cellio | Entries tagged with judaism

The person who murdered my friends at Tree of Life has just been sentenced to death. There will presumably be years of appeals, but it still feels like there's some closure. I mean, as much as there can be when people we cared about are gone and obviously aren't coming back.

I have complicated feelings about the death penalty. In this case I found the defense's arguments wholly unconvincing. We're supposed to believe that someone who spent months planning an attack, who talked coherently about it on social media, who carried it out methodically, and who showed no remorse -- should get a pass because he had a difficult childhood? Lots of people have difficult childhoods but don't turn into bigoted murderers, y'know? I'm no expert, but it seems to me that he was clearly capable of forming intent, and did. I guess the defense made the best arguments they could; they just didn't have much to work with.

I've noticed that the local Jewish newspaper does not use his name, and neither shall I. We don't need to give him word-fame and help make him a martyr. He's a nobody, a murderous nobody -- Ploni.

Yesterday's torah portion, Emor, includes one of the "life for life" (death penalty for murder) passages. Locally, the trial for the murderer in the attack at Tree of Life in 2018 has just gotten started. We had a small discussion of the death penalty through that lens.

Many of the victims' families wanted the state to accept the murderer's offer to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison. Some family members pressed for the death penalty. I don't know how prosecutors decide these things, but they decided to have a capital trial instead of accepting the plea.

The systems around the death penalty in the US are badly broken in many ways ranging from injustice to impracticality. Through the lens of civil law and current judicial practice, I personally would prefer that they do the closest legal thing to dropping the guy into an oubliette, keeping him out of circulation while denying the opportunity for grandstanding and martyrdom. Through the lens of Jewish law, however, something struck me yesterday.

The rabbis of the mishna and talmud (in tractate Sanhedrin) were uncomfortable with the death penalty the torah calls for, so they nerfed it. It's very hard to qualify for the death penalty under rabbinic law. In addition to the requirements for eyewitnesses (who themselves face the death penalty for perjury), people must have warned the person beforehand that he was about to commit a capital offense, and he needs to acknowledge that warning. How likely is that? I used to wonder if anybody ever actually did that.

"Screw your optics, I'm going in". That's what the murderer posted on a site where he and others had been discussing the "problem" with Jews.

I don't know what else is in the transcript from that site; I haven't seen it. It sounds like people tried to stop him. Along with everything else -- his social-media activity, the obvious premeditation, the eyewitnesses to the murders, the lack of regret afterward -- it kind of sounds like the talmud's requirements might have been met. It's not a slam-dunk under rabbinic law, but if Jewish law rather than US law were governing this case, it strikes me that this could actually be the rare case that would qualify for the death penalty. And I'd be fine with that.

That's not vengeance talking, though this case is also personal to me (friends, not family). I can support the rabbinic rules for capital cases, theoretical as they seem, because of their many protections and focus on being careful. Example: did you know that a unanimous vote for capital conviction is overturned? Because if nobody had doubts, maybe the judges didn't look hard enough for factors in the accused's favor.

My synagogue has gone through some changes in the last couple years, on top of the changes forced on all of us by the pandemic. Last year we hired a new rabbi and this year we hired a new cantor, and in-person services are more of a thing than they were, so lots of stuff is new together.

The rabbi and the cantor work well together. I already knew this from the morning minyan, but it also carried over to the formal high-holy-day services with all their extra stuff. Later, when all the holidays are over (they aren't yet), I want to ask the rabbi about some of the choices he made, but it was generally fine. It was nice to be together again.

I was asked to read torah, even though I said I'd pretty much have to memorize it because of the vision issues that are why I stopped reading torah on Shabbat. The readings for Rosh Hashana aren't that long, so I could memorize it, and anyway I don't know the special trope for the day so I was going to have to learn the music by rote anyway. That all went fine. I had the last aliyah and I noticed that other people were translating after their readings, so I followed suit on the spur of the moment. Later I realized that most of the others were reading translations, not doing it on the fly. (I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I knew this part.) Ironically, I did need to look at the scroll for that part and there were some stumbles as a result, but on Yom Kippur several people stopped me to tell me how much they liked my RH reading, with specific compliments. Wow.

