V'dibarta Bam

@jake I hope things have been going well for you?

Seth J

4:17 AM

Anyone know what "Call of the Shofar" is? I know it's ostensibly a men's self-help organization run by someone from Monsey. But Google only turns up their website, some Messianic websites, and Chabad articles calling them a cult. Cynical responses not necessary.

Seth J

4:40 AM

Speaking of cynical

5:35 AM

I find contributing on this Stacks Exchange is harder than Christian one or the Islam one. For one thing, there is the language barrier. I just can't speak, write, understand Hebrew!

Sometimes, I can't tell if people here are writing the transliteration of the Hebrew term or the Hebrew term itself, or how to find either-or in search engines and academic databases.

@Anonymous I agree: it's hard. Something specific you need a hand in at the moment?

@msh210 Not really.

@Anonymous You can contribute entirely in English. In fact, it's encouraged: "Don't use non-English terms gratuitously. If there's an English term that conveys your meaning smoothly, just use it. (But there won't always be one.)"

@msh210 In the case that there is no English term, I would prefer the actual Hebrew script.

That way, it may be searchable.

@Anonymous Sounds reasonable, though Google's pretty good with transliterations. (The on-site search tool is not as good.)

Cf. meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/q/40

5:44 AM

@msh210 I am just wondering. Do "truth questions" occur on this site? You know, the type of questions that are just too broad and must be narrowed down to the sect?

@Anonymous I don't know what you mean.

@msh210 Well, I mean to say that a person may ask a question concerning Judaism. But if he or she asks a question about Judaism instead of a branch within Judaism, then that question may be too broad and must be tailored down to a specific branch within Judaism.

@Anonymous I can't think of any such offhand.

@msh210 Weird... So, it is assumed that Jewish life is consistent for ALL Jews?

@Anonymous Not at all.

5:52 AM

@msh210 I have been asking and answering questions on the Christianity Stacks Exchange, and believe me, there are so many denominations - many of which directly and fiercely contradict each other - that a response must be narrowed down per denomination. "Truth questions" are typically discouraged, because they are too broad and not refined enough.

@Anonymous What's the alternative to a 'truth question'? Is it a 'falsehood question'? an 'opinion question'? (I'm trying to gain an understanding of what you mean by 'truth question'.)

@msh210 I don't know. I think the alternative would be an acceptable question.

I think it is best shown by example.

@Anonymous judaism.stackexchange.com/q/6837 would be a good example of a question that ought to have been narrowed down by population or rewritten to account for various populations -- but it wasn't, and it got answered all right anyway.

@Anonymous By all means.

Example: Is God unjust by [insert biblical passage here]?

That question is problematic, because (1) the answerers are people and cannot speak for God, and (2) it's impossible to do research on God!

Q: Promising not to Destroy the World, and "I will Return the World to Water"

6

After the Mabul Hashem promised that he would not destroy the world. Yet we know from Tisha Bav and Yom Kippur's "Asarah Harugay Malchus" (“The Ten Martyrs”) poem that when they were going to kill Reb Yishmael Kohen Godol and the angels exclaimed "is this the payment for the Torah", Hashem says "...

That ^ is a perfectly acceptable question (though its wording could be improved).

6:00 AM

I have no idea who is Mabul Hashem.

@Anonymous Mabul = deluge. Hashem = God. (There should be a comma between those words.) The question: After Noah's deluge, God promised He'd not destroy the world. But in [other reference], He told the angels "quiet or I will return the world to water". How could He threaten to break a promise?

That's an "Is God unjust by [insert passage (albeit non-Biblical) here]?" question.

Weird...

I wonder how many people speak Hebrew around here. I read a short mini-biography about a Jewish synesthe and how he can speak Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian. Hebrew+Yiddish are presumably the Ashkenazi Jewish languages, while Russian is the cultural language of the region.

@Anonymous Yiddish is the Ashkenazi Jewish language. Hebrew is the Jewish language of scholarship (and more recently the local language in what's now Israel).

@Anonymous What's "here"? Do you mean Mi Yodeya? or where you live? or this chat room? or Stack Exchange?

@msh210 I mean, Mi Yodeya.

@Anonymous No way to know, really, what with user anonymity. But it probably depends on what you mean by "speak Hebrew". Probably many more Yodeyans have exposure to it in scholarship and can use it than are fluent in conversational Hebrew.

Pleasure talking with you, @Anonymous, but I'll need to go soon.

6:15 AM

@msh210 Babies are known for their incredible ability to segment words and recognize fine distinctions and patterns in speech very quickly.

@Anonymous Okay. But I don't see the relevance of that statement.

TZT, y'all.

A: What Yodeyan slang terms are there?

@msh210 What's TZT?

Double AA

6:30 AM

7

TZT / Time zone tov / Good time zone - Have a good one. "TZT" is an initialization of "time zone tov." "Time zone tov" is a partial Hebraization of "good time zone," adopting the form of the common Hebrew greeting "Shavua' tov" ("Have a good week.") "Good time zone" is meant to be an equivalen...

