tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8103953047458997802024-03-05T14:16:23.838-08:00DencklaTronicBen Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-61966780765626940972015-02-19T18:28:00.002-08:002015-02-19T18:28:39.318-08:00Tenth-Century Street HebrewWhile listening to the audiobook of <i>The Aleppo Codex</i>, one small section struck me as strange. Here's my attempt to get to the bottom of it.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://bdenckla.bitbucket.org/BQZCGKXk6x/">http://bdenckla.bitbucket.org/BQZCGKXk6x/</a>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-90963153569899166452014-12-04T11:22:00.002-08:002014-12-04T11:25:02.106-08:00What would Amos do?This is just a quick follow-up to my "<a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2014/10/what-would-isaiah-do.html">What would Isaiah do?</a>" post.<br />
<br />
I was struck by an excerpt from chapter 5 of Amos that I saw in "<a href="http://www.justice-in-the-city.com/?p=754">A Lament for Eric Garner</a>" on Aryeh Cohen's <i><a href="http://www.justice-in-the-city.com/">Justice in the City</a></i> blog.<br />
<br />
Two selections from Amos made it into the prophetic lectionary (haftarot), but not this one.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, I thought it was great, and it felt very much in line with the excerpt I used from chapter 58 of Isaiah in my post.<br />
<br />
Here's the JPS translation:<br />
<br />
[21] I loathe, I spurn your festivals,<br />
I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies.<br />
<br />
[22] If you offer Me burnt offerings—or your meal offerings—<br />
I will not accept them;<br />
I will pay no heed To your gifts of fatlings.<br />
<br />
[23] Spare Me the sound of your hymns,<br />
And let Me not hear the music of your lutes.<br />
<br />
[24] But let justice well up like water,<br />
Righteousness like an unfailing stream.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The JPS is a bit different, in its details, from the (unidentified) translation Aryeh Cohen uses, but not different in spirit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Isaiah of chapter 58 is generally agreed to have lived far after and far away from the Isaiah of chapter 1, who identifies himself as the son of Amos. Nonetheless, we see here that this Deutero-Isaiah is a worthy literary heir to Amos.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Note that this passage from Amos, like the one from Isaiah, could be interpreted as a rejection of the ritual aspects of Judaism in favor of its ethical aspects. In my opinion such an interpretation is neither reflective of the past nor is it helpful for the present. In other words, Isaiah and Amos railed against rituals as meaningless <i>when practiced in isolation from Jewish ethics</i>. This criticism is as relevant in our time as it was in theirs.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Perhaps more interesting, though, is the question, is ethical behavior any less meaningful <i>when practiced in isolation from ritual?</i> Or, more generally, what is the relationship, if any, between the ritual and the ethical? Does ritual somehow inform, motivate, or amplify our ethical behavior?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All I can say is that these questions are important to struggle with rather than dismiss.</div>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-24478267486074819022014-11-04T11:46:00.000-08:002014-12-03T17:20:47.203-08:00Ebooks are SoftwarePublishers have converted a huge number of their books into ebook form over the past few years.<br />
<br />
Here are some reasons they might have done these conversions.<br />
<ol>
<li>They believed that ebooks would be profitable, especially if low-quality conversion was done, making their fixed costs negligible.</li>
<li>They were skeptical that ebooks would be profitable, but low-quality conversion was so cheap that it was worth hedging their bets.</li>
<li>They feared Amazon's reprisal against their paper sales if they failed to get on board with Kindle.</li>
</ol>
Can you tell that I really want to talk about here is low-quality conversion? (I couldn't resist mentioning the juicy topic of pressure from Amazon, but that gets plenty of attention so I'll leave it at that.)<br />
<br />
