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Comment on Authors by Der “Talmud Blog” | GESELLSCHAFT FÜR DAS GEISTESLEBEN PERSIENS

Der “Talmud Blog” | GESELLSCHAFT FÜR DAS GEISTESLEBEN PERSIENS — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:25:31 +0000

[…] Talmud Blog unter der Redaktion von Shai Secunda und Yitz Landes widmet sich der zeitgenössischen wissenschaftlichen Erforschung des Talmuds und […]

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by YY

YY — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:07:17 +0000

Interestingly verses 15:25-33 were not read together with the previous, rather with the following אחרי מות . (taken from Biblia Hebraica by Rud. Kittel)

Comment on Trying to Understand Scribal Practices by Noah Bickart

Noah Bickart — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:08:08 +0000

Isn’t this true of many Yemenite MSS of the Bavli? I am thinking about MS Yad HaRav Hertzog of Sanhedrin, which both preserves old readings and presents lots of “new” editorial insertions.

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by AS

AS — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:46:59 +0000

It just occurred to me that your discussion is very apropos of the opening of this past week’s haftarah (if your custom is to read that of Aharei Mot).

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by AS

AS — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:44:01 +0000

I hesitate to say anything that might make you fell less guilty about perpetuating certain metaphoric associations, but metaphors like those drawing on the idea of blindness are intensely embodied and ingrained to human thought. I think that to a large extent you can change the way that people think without sanitizing language, and to the extent that you cannot, well, that’s human culture for you.

After working closely for a number of years with a mentor who happens to be blind I can state with some degree of confidence that it is not metaphoric associations that are most problematic, just the perception that a person with a disability is less present and has less agency than others.

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by AS

AS — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:27:24 +0000

That was precisely my understanding of the midrash. It seemed to me that Shai was conflating the two. On the other hand, without the revulsion to the actual thing, their laws would not have that aesthetic resonance.

What puzzles me about the midrash is that those torah portions are not graphic by the standards of the descriptive richness available in modern languages. Perhaps if I had more daily exposure to what is being described it would evoke more of a visceral response. (I had a rather nasty abscess cut open a few weeks ago and it was more of an object of fascination that revulsion for me and the intern who witnessed the procedure.)

In any event, are you trying to say that the aesthetic elements of the torah portion under consideration in the midrash are are structural and linguistic, not visual? That’s an interesting thesis.

[on an unrelated note: is it not somewhat paradoxical that the most visually descriptive portions of the torah -the construction of the mishcan- are the most boring? ]

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by Zohar

Zohar — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:49:07 +0000

Nice post, Shai. A point which supports your interpretation is that the Torah reading referred to in the Midrash would have obviously followed the triennial Palestinian cycle. Thus, these portions do not get “diluted” by adjacent sections and would have tended to stick out more, and would need to be addressed.

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by Shani Tzoref

Shani Tzoref — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:41:43 +0000

Thanks, Shai. I’ve been struggling with this too, more than usual, recently. Part of my paper for the Meghillot conference this Thursday deals with “Blindness” as a metaphor for being sinful and susceptible to sin. I’m confronting once again the Qumran Community’s exclusion of people with disabilities, modeled on a biblical ideal of priestly perfection, as well as the seemingly-universal metaphor for darkness/blackness as negative set against the positives of light/white. If I could just leave this in the past, whether by positing Zoroastrian influence or otherwise, the dark/light dualism might not bother me so much. But the metaphors are still so very much alive in western culture. I can’t help feeling that even the fact that “light = enlightenment = purity = cleanliness” etc. makes “sense” to me implicates me in a process of perpetuating associations that have real, detrimental, effects.
Observations like this http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/04/13/kids-thoughts-about-skin-color-and-beauty/, which give me some hope that “Black is beautiful” can be a credible message in western society, make me wonder– if the message is successful, will much of the past millenia of western literature become less accessible to readers in the near future?

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by zjb

zjb — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:32:46 +0000

yes, yes, Shai, but what if it doesn’t “mean” anything. if this sounds a bit off the wall, see Michael Scwartz’s new’ish book The Signifying Creator, especially the reference to John Cage, a first in the history of Jewish Studies?

Comment on Black Like a Raven: Menstruation and Aesthetics by אריה ברנשטיין

אריה ברנשטיין — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:43:33 +0000

AS, I think you misunderstand the midrash. The verse is situated as a metaphor for portions of the Torah (“פתר קרייה בפרשותיה שלתורה”), so the discussion is not around the aesthetic ugliness or beauty in *actual* blood, discharges, lesions, etc., but about the aesthetic ugliness or beauty in *Torah discussions about those things*, as Shai said. They seem — to people — ugly *to read in public*, but they are beautiful and pleasing to God and that’s why God, as it were, even enumerates these laws at greater length than necessary.