V'dibarta Bam

12:27 AM

@user6591 Speaking not as a moderator but as a frequent user, I encourage you to consider choosing a name that is more unique than user6591. We also have other users with similar names (of the form userXXXX) and it's challenging for me (and I assume others) to keep track of who is who. You have been a extensive contributor to the site, amassing almost 9K rep, and we all appreciate it.

Shokhet

@DoubleAA Is 6591 pingable in chat? I can't get his username to autocomplete

Double AA

@Shokhet I can ping anyone in chat.

4

Shokhet

@DoubleAA Oh. You're a moderator. Riiiight :)

@DoubleAA Also, when you do, @user6591, I would appreciate it if you would come to chat and announce it, so that we don't suddenly find ourselves with a 9K user that we don't know :)

Shokhet

1:18 AM

@roomowners: apparently, we have 5 feeds, but I only see four on that page -- SE blog, new MYM questions, parshablog; and the new MY questions in the ticker. What's the fifth?

Monica Cellio

2:31 AM

@DoubleAA why so can I, and so can any mod, but will he come when you do call for him? We'll see! :-)

@Shokhet hmm, good question. I don't see another there either, nor an obvious "history" link. (My first thought was that we had one that vanished somehow, e.g. something that's not publishing any more.)

Shokhet

@MonicaCellio But then the number should change to "four," shouldn't it? And anyway, in all my time here, I've never seen the parshablog feed publish anything.

("all my time here" is a major qualifier of the above statement :P)

Monica Cellio

@Shokhet I would expect it to drop to 4, yes. It seemed possible that there was another that's visible only to mods (like one that's been deactivated), in which case showing 5 to everybody would be a bug. Instead we have a different...unexpected behavior.

Shokhet

@MonicaCellio Yeah, it's odd.

What was parshablog about, anyway?

Monica Cellio

@Shokhet hmm, yeah, parshablog is a message not a ticker, and I haven't seen that in a while either. (Search would presumably tell you if it's ever been here. I think it has, a few years ago maybe.) Stuff in the ticker is easy to miss.

Shokhet

Last message from March 2013

Scrolling through, it appears that it was Josh Waxman's blog, on parsha

Did he stop writing it, or did the feed stop working?

Monica Cellio

2:41 AM

@Shokhet it is (was?) Josh Waxman's blog.

@Shokhet I see an entry from yesterday on the blog. Looks like the feed is busted. Let me see if I can figure out how to fix that.

Shokhet

@MonicaCellio I see that entry; it references a Mi Yodea (sic) question

Monica Cellio

@Shokhet ah. I haven't actually read it yet, just checked the date. :-)

Shokhet

@MonicaCellio I didn't claim to have read it, either; it's in the first line :)

Monica Cellio

Ok, I'm going to click the button, which may dump a bunch of messages into this room all at once. Heads up.

Feeds

Monica Cellio has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

Shokhet

2:46 AM

I have to go now; TZT! ....I'll be sure to check back in later to see all the havoc that I caused :P

Stack Exchange

parshablog: Why does Yaakov privately refer to Esav as his master?

posted on December 01, 2014 by joshwaxman

The Brisker Rov, Rabbi Yitzchok Zev HaLevi SoloveitchikThe Brisker Rov has an interesting analysis of Yaakov's instructions to his servants / address to Esav, where Yaakov says כֹּה תֹאמְרוּן לַאדֹנִי לְעֵשָׂו. This analysis differs, but falls in line, with something I heard from Dr. Steiner about the role of this phrase. We begin with the pasuk in Vayishlach, in Bereishit 32:5: &n…

parshablog: Saadia Gaon on שִׂכֵּל אֶת יָדָיו כִּי מְנַשֶּׁה הַבְּכוֹר

posted on December 31, 2014 by joshwaxman

In parashat Vayechi, Yaakov crosses his hands when blessing Ephraim and Menasheh. Thus, the pasuk and Rashi: But Israel stretched out his right hand and placed [it] on Ephraim's head, although he was the younger, and his left hand [he placed] on Manasseh's head. He guided his hands deliberately, for Manasseh was the firstborn. יד. וַיִּשְׁלַח יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת יְמִינוֹ וַיָּשֶׁת עַל רֹא…