I used to rail against low-quality conversion, to whoever would listen: mostly my poor wife, since she's more or less a captive audience.<br />
<br />
Then I had a humbling realization: publishers did exactly the right thing, in opting for low-quality conversion.<br />
<br />
But I haven't become too humble: I think they did the right thing for the wrong reason.<br />
<br />
They think they converted cheaply and now they're done.<br />
<br />
I think they did the right thing to convert cheaply, but they should just view those conversions as version 1.0.<br />
<br />
Another way of putting this is that publishers need to start treating ebooks as software, since ebooks are software.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Software has bugs that need to be fixed.</li>
<li>Software needs to evolve as its environment changes.</li>
</ol>
<br />
To be fair, nothing in their previous, paper-based business would have prepared publishers to understand the dynamics of software.<br />
<br />
Heck, software is such a young, changing field, that half of the software companies out there don't understand the dynamics of software. So why would I expect publishers to do better?<br />
<br />
Then again, as Kohelet reminds us Jews every Sukkot, there is nothing new under the sun.<br />
<br />
Publishers have, over the last four centuries or so, developed quality control processes that<br />
<ol>
<li>result in low initial defect rates and</li>
<li>allow for fixing the few defects that do creep in.</li>
</ol>
Kind of sounds like software, doesn't it? At least it sounds like software property #1 above: software has bugs that need to be fixed. (We'll leave property #2 (evolving with environmental changes) alone for now.)<br />
<br />
So, publishers don't know anything about the particulars of software, but they do know something about quality control of initial releases and managing bug fixes in subsequent releases.<br />
<br />
In paper publishing, a release is analogous to a printing.<br />
<br />
Quality control of an initial release, in publishing, includes processes such as proofreading, possibly done multiple times on proofs of increasing finality. Managing bug fixes in subsequent releases includes processes such as receiving reported typos and fixing those that merit fixing.<br />
<br />
One might think that publishers' quality process savvy would have ported well to the world of ebooks.<br />
<br />
Sadly, this could hardly be farther from the truth.<br />
<br />
As far as I can tell, these quality control processes almost never happen to ebooks. This is especially puzzling in the case of bug fixes, since the ebook medium drastically lowers the cost of reporting and fixing typos.<br />
<br />
Paper books don't have a button allowing a reader to report a typo to the publisher. But, Kindle books might as well not have such a button, since, in my experience, publishers hardly ever act on such reports. I made hundreds of such reports before realizing that it is virtually pointless to do so.<br />
<br />
To fix a typo in a paper book, a publisher has to not only fix the typo but wait for the next printing, which may never happen if the book's popularity falls off. In contrast, for an ebook, there is no such thing as a printing, only releases. A new release can be made at whatever frequency the publisher deems appropriate. Too bad virtually none of them seem to take advantage of this capability.<br />
<br />
But, let's get back to my major theme here: low quality conversion.<br />
<br />
If the initial conversions of ebooks had not been of such low quality, the typo correction process would not be so important.<br />
<br />
But, as I must calmly remind myself when I start foaming at the mouth, I'm now trying to give publishers the benefit of the doubt, admitting that an initial low quality conversion was the right thing to do.<br />
<br />
Low quality conversion allowed publishers to quickly enter a new market with low initial investment. What's not to love about that?<br />
<br />
So, is all I'm advocating that publishers take reported typos seriously and start releasing 1.1 versions?<br />
<br />
No.<br />
<br />
I'd like to advocate for something more radical.<br />
<br />
Yes, start taking typos more seriously, but, even more importantly:<br />
<br />
It's time for version 2.0. In other words, it is time to re-convert, the right way. Or at least a better way.<br />
<br />
It may be painful for publishers to hear this, since most are still in the middle of, or have just completed, the conversion of their back catalog. (Luckily, I don't think publishers or anyone else reads my blog, so these painful words will not be heard.)<br />
<br />
In software, it is not at all painful to hear that what you do when you complete version 1.0 is you get to work on the next version. In fact, there is often a pipelined development process where work on 2.0 is already well underway when version 1.0 is released!<br />
<br />
These 2.0 versions should<br />
<div>
<ol>
<li>Be high quality, e.g. avoid OCR if possible</li>
<li>Be modern, i.e. avoid concessions to the limitations of early e-readers</li>
</ol>
</div>
I've already talked about quality a lot, but this "be modern" admonition takes up a theme I briefly introduced above but then dropped: software needs to evolve with changes in its environment.<br />
<br />
"Be modern" means no more concessions to the limitations of early e-readers. Publishers need to make the same hard calls that software companies make, with respect to leaving certain users behind who do not (or cannot) upgrade their hardware or software. Perhaps Amazon and other vendors could ease those users' pain by still making the old version available, but I know of no current mechanism for this. In the big picture, I'm sorry to say it but publishers can't let a few users cause their books to be stranded in a format that was the right thing for one particular time but is not the right thing, going forward.<br />
<br />
Here I'm going out on a limb, but I think ebooks are where books are heading. I'm not saying that paper books will die. They will probably always have a place. But I think that in the future, the roles of paper books and ebooks will flip: the ebook will be viewed as the canonical version of the book, and the paper book will be viewed as a convenient alternate form of this canonical version. If I'm right about this, the initial, quick-and-dirty conversions that publishers have done are not appropriate for a lasting, canonical encoding of a book.<br />
<br />
Some of the concessions to the limitations of early e-readers that are my pet peeves are as follows.<br />
<ol>
<li>Images used instead of Unicode.</li>
<li>Raster images (e.g. JPEGs) used instead of vector images (e.g. SVG).</li>
<li>Failure to take advantage of various EPUB 3 features.</li>
</ol>
<div>
I guess this is sort of an abrupt ending, but that's it for now.</div>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-60615682623328442282014-11-04T11:08:00.002-08:002016-07-17T11:12:53.220-07:00The web needs inkscale imagesWeb browsers are missing an important feature I call inkscale.<br />
<br />
Inkscale is like grayscale, but instead of varying from black to white, it varies from its context's background color to its context's foreground color.<br />
<br />
Inkscale should also support transparency, in which case it would vary from transparent to its context's foreground color.<br />
<br />
The problem that inkscale solves is keeping an image's color scale in sync with the page's surrounding text colors.<br />
<br />
Inkscale could be implemented by extending an existing image format, in which case no extension to HTML or CSS would be needed, though web browsers would need to be upgraded to interpret this new feature of, for example, PNG.<br />
<br />
Alternately, inkscale could be implemented by extending HTML, perhaps as a new attribute of the IMG element that would instruct the browser to "deliberately misinterpret" a grayscale image as inkscale. Or it could be implemented in CSS.<br />
<br />
My particular motivation for wanting inkscale is ebooks. Ebooks readers are basically specialized web browsers, since the two most commercially important ebook formats are the following.<br />
<ul>
<li>EPUB, which is based on HTML</li>
<li>Kindle (MOBI/KF8), which is usually generated from EPUB</li>
</ul>
The reason why inkscale is particularly important for ebooks is that, unlike most web browsers and web sites, many ebook readers allow the user to set the foreground and background colors.<br />
<br />
