My Jewish Link article for this week is now up. Via html, flipdocs, and on (paid) Substack. There will be slight different differences based on the editing process, since the Substack post will be my original. So the editors may correct my spelling or grammar errors, but they may also obliterate intentional constructions.
One such example from this week. Earlier in the article, about using IV drips on Yom Kippur / Tish’a be`Av, I wrote “consult your local Orthodox rabbi for halachic and hashkafic guidance”. Later, when discussing the health benefits of straws, I wrote, “Ask your local Orthodont ist”, but this was corrected to “Ask your local orthodontist”. :(
The outline of the article is:
Rava asks about whether a sotah drinking through a סיב or שפופרת is effective. We can’t be sure whether this siv is a drinking straw, or palm bast used to absorb the water, which she then sucks (or swallows whole). There are slight variations in whether siv and shefoferet were two separate questions or an alternation within a single question, which may weigh in on it. And Tosafot Shantz discusses a variant.
Vatican 110, Sotah 18a We might deduce cultural practices in Rava’s day from this very question. And we can see his contemporary Abaye also discuss a drinking straw elsewhere.
The basis for the question, according to our sugya, is whether it is derech shetiyah. Nowadays drinking through a straw is common. But I kvetch about environmentalists who succeeded in banning, or at least greatly restricting straw use, without considering the broader picture of dental health and people with disabilities, as well as based on misinformation as to the number of straws used in the US daily. So drinking through a straw may become less common.
Is this really the basis of Rava’s inquiry? We can examine other sugyot across Shas. It is always Rava posing the question, and it isn’t always a matter of derech shetiya or derech achila. Rather, it might be a question about chatzitza, or about whether the (bitter) experience and the potential to taste is required.
Here is the article image, which you can click to make larger.