We have programming all day on Yom Kippur so you don't have to leave if you don't want to. The "learning" slot had two class options, fewer than in the past but I think this worked together. I went to a very good class on the Vidui (confessional) prayer, taught by someone who used to be our associate rabbi 15-20 years ago. (He moved away for another pulpit and returned to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, taking an educational position rather than a pulpit.) We did a close reading of the text compared to the translation in our prayerbook and talked a lot about the word aval.

In some years I've gotten to the end of Yom Kippur on a high, feeling scrubbed clean and energized and stuff. That didn't happen this year. I think some of that is due to some liturgical choices they made. I wonder how much of it is due to having finally been to a traditional Yom Kippur service (last two years) and now I'm more keenly aware of the differences.

For festivals we combine with another congregation and Sukkot was there not here. "There" is a two-mile walk each way for me, so I went to Beth Shalom, a Conservative congregation that also has an occasional musical Shabbat evening service that I've gone to. The people there were very welcoming, the service was complete and yet efficient, and the leaders and speakers were good. I was surprised to be offered an honor (carrying the first torah scroll). I had pleasant conversations with several people I didn't know at the kiddush after. I wonder if I should try to go there next Yom Kippur.

We've been able to have most of our meals in the sukkah this week, though a couple got rained out. This late in the year I didn't have expectations.

Elul is the month before Rosh Hashana. It started about a week ago. The season of repentance and introspection that characterizes the high holy days doesn't begin on Rosh Hashana; it begins earlier, in Elul. (The actual work of making amends and improving ourselves is year-round, of course.)

Even better than making amends is acting in a way to reduce the amount needed. In that nanosecond between seeing or hearing something and jumping to the "obvious" conclusion and acting on it, we can sometimes stop to consider other explanations. There's a lot of hair-trigger absolutist judging happening in our world today, and a small anecdote I saw on Twitter during this season struck me so I'm sharing it.

I almost yelled at a woman looking at an iPhone during Kol Nidre, but I just said "This is one of the most beautiful prayers you'll ever hear." She saw me looking, and explained she was checking her blood sugar. I wished her a healthier New Year. I finally conquered my snark! - LibbyCone

Even when we think we know all the context, we might not know all the context.

Not for Lightweights by Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher) just showed up in my feed. (It looks like a repost; not sure when he wrote it.) He talks about using a sabbatical from his job as a pastor to explore other churches, some quite different from his own. In this post he talks about going to a Byzantine Orthodox service. What he wrote resonated for me:

Pews? We don’t need no stinking pews! Providing seats for worshipers is SO 14th century. Gorgeous Byzantine art, commissioned from a famous artist in Bulgaria. Fully robed priests with censors (those swinging incense thingies). Long, complex readings and chants that went on and on and on. And every one of them packed full of complex, theological ideas. It was like they were ripping raw chunks of theology out of ancient creeds and throwing them by the handfuls into the congregation. And just to make sure it wasn’t too easy for us, everything was read in a monotone voice and at the speed of an auctioneer. [...]

After 50 minutes Shelby leaned over and asked how much longer the service would be. I was trying to keep from locking my knees because my thighs had gotten numb. I showed her the book [which was a summary/guide, not complete text]. We were on page 15. I flipped through the remaining 25 pages to show her how much more there was. Her mouth fell open. [...]

In a day when user-friendly is the byword of everything from churches to software, here was worship that asked something of me. No, DEMANDED something of me.

When I started attending synagogue services, I sometimes found myself at Orthodox or Conservative services. I could barely read Hebrew, and what I could read, I read very slowly. I sure wasn't keeping up. When I got lost, I would find the next kaddish in the book and listen for it to get back on track. (Kaddish shows up a lot of times in a traditional service.) Some things I knew well enough to say; most went over my head. Each time I went I learned a little more. I am still not fluent in the traditional service, though I like to think I would be had I joined a traditional congregation instead of a Reform one.

The Reform movement, for all the good it does in other areas, fails profoundly in supporting prayer growth. That's because the norm is to aim for the lowest common denominator. It's not just that they removed a lot of stuff from the service; it's that what they kept they still simplify. If you're lucky the simplification is just to read a prayer in English, but it's more likely to be a song containing a single phrase from the prayer or, too often, a loosely-related creative English reading. They do this in the name of being welcoming, to make sure everybody there can have a comfortable experience, to make sure no one has to work.