Seth J

1:56 PM

@anonymous, "I have no idea who is Mabul Hashem," made me lol. Assuming you're not trolling, that's one of the best articulated arguments, to date, for taking a serious look at how we handle slang and Hebrew.

@anonymous, truth be told, however, I'm not really too sure what we can change that will make it easier on visitors, without driving away good content.

3:08 PM

@SethJ I've seen Anonymous on other sites and do not believe he is trolling. He does sometimes overflow with chat-questions, but he's not a troll that I've seen.

@Anonymous here are a couple more theology questions that have been well-received even though, as you say, we can't really know God's mind/heart/intentions: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/12200/… judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/17195/…

(There are bunches of others, but I reached for ones I remembered asking.)

I think a distinction between these kinds of questions here and what you call "truth questions" is that good answers to our questions don't say "this is the answer (truth)" so much as "this is what so-and-so says about it, versus thus-and-such, and here's how we can reason it out, and...". In other words, show your work, don't assume there is exactly one correct answer, and present multiple significant possibilities if you can.

By the way @Anonymous, while Judaism certainly has different groups based on geography, tradition (mesorah), and approach to halacha, it's nothing like what Christianity has, as best I can tell. Most of us agree on most of the core principles and understand that some things are legitimately variable based on your community, and even when we disagree we seem to do better at being able to understand the other positions and discuss them calmly. Not perfect, of course.

I have the impression (which of course could well be mistaken) that there is a lot more strife among more of the Christian groups. Sure we have our extremists and trouble-stirrers too, but it seems like not as many and they don't each have congregations in every city and stuff (so many of us may never encounter many of them).

Isaac Moses

@SethJ There's plenty of room to increase adherence to our jargon guideline, both by authors and by editors. Note that within the jargon guideline, there is room for technical questions that would be only of interest to people with certain expertise using technical language that would only be understood by that population. There's no practical way around that, and nothing wrong with a relative novice seeing the language in such a question and choosing to move on.

jake

4:09 PM

@MonicaCellio, Thank God.

Sorry, people. I do not mean to appear as a troll. I view religions as a complete outsider; yet they fascinate me. I try to be good contributor on the Christianity Stacks Exchange (I've answered and asked a lot of questions, researching the answers primarily in scholarly sources), but I confess that's only because Christianity has a greater influence on Western culture than Judaism does, and of course, its bias and view on Judaism are spread culturally.

4:25 PM

@Anonymous please feel welcome to ask your questions about Judaism here instead of believing their biased (and often false) teachings about our tradition. We don't feel the need to proselytize like they do, so we won't come knocking on your door to push it at you -- but we're happy to answer if you ask. We think we've got a pretty good thing going -- God chose to make a covenant with us and revealed His torah to us (wow!) -- and we're happy to share here with sincere seekers.

4:54 PM

I must add in the previous post that I am referring to Christianity and Judaism as ideas, not people. The adherents can be well-meaning, but it's the subtle presuppositions of Jewish and Christian beliefs that make them not only at odds with each other, but also extremely hostile.

However, I think the apparent hostility may be inevitable, if the Abrahamic religions are to survive separately and distinctly. Otherwise, the adherents may start to think, "So... what's so special about my tradition again?"

In other words, the apparent sectarianism may be a sign of cultural identification.

@Anonymous I'm not so sure. I'm not aware of tensions between, say, Judaism and Hinduism (or Jews and Hindus); they have thier traditions/culture/people and we have ours, shrug. The problem is when one group either seeks to impose its will on others or seeks to subvert, misrepresent, or misappropriate another. But those problems have existed for centuries and we're unlikely to solve them in this chat room.

6:45 PM

@MonicaCellio ...but what if we could.....

@HodofHod then we'd finish planting our trees and then go out to greet the mashiach. :-)

2

AMEN, kein yihi ratzon, bimheira byameinu, bkarov mamash.

Or.

אמן כן יהי רצון במהרה בימינו בקרוב ממש

2

Hm, is that conciseness, or font size?

@HodofHod some of each. Hebrew is more compact -- certainly than English, but also than transliteration into the Roman alphabet, because of vowels. But the font also seems a little smaller too.

@MonicaCellio Right. I recall this came up with Jin's new(ish) site design.

By "because of vowels" I mean they don't take up the width that they do in English where they're stand-alone ltters.

@HodofHod now that you mention it, yeah, I remember some discussions of Hebrew size and maybe face. What we ended up with looks fine to me; I no longer remember the stops along the way.

Q: Hebrew in comments and sidebars is too small to read

6:53 PM

7

The current font used on site (Georgia) renders Hebrew letters smaller than their English counterparts (ooh, fancy word there). In posts, this causes no problems, as 15px is plenty large enough to read clearly. However in comments and in sidebars (13 and 12 px, respectively) it becomes hard to di...

bug status-completed design hebrew font

On a totally separate note: I only got this new avatar for the hats, but I think it's starting to grow on me....

@HodofHod I like the avatar. If you keep it, do mind your profile blurb. I don't know whether you'll choose to change the text or rotate the avatar, but, you know, consistency...

@MonicaCellio Yeah, I should figure out something new that's "cute" or whatnot. ;)

"That's a beard, not peach fuzz!"