkeys with the specific goal of performing this mitzvah. Two have already given birth to female offspring (and this only applies to males), but there's still one more chance. This sounds neat. (I do not know if the baby donkey is required to be present for the transaction or if it stays on the farm.)

Readers who use source-control systems might be interested in this article about Git usability. The graph of the Git learning curve is spot-on. This is timely for me, as I am in charge of migrating our documentation group from SVN to Git and, in the process, establishing a sane branching model.

And let me say this. There recently have been reports that the new Administration plans to force Muslim-Americans to register for some sort of master government list.

Look, Islamic extremism is a threat to us all. But as Jews, we know what it means to be registered and tagged, held out as different from our fellow citizens.

As Jews, we know the righteous and just response. All of us have heard the story of the Danish king who said if his country’s Jews had to wear a gold star…all of Denmark would too.

So I pledge to you right here and now, because I care about the fight against anti-Semitism, that if one day in these United States, if one day Muslim-Americans will be forced to register their identities, then that is the day that this proud Jew will register as a Muslim.

Because fighting prejudice against the marginalized is not just the fight of those minorities. It’s our fight. Just as the fight against anti-Semitism is not only the fight of us Jews. It’s everyone’s fight.