We lose so much by doing this. By trying to make everybody completely comfortable, we impede growth. Growth means going beyond what you already know. It means stretching. It means being temporarily less comfortable.

I'm not saying I want to spend three hours every Shabbat morning listening to rapidly-mumbled Hebrew I don't understand (even though we get to sit for a lot of it). But I want to grow. I want to increase my fluency. And I want to plumb the depths of our actual tradition before ditching that in favor of some modern English poetry that too often misses the mark. There is so much to learn, and every time my congregation replaces a Hebrew prayer with something else, I feel the loss of support from my community in doing that growth.

My Shabbat morning minyan has more traditional content than the norm for Reform, and it was hard-won. Our previous rabbi built that community competence over three decades; when we got a new rabbi who sometimes switched to English for parts we actually know, I took him aside and said "please don't take away the parts we worked for" (and he listened). So far, maybe because he's comparatively new, he hasn't pushed us add more, and sometimes new songs take away some parts and then catch on and now we're singing one line where we used to do a prayer and we've lost another one. And maybe it's a very nice song but it's still a move away from engaging with the prayerbook's traditional content. While I enjoy singing and learning new music, I feel the loss when this happens without some offsetting increase.

I could, I assume, get the growth I seek by going to a traditional synagogue every Shabbat -- it might take years, but just as I went from sounding out basic prayers to reading and comprehending them at speed through repetition and concentration, I assume it would happen there too. I wish I had a path for that growth within my current community. I wish it were considered more acceptable to ask people to work a little, to stretch gradually. If we're there for God -- and I acknowledge that not everybody is -- then we should want to try to do more, shouldn't we?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

An online Jewish community I'm fond of has some unanswered questions that came out of Pesach this year. Can you answer any of them, dear readers?

Why do we designate specific matzot for seder rituals? We break the middle matzah; we eat first from the top one and use the bottom one specifically for the Hillel sandwich. Why? What's the symbolism? (I'm aware of the interpretation that the three matzot symbolize the three "groups" of Jews -- kohein, levi, yisrael -- but that doesn't explain these positional associations.)
If your house is always kosher for Pesach, do you have to search for chameitz? That is, is the command to search for chameitz, period, or is it to search for any chameitz that might be in your house, and if you know there isn't any you skip it?
Why does making matzah require specific intent but building a sukkah doesn't? When making matzah (today I learned), it's not enough to follow the rules for production; you have to have the specific intent of making matzah for Pesach, or apparently it doesn't count. This "intent" rule applies to some other commandments too. But it doesn't apply to building a sukkah; you can even use a "found sukkah", something that happens to fulfill all the requirements that you didn't build yourself, to fulfill the obligation. Why the difference?

I tried searching for answers for these but was not successful. I have readers who know way more than I do (and who can read Hebrew sources better than I can). Can you help?

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 asking about words, not observances or concepts.

When a Jewish boy comes of age, he becomes obligated in the commandments, bar mitzvah. Usually the occasion is marked in the synagogue, which is also called a bar mitzvah. When a Jewish girl comes of age, she becomes obligated in the commandments, bat mitzvah, and she might have a bat mitzvah in the synagogue.

These terms are from the talmud. The word bar literally means "son of" (in Aramaic). The word bat literally means "daughter of". One might also see the term b'nei mitzvah, which is plural, when more than one person is marking the occasion in the same service. The word b'nei is unambiguously plural in Hebrew, unlike the sometimes-numerically-ambiguous "they" in English.

Hebrew is a gendered language; there is no neuter term like "child" in English.

What term are people using for nonbinary or genderfluid people? This is going to come up in my synagogue, and it must have already come up in others, but I don't know what they did. I have some readers who might know: what are people using instead of bar or bat?

While the talmud recognizes four genders, I don't think its conclusions about the other two are going to satisfy most modern people.

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.

I've heard good things about Hadar (formerly Mechon Hadar I think) and their week-long Jewish-learning program every July. But it's usually close to Pennsic, and it involves lodging and travel logistics, and I've never actually gotten there.

This year Pennsic is cancelled and there is no travel and they've moved it online. There is a sample schedule (which I apparently can't directly link to; click on "schedule"). I have been craving meaningful Jewish engagement in this time when many routines have been disrupted.

