(no subject)

Potential variant reading in text: is it R. Avin, R. Hanin, or R. Yohanan? אבין, חנין, יוחנן?

Statistically, the answer would be Yohanan, because Avin and Hanin weren't so prolific.

But in script, Avin and Hanin are pretty similar, likewise Hanin and Yohanan.

Lectio difficilior tells us that the proper read is probably not the easiest one. Yohanan is very common, so if you were cruising along copying, you would be writing Yohanan a lot. If you came to something that looked a bit like Hanin, Hanin wouldn't necessarily register as a name, so you would be quite likely to substitute Yohanan.

cool!

Drisha asked me to teach a class in some way related to What I Do next semester! What an honour.

what I learned in school today

PDF analysis of an interesting passage of Talmud. The twiddles at the end, quite frankly, blew my mind.

talmud tools

Useful things to know

About the guys on the page:
אחרית דבר - list of manuscripts consulted, at end of מסכת נדה
In מסורת הש"ס, square brackets (חצאי רבוע) = additions or semi-parallels; ע"ש = something weird worth looking at; ש"נ = ושם נסמן, the list of parallels isn't here, it's over there

סמ"ג.
13-th century, ר' משה נקוצי, synthesising rulings of Tosafot & Rambam, gaonic influence

רש"ל
Glosses on Tosafot, printers' errors. Poland, contemporary of Rema. שלמה לוריא, חכמת שלמה. Bases for emending text.

גילון הש"ס
עקיבה עיגר - sort of concordance, interesting points.

About the guys in the back:
המתרגם - translates Rashi's Old French terms into Yiddish
רי"ף - distils gemara to germane points only (obviously highly subjective).
רא"ש - rulings based on baalei tosafot and Rif
קיצור פסרי הרא"ש - the Beit Yosef's notes on the Rosh
שדה צופים - on the gemara; if the Rosh doesn't talk about the subject there it tells you where he does talk about it
מהרש"א - ways of looking at sugiyot. Small letters aggadah, big letters halakah, "intermittently helpful."
רש"א - emended text
מהר"ם - bare-bones Tosafot structures
יפה עינים - parallels in Yerushalmi, Tosefta, midrash halakha
Rashi on Rif - isn't always the same as Rashi on the Gemara
מאור הקטן - "hardcore Provencale - youthful attack on the Rif"
מלחמת השם - the Ramban's smackdown of the Meor haKatan