Eats Shoots and Paskens

Don't remember the sugiya, exactly – something in Arbei Pesachim

but it went something like:

Statement, explanation, assertion A; assertion B; counter-example ¬B; assertion C; counter-example ¬C; assertion D; counter-example ¬D.

In terms of decisions based on the text, we had general agreement on A, and most people seemed also to think ¬C, but the Rambam thought C, and it was weird.

It looked as though it came from reading the sugiya two different ways, thus.

One way:
-> statement, explanation, assertion  A
<-   assertion  B  (challenging A)
->     refutation  ¬B  (accepting ¬B and reinstating A)
<-  assertion  C  (challenging A)
->       refutation  ¬C  (accepting ¬C and reinstating A)
<-  assertion    D  (challenging A) <-     refutation  ¬D  (accepting ¬D and reinstating A)

so you end up with A, ¬B, ¬C, ¬D.

Alternatively:

-> statement, explanation, assertion A
<- assertion  B  (challenging A)
     -> counter-example  ¬B  (with idea of reinstating A)
          -> in support  C  (supporting ¬B with idea C, hence supporting A)
               <- challenge  ¬C  (challenging C)
               -> refutation  D  (rejecting challenge to C using D)
          <- assertion  ¬D  (challenging C's ability to support ¬B, but ¬B still stands)

now you would pasken A, ¬B, C, ¬D.

Something like that. Not sure exactly, but you get the general idea? Sometimes things are ambiguous enough that you can break the assertion-refutation pattern in different ways such that each read is equally plausible.

serendipitous

The front of the new Koren siddur* is very pretty. Just the sort of design I like for my own artwork.

Click the thumbnail of the left image to see a bigger version. The right image is where I have highlighted the pretty. Rather indifferently :)

Still, even thought it'd make a lovely border for something, one can't very well plagiarise a prayerbook. I mean, it's a prayerbook. That seems to make it at least one degree worse than ordinary plagiarism.

So imagine my joy when I went again to the Valmadonna Trust exhibition and found this:

It's the title page of a certain Psalterium Hebraeum, printed in Genoa, in 1516 by Pietro Paolo Porro.

I tend to think that when something's that old it's fair game. Koren evidently did!

* The inside is jolly nice as well.

Consistency – necessity or luxury?

Went to a session ostensibly exploring this question, although owing to a certain lack of restraint in the construction of the source sheet, we didn't actually make it to the question.

One thing I've learned over the past ten years or so is that consistency is not essential. Not a necessity, and not a luxury – more like a red herring, or possibly a pretty toy.

I often say that Talmud combines the logical approach of pure mathematics with the interesting irrationality of people, and the halakhic system is indeed based on taking people's (on the whole more or less predictable) actions and absorbing them into a consistent system.

Given an halakhic system, should the system mould to the people, or should the people mould to the system? Overmuch focus on consistency forces the latter interpretation; the halakhic framework exists inviolable, like the integers, and all the rest is the work of man.

As I get further away from being seventeen and naiive, I find this approach less and less compelling. The idea of living within a prescriptive framework [is not nearly as interesting as watching that puppy outside the window omg puppy cute puppy]...um, yes, the idea of living within a prescriptive framework and having one's chief preoccupation be how rigidly one cleaves to its girders seems, not so much overly challenging as profoundly uninteresting.

These days I see the framework as a support, which one may use as support, or as shelter, or as basis – as any number of things, but always as something in relationship to the people. The point is not to blend into the framework, the point is that the framework is the basis for something greater.