The theme is, not surprisingly, topical: the torah of Covid-19. There are sessions on triage priorities (what does halacha have to say), Rebbe Nachman on resilience, comforting mourners, praying alone, virtual minyanim, racism, privilege disparities, Tisha b'Av, and more.

I think I will attend. Do I know anybody else who will be doing so?

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.

Today there are large community gatherings to remember -- social-action drives, torah study with a variety of visiting rabbis, and a big memorial service.

And I can't even... I just can't do this with huge crowds. It's too painful, and also there's the irrational nagging voice in the back of my head that says "target" (guess I haven't banished it yet after all), and...

I spent that day hiding at home, and so I will spend today as well.

Healing is hard.

But I went to Shabbat services yesterday as I always do. I will not be driven out from there.

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 )

I'm home from Pennsic. Brief notes in the form of bullet points:

My good friend Yaakov HaMizrachi was elevated to the Order of the Laurel! Yay! The Laurel is the SCA's highest award (peerage) for arts and sciences. He's also now known (additionally) as Yaakov HaMagid, Yaakov the Storyteller. The ceremony felt like a reunion of old friends, and it was a nice touch that they had his son chant the scroll (in Hebrew).
The part of Atlantian court that I attended (because of the previous) was very well-done and engaging. I don't live there, I don't know most of those people, and yet I was not bored. They moved things along without it feeling rushed, and everybody speaking from the stage could be heard clearly. They also mixed it up, instead of doing all recipients of one award and then moving on to the next. Sprinkling the peerages throughout the court works well and, really, it's not a big deal for order members to get up more than once in an evening. (Also, if peerage ceremonies are burdensomely long -- theirs weren't; ours sometimes are -- it's nice to be able to sit down between them.)
I don't think I've ever heard "we're ahead of schedule; let's take a 10-minute break" in the middle of court before, though. I wonder if someone on the stage had an urgent need?
They elevated another bard to the Laurel, and that one sang his oath of fealty. While he was doing so I wondered if the king would respond in song -- and he did. That he used the same melody suggests some advance coordination (beyond "we're singing"), I wonder which of them wrote the king's words.
I had long, enjoyable conversations with both Yaakov and Baron Steffan. I miss the deep email conversations I used to have with both of them, before the great fragmenting of the digital-communication world (some to email, some to blogs/LJ/DW, some to Facebook, some to Google+, some to Twitter, some to places I don't even know about). It's harder to track and stay in touch with people than it used to be.
No I am still not going to start using Facebook. It's frustrating that by declining to do so I miss more and more stuff, but I'm not ready to let yet another thing compete to be the center of my online life. Also, Facebook in particular is icky in some important ways.
SCA local group, that means you too. Plans for a baronial party at Pennsic were, as far as I can tell, announced only on Facebook. (I've checked my email back to the beginning of April, so no I didn't just forget.) And thus I did not bring a contribution for your pot-luck. I do not feel guilty about that.
The Debatable Choir performance went very well. I conducted a quartet singing Sicut Cervus (by Palestrina), which I think went well. Two of the four singers had not previously done a "one voice to a part" song with the choir, and I'm proud of them for stepping up and doing a great job. I hope we got a recording.
I went to a fascinating class on medieval Jewish astrology (taught by Yaakov in persona). I've seen zodiacs in ancient (and modern) Jewish art and in synagogues, and a part of me always wondered how this isn't forbidden. It turns out that astrology is more of an "inclination", a yetzer, than a hard-and-fast truth -- there are stories in the talmud where astrology predicted something bad but the person, through good deeds, avoided the bad outcome. Also, in case you're wondering (like I did, so I asked), the zodiac signs get some solar smoothing, so if there's a leap-month (Adar Bet) there's not a 13th sign in those years.
Our camp has two wooden buildings (besides the house on the trailer, I mean), which we wanted to sell this year because we're making a new kitchen trailer that will replace both of them. We succeeded in selling the larger one (yay!). Maybe we'll be able to sell the other next year. (We'll set it up and use it for something else, because potential buyers would want to see it set up.)
Overall the weather was good. There were big storms on the first Friday ("quick, grab snacks and alcohol and head for the house!" is our camp's rallying cry), but only occasional rain after that and it wasn't sweltering-hot, which makes a huge difference.
The last headcount I saw was around 10,500.

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.

A few days ago I wrote about the first session of a class applying talmudic reasoning to modern legal cases. The first class covered cases of unintended benefit: somebody, in the process of committing a crime, accidentally causes benefit to the victim -- does he deserve leniency? I noted that the class gives CLE credits and wondered in passing how that worked; why would the American Bar Association care about Jewish law, interesting as it is?

I've now had a chance to read an essay that was an appendix to the class materials, and that essay did a good job of drawing connections. I also learned a new term from it, "moral luck", which I gather is a term of art in some circles. (I'm not sure why "moral" exactly.) Example: a driver recklessly races down the road and hits a pedestrian. Another driver, equally reckless and speedy, almost hits a pedestrian but the pedestrian manages to jump out of the way. In both cases the drivers had the same intent and behavior; it's only that the second one got lucky and didn't hit anybody. But even though the drivers were the same, one will be punished much more severely than the other; the one who didn't hit anybody benefited from "moral luck".

We saw this in the case of the fisherman who saves a child from drowning. The sages in the talmud disagree about whether he is nonetheless liable for violating Shabbat (he didn't even know about the child so had no intent to save him); later the halacha is determined as I described in the previous post.

The essay then contrasts this with how US criminal courts operate. Courts deal in crimes, the author notes, and not primarily in outcomes (caveats to follow). It notes that in criminal law the interested party is the state; criminal law doesn't much care about victims per se. Because a criminal case is prosecuted on behalf of the whole community (bundled up into the state), a positive outcome for the victim isn't very important. Laws are about establishing the rules of society, in which smashing car windows to steal laptops from inside just isn't ok. (Smashing a car window because you saw the dog that was going to die from heatstroke is different, and not addressed.)

However, the essay goes on to note, prosecutors have discretion in whether to bring charges and which charges to bring. Further, there is wiggle room come sentencing time (assuming a conviction), and victim impact statements are often allowed.

While it appears that intent is secondary to action -- we prosecute for what people do, not what people want to do, and that's how the one reckless driver evades penalties -- the concept of punishing intention isn't absent from American law. We have laws about "hate crimes", which is purely a matter of judging intent. (I have, I think, written in the past about how I think these well-intentioned laws are nonetheless flawed. Thought-crime laws give me pause, and laws that seem to value different victims of the same crimes differently seem pretty iffy to me. But they're a thing, and they're a thing that's probably not going to go away.)

That's all about criminal law. The essay then turns to torts, which are between people (not the state) and involve the payment of damages. It uses the legal principle of "reasonable foreseeability" to argue that the thieves get no leniency for saving the dog because they didn't reasonably know about the dog, but then contrasts this analysis with the "eggshell skull" case, in which if you accidentally gravely injured/killed someone because of his unusual medical state (which you could not foresee) when you only meant to hurt him a little, you're held liable nonetheless. It appears that under American law you can't benefit but can be liable if consequences are not foreseeable.

The essay, written for the class and with many citations, is by Menachem Sandman, an attorney from New Haven, CT.

It's possible, perhaps probable, that the lawyers taking this class for CLE credits knew all that already, but a lot of it was new to this non-lawyer and I'm glad to have the additional context. It looks like each lesson has an accompanying essay of this sort -- cool!

Crossposts: http://cellio.livejournal.com/1066383.html

I've taken a few classes put on by the Jewish Learning Institute (they teach concurrently in many locations worldwide) and am currently taking this one. The title is "The Dilemma", and they describe it as: modern dilemmas, talmudic debates, your solutions. Each class looks at a group of real incidents around some theme, after which we discuss what principles ought to apply before delving into relevant texts (talmud and later commentaries). It's a pretty neat class, though I keep identifying aspects of the problems that aren't the core point of the lesson and thus get set aside.

In the first class, the theme was cases where someone in the process of committing a crime does unexpected good -- should he be treated more leniently because of that? The cases were:

1. A terrorist attacks someone, stabbing him in the gut but not killing him. The victim is rushed to the ER, where doctors find a cancerous tumor that would have killed him within the year.

2. On a hot day, thieves smash a car window to steal the laptop sitting on the front seat, allowing a dog inside to escape the heat that would have killed him.

3. Civil law prohibits possession of alcohol, but someone nonetheless keeps a private stash. A disapproving neighbor smashes his kegs. Later that day, the civil authorities conduct a surprise inspection but find nothing with which to charge the person.

I noted that the three cases had different types of unintended benefits -- saving a human life, saving an animal's life, and saving money (the fine that wasn't paid). (On the transgression side, one is against a human life and the other two are against property. We were mostly focused on the benefit side, not this side.) I also noted that there were three types of culpability on the part of the victim -- the guy with the alcohol was knowingly violating local laws, the guy with the laptop recklessly endangered the dog, and the terror victim was an innocent bystander. I thought that both of these axes of variation would be relevant to the discussion, but that's not where the class went.

We then talked about some other cases, most significantly a passage from the talmud about a man who goes fishing on Shabbat and inadvertently catches in his net a child that had fallen into the water, thus saving the child from drowning. Fishing is not allowed on Shabbat, but saving a life takes priority over Shabbat laws. Does saving the child bring him any leniency for violating Shabbat? If he knew about the child there would be no question; pikuach nefesh trumps Shabbat. But in the case of an accident? The talmud rules that it's pikuach nefesh, saving a life, even if you didn't intend it, and so the fisherman is not guilty of violating Shabbat.

(Rabbi: "What do we learn from this?" Me: "If you're going to fish on Shabbat, have a child on hand to throw in." Rabbi: "..." What? It reminded me of always mount a scratch monkey. But I digress.)

From there we talked about applications, and learned that if the act itself causes the positive outcome then there is leniency -- for example, breaking the window to steal the laptop and freeing the dog -- but if the benefit comes only later, it doesn't. So the knife-wielding attacker doesn't get any leniency for the cancer discovery, and the person who destroyed his neighbor's alcohol stash owes him damages.

There was more, and also some material in the book that we didn't get to and that I haven't read yet. I don't claim to have learned all the answers, but it was an engaging class.

The second class was about taking the law into your own hands -- for example, you know that that guy right there is the one who just stole your iPhone and he's about to hop into a cab, so can you physically intervene? More on that later, I hope. (I had to miss the end of this class so I'm waiting for the recording, plus there are materials I need to read yet.)

This class gives CLE credits, which kind of mystifies me, so a lot of the students are lawyers. Apparently I fit in with them, dress aside. I'm not sure how talmudic studies help one be better at practicing Pennsylvania law, but if I were a lawyer I'd be tickled to be able to satisfy a professional requirement through torah study.

I was discussing this class in Mi Yodeya's chat room and somebody mentioned the book Veha'arev Na, which collects things like this -- real, modern question with Jewish-law interpretation. That sounds like something I would quite enjoy.

Followup post

Crossposts: http://cellio.livejournal.com/1066212.html

Last week I went to the first session of Kulam Pittsburgh (warning: website design has, um, issues). "Kulam" means "all of us", and the goal is beit-midrash style learning for Jews of all flavors. I've experienced this style learning at Hebrew College, at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and select other places, but it hasn't been very available to me locally. The Kollel does this style of learning, but as a woman and as somebody who's not really part of the Orthodox community here, I have trouble navigating it. (Most classes are for men only, and many of the ones that are for women are on topics that aren't especially engaging for me. I'm not faulting them; I am not their target.)

What do I mean by beit-midrash-style learning? I'm talking about text-based study, with a significant part of it being deep dives in chevruta (partnered learning). It's a style where you look at text, what that text implies, how that squares with other text and what it implies... with the goal of coming out with a deeper understanding of whatever question sent you down that path in the first place. This kind of study relies on conversations, on back-and-forth, and on an inclination toward certain analytical styles. I'm not describing this very well, I don't think. Maybe you have to experience it.

The Kulam program is being led by Rabbi Will Friedman from the Pardes Institute. On first encounter I really like him; he's accessible, knowledgable, good at guiding a conversation, and seems like somebody who really cares about helping people learn. He's from the Boston area and flew down here for this; he'll do that monthly, and between those sessions there'll be other ones with a more local focus (he'll join by video call). The sessions stand alone, though each of those "local" ones is related to the previous one that he led in person.

The topic of last week's was: "Interpersonal Responsibility in a Global Age". Rabbi Friedman gave an introduction, including explaining the basic idea of chevruta study for those unfamiliar with it, and then had us pair up and dive into texts for about an hour. We were given a packet of materials -- a text, some questions to discuss, and then the next text and its questions, about a dozen in all. The first few texts came from torah, then talmud, then later commentaries. After the chevruta study Rabbi Friedman led a discussion that he used to draw out the key points he wanted us to take away. I found this last part very useful, as he picked up on some themes we talked about and drew out some things I hadn't figured out on my own. (Maybe I'll write more about the specific content some other time.)

