Week in Review
This past week, we’ve discussed the following:
Is Love the Neighbor as Thyself a Meta-halachic Principle? The verseואהבת לרעך כמוך might be a central guiding principle in halacha, but it is rarely explicitly invoked. Where it is, I suggest that it is not really / entirely to invoke the principle on a peshat level. Instead, there’s wordplay involved. For executing a criminal in a human way within other bounds, it is perhaps kamocha / ke-motecha. For seeing your bride-to-be, it it rei’acha as beloved, looking to Shir Hashirim.
In Humiliation for Bestiality, we consider the Talmudic idea that, while prohibited for all humans from a moral perspective, some ancient cultures did not have cultural taboos against bestiality, at least not to the same extent. For instance, Hittite law. If so, there wouldn’t be shame to the perpetrator if the animal were still walking around. We also contrast that idea to what many consider the famous midrash about Bilaam’s conduct with his donkey, and the reason the donkey was killed. Early versions of the midrash don’t mention that conduct, and regardless, the shame was for the one-upmanship, not that conduct.
A summary post for last week’s Jewish Link article, All of Rav’s Students, and how it refers to Rav’s students in the time span after Rav’s death.
My article for this week is Synesthesia at Har Sinai. For now, here is the paywalled version here and the article on the paper’s website. A Mishnah discusses hearing the blasphemy directly, with no intervening interpretation / summary. I then look at how Eliyahu Munk has translated two Biblical commentaries, making them say that there was literal seeing of sound, like synesthesia. While that is the Mechilta and Rashi, these two commentators said something completely different.
In Yossi or Yosa, I mention the two versions of the word’s spelling / vowels, in what is supposed to be a stand-in for the / a Divine Name. Also, they lacked orthography for nekudot then. In that same post, I discuss Artscroll’s sensitive rendition of Cuthean.
Finally, in Yitro: Rashbam and the Dagesh in וַיִּ֣חַדְּ, I discuss Eliyahu Munk’s botched translation of this Rashbam. He erroneously talks of dagesh chazak instead of dagesh kal, skips some of Rashbam’s Biblical examples, and gets one (which is one half) of the Biblical examples wrong, vayashav, “he returned”, instead of vayishb, “he took captive”. A point being that not all mistranslations should be blamed on a censorious instinct.
