Dec. 2nd, 2018

seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
Daf 5

The Gemara goes deeper into the question of the Mumar, the Jewish renegade. It parses out a number of different types of Mumar:

-The Mumar who abrogates the whole Torah, which is what I think we would classically think of as a true renegade

-The Mumar who only violates one subset of the Torah's laws, not because they reject the Torah's authority as the first class does but for some other, more selfish reason. But this segments into smaller categories:

--the Mumar who, say, is not circumcised. The Gemara takes this as the paradigmatic example of a Mumar who has rebelled against one particularly (highly significant!) Jewish law, but that law is not relevant to the question at hand: We are trying to determine if we can trust this Mumar to do shechitah properly, and whether or not they have had themselves circumcised is not directly relevant

--The Mumar achal nevelah l'teiavon that I mentioned yesterday, whose one specific rebellion against Jewish law is that they eat non-kosher meat because they are hungry and it is more convenient/cheaper/easier

--The Mumar avodas kochavim, the renegade who may observe other laws of the Torah but who participates in acts of Idolatry. The Gemara argues that this is different from the first class of Mumar, because even though they violate only one class of mitzvot, committing idolatry is akin to abrogating the whole Torah.


As I mentioned yesterday, the only reason to get this deep into this question is to try to figure out how far you're willing to compromise. It remains surprising to me that the Rabbis are willing to eat the shechitah of any Mumars, people who routinely and publicly violate Torah law.

But it's clear from the discussion of Ravina's position on the l'chatchila/b'dieved in the original Mishna that no matter who we're talking about, there's still a requirement that the shochet demonstrate full knowledge of the halakha of shechita and full technical skill at the actual task, so we're talking about a very strange edge case in a Mumar who is fully engaged with the practice of shechita but isn't strict with their observant of other mitzvot. I guess the overall point is to demonstrate the basic principle that this is chullin, not kodshim, and state of observance and state of mind aren't as important as they are with regard to Temple rite.



At the end of the daf, they bring a baraisa that goes back to the Cuttim and says that Rabban Gamliel (Artscroll's footnote says this was Rabban Gamliel III, the son of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, but I'm not sure how they know) got together his Beis Din and they banned eating the shechita of the Cuttim altogether. We haven't gotten to a reason yet, my guess is that this records an evolution in the interaction between the Rabbis and the Cuttim and that over time Samaritan law diverged enough from Rabbinic law that the majority no longer considered the Cuttim to be Jewish. I guess this is why Artscroll says that it was Rabban Gamliel III, because it had to have been post-Mishnaic. I assume more on this topic tomorrow.
seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
The annual playlist for [personal profile] bookherd of my favorite songs from 2018, or 2017 but I didn't discover them until 2018 because I'm not hip at all



"Golden Goat" by Chimney Swift- The accordionist from the band is a CTY friend- this song was on repeat in my car for about a month after their album came out. So catchy.

"We Are Gonna Be Okay" by Dan Whitener- The singer is also a CTY friend, though somebody I haven't been in touch with since a year or two after we left CTY. Apparently this is a year of my CTY friends putting out awesome music.

"Ben Franklin's Song" by the Decemberists- from the Hamildrops, with lyrics by Lin Manuel Miranda. Unused lyric from Hamilton set to music and sung by Colin Meloy. I love this in general as a history song, as it gives Franklin such a wonderful edge, but I particularly love it as a potential Walter Bishop vidsong.

"My Queen Is Ada Eastman" by Sons of Kemet - is by far not the first time I have placed a band with Seb Rochford drumming on a playlist, and I'm sure it will not be the last. But actually the most important driver of this album is bandleader Shabaka Hutchings on saxophone, not Rochford. This whole album is great, Afro-Caribbean jazz you can dance to, and I want everyone to listen to it and if I'd had my jazz panel at VVC this year instead of last, it's entirely possible the whole panel would've consisted of me playing "Your Queen is a Reptile" start to finish and then shouting "VID THIS MUSIC". I particularly want all the Black Panther vids to this album. [It was also the subject of a terrible NYTimes article about how surprisingly black people are making jazz music. Because the NYTimes is terrible.]

"Hurricane Birds by the Bad Plus -Jury's still out on the new Iverson-less version of the Bad Plus. I have mixed but mostly positive feelings about their 2018 album, which feels like a very conscious renegotiation of the band's identity. But I'm seeing them at LPR in a month and I am so excited. "Hurricane Birds" opens that new album and it starts with several bars of just Anderson and King before Orrin Davis joins in, and it feels very much like Anderson and King have to work to open up a space to let Davis in, but it's neat to listen to that musical conversation because all three are so open to experiencing the struggle.

"Reactor" by GoGo Penguin- A sort of smoother version of the Bad Plus, jazz meets rock meets Philip Glassian minimalism. A lot of the reviews of it talk about the ways in which the band is consciously trying to do an acoustic version of electronica idiom, but I don't know enough about EDM to recognize it.

"DNA' by Kendrick Lamar- Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't listen to Kendrick until 2018. I already mentioned that I'm not hip at all. This is exactly as brilliant as everyone said it would be. I had a couple week period in the spring where this album was almost the only thing I listened to in the car. Man, the poetry of his verse...

"Hi" composed by Caroline Shaw as performed on Mozart in the Jungle- I already wrote about this when the episode of "Mozart in the Jungle" it was written for aired.

"The Old Favorite/ Dweller on the Threshold" by Countercurrent- Mashup of an Irish jig and a Van Morrison classic that seems to make both parts of the mashup better

"You Are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution" by Patrice Michaels & Kuang-Hao Huang (composed by Derrick Wang) - new recording of this aria from "Scalia/Ginsburg", from an album of songs about RBG. Have I mentioned lately how psyched I am to finally see "Scalia/Ginsburg" next year? I AM VERY PSYCHED


Download link here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YUTpNUB-zQdo2drEmY1qVh3dzYuB-IFd

Profile

seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
seekingferret

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  12345
67 89101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags