Via the Daily Dish. The installation ‘bios [bible]‘ consists of an industrial robot, which writes down the bible on rolls of paper. The machine draws the calligraphic lines with high precision. Like a monk in the scriptorium it creates step by step the text. … Starting with the old testament and the books of Moses [...]
Rolling Stone has a 100 Greatest Singers of All Time list. Some of the entries have a description of their importance by another singer. I just read Bob Dylan’s entry, which was written by Bono. Bono had this to say, (emphasis mine) To understand Bob Dylan’s impact as a singer, you have to imagine a [...]
From Haaretz. Hebrew is alive and well. At least in the Arab and Druze communities. For students from those sectors, the Hebrew language has become the new business administration – a social and professional catapult to get ahead and succeed in life. The sticklers add Hebrew literature, too. It’s a triumph of practicality over ideology. [...]
Recently, a book was written by Maria Balinska with the title, The Bagel: A Cultural History. There is a review of it by Joan Nathan at Slate. (hat tip) She writes, Polish-born and half-Jewish, Balinska, who works at the BBC in London, tells us that the boiled and baked bagel as we know it comes [...]
There have been a number of recent posts which discuss questions of Torah reading cantillation, טעמי המקרא, and Hebrew grammar, specifically the question of whether a word is accented on the ultimate syllable (מלרע), or on the penultimate (second before last) syllable (מלעיל). See this post by Lion of Zion, and this one by Rav [...]
While I am sure that some Obama supporters are having their Schadenfreude moment at the people in the McCain campaign who have already pulled out the knives and started the back stabbing, one thing does bother me. The problem is that they seem to be stabbing only one person, Sarah Palin. I think that she [...]
Malcolm Gladwell has another one of his eye opening articles at the New Yorker. He writes about insides vs. outsiders, focusing on the figure of Sidney Weinberg, a former head of Goldman Sachs. While reading his article, I kind of thought about the Jewish people as the perpetual outsiders. I am sure that some Jewish [...]
A few months ago, I heard an interview on the radio with Douglas A. Blackmon, the author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. In this book, Blackmon describes what was essentially the reenslavement of blacks after the Civil War in many areas of [...]
There is a tragic article in today’s Washington Post about a young hasidic boy who was stricken with brain cancer. He is currently being kept alive with a ventilator and drugs. The hospital wants to disconnect the ventilator, because in their opinion the boy is already dead, and in the opinion of the parents, the [...]
R. Yair Hoffman has some comments on the printing of the Shulhan Aruch, Most of us know that the Shulchan Aruch was written by Rabbi Yoseph Karo. Most of us also know that the additions of the Rama, Rabbi Moshe Isserless, were added to the Shulchan Aruch and they served to eventually make the Shulchan [...]
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