But there's one big challenge of this sort of community-wide learning, and I don't know how we address it. Rabbi Friedman introduced chevruta study by quoting the passage in Mishelei (Proverbs) that iron sharpens iron, and said it's essential to study torah with somebody else and not alone so we can challenge and be challenged and, thus, be sharpened. I agree; well-matched chevruta study is really effective. This kind of study is traditionally done in Orthodox yeshivot where all of the participants have a common educational background. Some are more learned than others of course, and some are more skilled than others, and some specialize in particular topics, but everybody there has a good grounding and you can build on that.

Iron sharpens iron. But it dents bronze and splinters wood. Meanwhile, wood can ding bronze some and doesn't do much to iron. None of this is the fault of the wood or the bronze or the iron. But you really do want to try to match people somewhat. In a group where people don't know each other, don't have a shared context, and are encouraged to not just pair up with the people they came with, how do you do that? A good match makes for a great experience at any level; a poor match leaves both people frustrated, as one feels overwhelmed and the other feels hindered. And if the bulk of the session is the chevruta study, that can be frustrating. I want neither to frustrate nor to be frustrated by the luck of the draw.

I'm currently planning to go to all of the sessions where Rabbi Friedman will be here in person -- I really like him so far. But I'm not sure about the others (which will have an even higher proportion of chevruta study because it's hard to facilitate a discussion via Skype). I don't know if I should just recruit a well-matched chevruta to go with (BYOCh?), or if there's some way to -- without causing anybody to feel awkward -- do better match-making.

Crossposts: http://cellio.livejournal.com/1064060.html

A friend sent me a link to this speech from the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League at a conference today. Excerpt:

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.

The rest is worth reading too.

TIL #1:

Somebody linked to this question on Stack Overflow about some unexpected results when doing math on dates in Java. The problem, according to Jon Skeet, is that the date being used in the calculation is near midnight on December 31, 1927 in the Shanghai time zone -- when Shanghai moved its clocks by 5 minutes and 52 seconds. So the time in question existed twice, and Java chose the one that the programmer wasn't expecting.

That answers the programming question, but my question from that was: why in the world would somebody move clocks by 5 minutes and 52 seconds? I understand shifts of an hour (that happens all the time), and there are timezones out there that have 30-minute offsets and even one with a 15-minute offset, so that wouldn't have much surprised me either. But 5:52???

So I asked Google, which led me to a question on History Stack Exchange about this, where an answer explained that 1927 was not a good year for political stability in Shanghai, and one of the side-effects was a change in who had control over the central astronomical institution, with the result that the reference point moved east from Beijing to Nanjing. Greenwich was apparently not yet a thing as far as they were concerned.

A comment on the answer, from Taiwan, casts doubt on whether there was a time shift at all -- but, if not, doesn't explain where Java got the idea. Curious.

TIL #2:

A few days ago on Mi Yodeya somebody asked if, during the Exodus, the commandment to place the blood on the doorposts and lintel was just on one door or all of them. (Is it like mezuzot, which are on every door, or like the chanukiyah, which we place next to one door only?) My first thought was that there might have only been one door in ancient Egyptian slave housing. Last night I learned a little about ancient architecture and then wrote an answer about the four-room house, which appears to have had one outside door. I argued that we're given the reason for the commandment: it's to mark which houses are to be passed over. To me, that says blood on exterior doors, of which there was one.

Not TIL #3:

Today on Mi Yodeya somebody asked how many people the Pesach offering would feed. The torah says to use a lamb or kid, that it all has to be eaten that night, and that if you don't have enough people to do that, get together with your neighbors. So how big a group are we talking about? One can find plenty of information (not always in agreement, mind) about the weights of modern livestock animals, but animal husbandry has worked its magic over the centuries -- heck, even within my lifetime we've seen "standard" chickens for food get a lot bigger. So knowing how much a yearling lamb weighs today doesn't necessarily tell us what it might have weighed in ancient Egypt or in the time of the first or second temple, when this was done.

I considered asking on History SE, but I haven't yet. Anybody happen to know?