parshablog: Some Samaritan emendations from the beginning of Vaera

posted on January 11, 2015 by joshwaxman

Here is a snip of Vetus Testamentum, from the beginning of parashat Vaera. The Samaritan text is to the left and the Masoretic text is to the right. Dashes mean no change and asterisks mean that the text is missing. 1) The first interesting change is from עתה (now you will see) to אתה (you will see). Perhaps this fluidity reflects how the gutturals ayin and aleph were pronou…

parshablog: Crocodile bile

posted on January 13, 2015 by joshwaxman

In the news recently was the tragic tale of many people killed of hospitalized because of accidental consumption of crocodile bile in beer served after a funeral. To cite the article in Forbes: Crocodile bile is literally the digestive juice from the gall bladders of the Nile crocodile, Crocodylus niloticus. Its use traces back to witchcraft accusations in 1899, according to Professo…

parshablog: Posts so far for parshat Vaera

posted on January 15, 2015 by joshwaxman

Jan 2015 1. Some Samaritan emendations from the beginning of Vaera. And brief analysis of the nature of these emendations. 2. Crocodile bile. Drawn from the news, we find a matching belief from the time of Rabbenu Bachya. Dec 2013 - Jan 2014 1. *Now* you will see. Why the emphasis on the word now? A midrash, now as opposed to later. That midrash also speaks about the war agains…

parshablog: Bo: Rashi's choice of midrashim

posted on January 22, 2015 by joshwaxman

I am short on time this week, but I answered a question on Mi Yodea about Rashi's choice of midrashim in parashat Bo. I will reprint the question and my answer here. The question: Why does Rashi on Shmos 12 (41) not quote the Sifrei which he does quote on Devorim 32 (48)? In relation to the words בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה and the Exodus from Egypt, the Sifrei there says, “Script…

Monica Cellio

I don't know how to get the feeds page to record a useful name for the feed instead of its raw URL. The old one had a name ("parshablog"). Maybe that's something in the data? The only thing I see that I can edit is the feed URL.

@Shokhet TZT! Havoc caused. :-)

Monica Cellio

2:58 AM

0

Q: Why does my chat room report more feeds than are actually there?

According to the feeds page for V'dibarta Bam we have five feeds. Or four. It depends on what part of the page you believe: I wondered if the extra were an inactive or deleted feed, but I don't see any hints of this on the page, like say a "history" or "deactivated" or "busted" link. I'm a ...

Stack Exchange

Doorknob has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

Doorknob has stopped a feed from being posted into this room

Doorknob

this is only a test

Shokhet

3:31 AM

@MonicaCellio I see :)

@MonicaCellio ^^^^

Monica Cellio

@Shokhet oh good -- so once it actually got stuff pushed at it, it picked up a real name to use.

Shokhet

@MonicaCellio I guess so

Scimonster

5:59 AM

Who picked parshablog anyways?

Double AA

7:16 AM

@Scimonster points It was @msh210!

Isaac Moses

2:48 PM

4

Q: Weekly Tanach Challenge 5775-2 (Week of Bo): Bereishit 21 - 25

In conjunction with Project 929, let's learn Tanach along with Jews all over the world. This coming week (Parashat Bo, starting Sunday, January 18), we'll be studying the following chapters: Bereishit 21 Bereishit 22 Bereishit 23 Bereishit 24 Bereishit 25 The challenge to you is: study t...

discussion featured weekly-topic-challenge project-929

Anyone think we should keep trying this?

Shokhet

4:18 PM

@DoubleAA Ha! ....from that conversation:

May 24 '12 at 14:15, by Adam Mosheh

This is a cool site: http://sefaria.org/

Shokhet

4:30 PM

@Shokhet - Thanks for the tip, but if someone is looking for a discussion of shoe polish brands and their ingredients then I have a hard time justifying such a discussion on Mi Yodeya. At the least, it's skating on the edge. Anyway, I will evaluate it overnight. Thanks again. Kol tuv. — Maimonist 12 hours ago

@Maimonist Product recommendations are on-topic here -- we even have a tag for it (product-recommendation)! The scope of this site is, as I understand it, "Jewish Life and Learning," and this falls under the "Jewish Life" part of it. As for "why this is a question since the information on various brands of shoe polish is readily available on the internet," see this recent Meta discussion: What's the point of posting an answer based on something that's already online?. — Shokhet 15 secs ago

I'm not sure if he thought that only Jewish learning was on-topic, or what; but hopefully we'll figure this out.

Transcript for