Can anyone recall a question here about why a particular area of halacha (mishna maybe) goes into great detail about what sizes of various substances qualify for some prohibition, or something?
I understand a number of reasons why the Jewish community keeps so many rules to the level of minutiae. But why SUCH a level of intricacy in some of these laws?
I looked through a large book on the laws of brachos, because this is one aspect of Jewish practice that resonates very loudly to me (I...
A friend stumped me with this question: What is the earliest reference to the custom of having newlyweds dip their hallah in honey? My guess is that it's an extension from the custom of honey on Rosh haShana... Any ideas?
@IsaacMoses Do you often practice practices without knowing where you heard of them from? Like did your mesadder kiddushin/chasan teacher recommend this and you can't remember whom, or you don't think there was ever encouragement? Did you think it was a religious practice or just a fun one (because who doesn't like honey)?
@DoubleAA AFAIK most people sometimes practice practices without remembering where they heard them from. I don't remember who taught me about eating simanim on Rosh Hashanah but I do it
@DoubleAA, I won't try to defend our adoption of the practice on Halachic grounds. It's something people do. The "fun" or obvious symbolism certainly contributes to its longevity as a meme (did in our case).
Looking forward to Einstein's general relativity centennial in 2015, I was thinking about how cool it would be if LIGO detects gravitational waves in 1916 (centennial of Einstein's "weak field" paper) or more likely 1918 (centennial of his quadrupole formula paper).
What are other examples in ph...
@Daniel I encourage you to ask your friends whom you see doing this how they started. From my experience, I'm highly confident no one will have anything intelligent to say.
(In my experience, you will also be called a 'party-pooper', but being truthful to tradition is worth it, IMO.)
@msh210 I only care if it's (mis)represented as an authentic Jewish practice. We don't particularly need any more Minhagim to deal with, and in 100 years, for instance, when honey bees are extinct I don't want people feeling bad. Otherwise you can put whatever condiments you want on your Challah. Perhaps Ketchup for Shana Sheniya?
Is it a mitzva for you to eat the honey, or that chala have honey on it?
If the mitzva is for you to eat the honey, then it comes from the verse cited in Gershon Gold's answer which refers to fruit honey, so you use fruit honey.
If it's that the chala have honey on it, it comes from a desire to be machshir the chala l'kabel tum'a, so you need bee's honey.
(... irrespective of the honey question). I expect that practically speaking, minhagim are born and die in every generation. Ones that get written down stand a chance of living longer than they would otherwise, so there's probably a net increase over time, but I expect that without new ones being born over time, it'd be a net decrease.
I am using "minhagim" as a descriptive term, and not relating directly to any technical status.
@msh210 I think participants in that practice probably consider it more of an expedient than a custom
But fine, shidduch/dating practice in Jewish communities is definitely something that evolves over time, with some peculiar aspects getting dropped and others getting invented in every generation.
PTIJ: "How large do the skywritten letters have to be, when one proposes marriage via skywriting?" vel sim.
Hopefully, with an answer that cites rishonim on Masechet Rosh Hashana to explain concepts of angles of observation, parallax, etc.
@msh210 Seriously, fewer words is better, but if you think that'd be clearer to readers, please go ahead and make the edit.
@msh210 Speaking of which,
> I suggest that once the community has had a chance to write, edit, comment on, and vote on drafts, the moderators make the final decision about how to edit the policy post, since it has official faq status.
@IsaacMoses We have discussed it and decided to forbear for now and decide a little later. The more eyes on it for longer before that decision, the better. (courtesy ping @DoubleAA @MonicaCellio )
In case anyone's wondering where we discuss such things, we take turns hosting weekly moderator meetings in one of our homes or another. Stack Exchange pays the airfare, first class.
@msh210 Cool. If there are any specific open questions that you want to see community input on, please let us know. I guess there's not a ton of value to editing the actual policy many days before R"Ch.
@msh210 But when you go to the 20k meetings do you still get first class tickets if you're a mod or is it just economy because it's not the mod meeting?
@IsaacMoses That may have been true in the past but nowadays in the "information age" (and the age of 100s of sefarim documenting little detailas of everything) people tend not to forget things as fast
@IsaacMoses It's impossible to completely accurately machine-transliterate Hebrew without trop because sometimes two words look alike even with vowels, like chach'ma ("she was wise") and chochma ("wisdom").
מים עד ים מכאן לשם את כולי תפילה זה יהיה ככה ואני מוכן לחיות ככה יהיה מה שיהיה ו בסערה (00:48) הנשמה לְשַׁבֵּחַ הנשמה עולה גבוהה כמו כנף (x 20 (1:18) מים עד ים מכאן לשם אני נושא תפילה תפילה טהורה, תמימה האם להרים אותי (1:30) התקשר היום ובכל יום ... כל מי שמתקרב בזוהר של אושר
@Daniel Well, to be fair, without vowels, there are so many things it can be. It did get לְשַׁבֵּחַ correct: Leshabbeach (in "Sefardi (simplified)"). So it's not that bad, I guess.
@Daniel It did. That's the only reason I knew about it. For that matter, for all I know, some obscure chatroom is carefully dissecting the 48 kinyanei Torah right this minute.
@NoachmiFrankfurt the two people I pinged in that comment were having a discussion about the tongs that one of them had just made, which is what prompted the question.
@DoubleAA I'm not sure what the translation of chach'ma is -- "she became wise" or "she was wise" -- but the latter is certainly plausibly a verb in Hebrew. Compare e.g. yash'na, "she was asleep", which also translates as an adj in English; likewise sam'cha, "she was happy".
@IsaacMoses Very likely.
@IsaacMoses I see you edited this question but it has no closure vote:
This seems to be a question about English words and answerable only by standard methods of answering "what does X mean?" where X is any word. This can include reference to a dictionary or encyclopedia or corpus... but appealing to a Q&A site about Judaism wouldn't seem to be the way to go: Judaism has nothing to say about the definitions of English words. I move to close this question therefore. — msh210 ♦3 mins ago
A friend stumped me with this question: What is the earliest reference to the custom of having newlyweds dip their hallah in honey? My guess is that it's an extension from the custom of honey on Rosh haShana... Any ideas?