Today is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust remembrance day). I don't know what is done elsewhere, but my Conservative morning minyan adds a short service after the torah service. It consists of some psalms and some modern writings, and ends with an unusual Kaddish. The Kaddish text is the usual text, but it's interspersed with the names of camps -- Aushwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and so on through the entire list. The reader reads the Kaddish; the congregation reads the names.

I led the service today, but someone else, someone who is old enough to remember first-hand, always leads this special service. So after he finished he turned to me to continue and it was time for...Aleinu. Aleinu is the prayer where we look forward to the day when the whole world will follow God.

I stumbled, tripped up by the cognitive dissonance.

I know that, even in the light of outrageous suffering at the hands of monsters, individuals can retain faith in God. People did, then and in earlier times (the Nazis were far from the first). People do today when murderous Nazis have been replaced with murderous Arabs. People will in the future too. Not all people, but some. This I believe.

This morning I found it a little harder to believe that at some time in the future the whole world will come around. I realize that Aleinu is looking ahead to messianic times, but the messiah will come only after we have done the groundwork. God won't send the messiah when we've sunk into the depths and all hope is lost; rather, God will send the messiah when we collectively deserve it. I hope that day will come. This morning I found it a bit harder to know that it will.

It's Purim Torah season at Mi Yodeya, where, in addition to the regular, serious questions, we also welcome parody questions. Our policy (yes, we have a policy) says:

It's gotta be distinctly "Purim" (not serious), distinctly Torah, and distinctly Q&A. Purim Torah questions that don't have all three of these qualities may be closed.
So, post sincere-looking questions (you know, the kind that invite answers) that:
misinterpret a real Torah concept or Jewish text, or

apply a distinctly Torah style (e.g. Talmudic analysis) to an irrelevant topic

Here's a sampling from this year. Purim Torah is welcome through this week, so feel free to join in.

If Rabbi Google quotes Mi Yodeya, can i rely on his advice?
How can I connect with God on Facebook?
Using the Force on Shabbat, for Jewish Jedis.
What kind of horns did Moshe have? (my first Purim Torah question)
Why didn't Adam use the pen of earth? -- based on a misunderstanding of the first verse of the torah and the observation that the pen is mightier than the sword so he should have been able to get back into the garden
For whom should I vote? (US presidential election 2016), seeking biblical or talmudic sources only
Seeking texts of all prayers associated with the clock change (also links to other questions about time-shifting)
What is the bracha when one eats the torah? -- "I keep seeing all these questions which discuss "Purim Torah, Ingest" but they don't seem to address the rules of actually ingesting the Torah." (What's a little homophone among friends?)
And from the same person who, last year, asked Why don't Jews accept Our Lord and Savior? (I'm pretty happy with my answer there), we have another provocative-seeming question: What's the source/reason for allowing gay marriage for synagogue leaders?

There are a lot more, over 250 from this and past years.

There is, apparently, a construction company out there that will build you a house styled on a Hobbit hole. Naturally, an important question arises for Jewish owners of such homes: do you put a mezuzah on a round door, and if so where? The mezuzah is the scroll (containing certain torah passages) in a case that is affixed to your doorpost -- so what exactly is a doorpost?

This is what 1400 copies of our book looks like:

If you've previously said you might be able to help with distribution, please let me know Real Soon Now where and how many copies to send you. (Or if you weren't able to get permission from your rabbis, of course I understand.) If we haven't discussed that, but you'd like some copies for your synagogue, please let me know (while supplies last). My email address is this journal name at pobox.com.

I'm delighted with this book. You can download a copy from http://s.tk/miyodeya. Enjoy!

Monica

today's news

the TOL murderer, capital punishment, and rabbinic law

holidays

welcome to Elul

"not for lightweights"

upcoming class on principles of Jewish civil law

seder-inspired questions

Ki Tisa: haftarah

Question: bar/bat/? mitzvah in modern times

new Judaism community on Codidact!

Hadar summer institute!

quarantine rambles

one year ago

redemption of the first-born

Pennsic

a few short takes

followup: JLI class

JLI class: Dilemma

Kulam: new Jewish study in Pittsburgh, and challenges of chevruta study

ADL: "never is now"

today I learned...

a little cognitive dissonance

Purim Torah

challenges of round doors

Days of Awe - Mi Yodeya?

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