So whereas the lack of inkscale in web pages is primarily an inconvenience for web designers, the lack of inkscale in ebooks is an inconvenience for end users. For example, consider these following two different "statements of pain."<br />
<ul>
<li>Web designer: "Argh! We can't redo the color scheme without re-generating our images!"</li>
<li>Ebook end user: "Argh! I like black-on-beige text but it makes this book's images stick out like a sore thumb, since the images are stuck as black-on-white!"</li>
</ul>
<div>
Another reason that inkscale is particularly important for ebooks is that many ebooks encode non-Latin characters as images, since unfortunately for a long time many ebook readers did not have Unicode support. It is particularly jarring when such "text-only images" do not match the foreground and background colors of the surrounding text.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here are some examples of problems created by the lack of inkscale in ebooks. These are screen snips from the Kindle for PC ebook reader. I show each example two ways. First, I show it with a problematic color scheme (white-on-black or brown-on-beige) and then I show it with the black-on-white color scheme, in which case there is no problem.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLbnliEajlQMK8nJjZ52GUgdgDzNPJdmo4omjNv7wn0nSx1dKJo9N0QDfJngYmE6z4Xzw2ZDSyb8RdQg3lgT_gmQUxEGPhxkVvxP06g7-7KU_mx2S7gciRpi_xKg2QQM9RxsLM_FGkZdQ/s1600/ant+-+black.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLbnliEajlQMK8nJjZ52GUgdgDzNPJdmo4omjNv7wn0nSx1dKJo9N0QDfJngYmE6z4Xzw2ZDSyb8RdQg3lgT_gmQUxEGPhxkVvxP06g7-7KU_mx2S7gciRpi_xKg2QQM9RxsLM_FGkZdQ/s1600/ant+-+black.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi83mK5Tj7lmjo9ECKOaoDUfaW3f39wcX7iRxQ8uFOdNjbtuAihYxG25DpT6bWe1d3vECC7S4msU6U7F_BzZQEdwtIK4DhB3M7_H5hFClDnvdqMYcesfFjmW2Siq3_RIc34ebnaeRAEDzo/s1600/ant+-+white.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi83mK5Tj7lmjo9ECKOaoDUfaW3f39wcX7iRxQ8uFOdNjbtuAihYxG25DpT6bWe1d3vECC7S4msU6U7F_BzZQEdwtIK4DhB3M7_H5hFClDnvdqMYcesfFjmW2Siq3_RIc34ebnaeRAEDzo/s1600/ant+-+white.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9bHMKQOGDWSFulS3AzshiTZhpoJ4eX-g-Xzy6QYQTGEWMALUmJO-nVIIDD5OcpwccOIq2gKnWkVfFuv4jSMR64p1GZw0mdl-_otTqK8j0ivNJjm-kGd77XJfq_ElgLIJ4ND3VTEEZpgM/s1600/greek+-+black.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="33" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9bHMKQOGDWSFulS3AzshiTZhpoJ4eX-g-Xzy6QYQTGEWMALUmJO-nVIIDD5OcpwccOIq2gKnWkVfFuv4jSMR64p1GZw0mdl-_otTqK8j0ivNJjm-kGd77XJfq_ElgLIJ4ND3VTEEZpgM/s1600/greek+-+black.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtTysgnqNdhOPldTSasaBRmILbirs-7lGGeEialn3cKvj4hG9RBmQRF15Tz3IQiA990y-ixcgp14OBZVZ5315uK7aeL-AH266HMA6arhTM8Hv_KQlWS48xfbwFhZrvmugcpxZwRDnDGt4/s1600/Part+2+-+sepia.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtTysgnqNdhOPldTSasaBRmILbirs-7lGGeEialn3cKvj4hG9RBmQRF15Tz3IQiA990y-ixcgp14OBZVZ5315uK7aeL-AH266HMA6arhTM8Hv_KQlWS48xfbwFhZrvmugcpxZwRDnDGt4/s1600/Part+2+-+sepia.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhna2e7MLDJGX291pmBB-HXYNyIQZRTu1BN1jpwWw9kiuzRFyxwevbj9FzMTm_a6hVNaQ9WlWGwnT-h8DIM0W0akoYzvMFOgtUw-mT-vT-fcCwwRXbO2XFPmpFxe9_o4J-aRG1mGk05UFY/s1600/Part+2+-+white.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhna2e7MLDJGX291pmBB-HXYNyIQZRTu1BN1jpwWw9kiuzRFyxwevbj9FzMTm_a6hVNaQ9WlWGwnT-h8DIM0W0akoYzvMFOgtUw-mT-vT-fcCwwRXbO2XFPmpFxe9_o4J-aRG1mGk05UFY/s1600/Part+2+-+white.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div>
Finally, a few random concluding notes and questions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
AutoCAD's <a href="http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%202010%20User%20Documentation/index.html?url=WS1a9193826455f5ffa23ce210c4a30acaf-5ac0.htm,topicNumber=d0e158306">bitonal images</a> feature is a bit like inkscale.</div>
<div>
<br />
SVG inside HTML already supports inkscale images, for vector elements, i.e. strokes and fills. E.g. an SVG element's "fill" property can be set to the SVG variable "currentColor," which is the current HTML/CSS foreground (text) color. What is not clear to me is whether SVG can be coaxed to transform raster images according to currentColor.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Fonts can, somewhat perversely, be thought of as special-purpose inkscale images. In some sense, this is what has created the whole problem: if fonts weren't inkscale, we wouldn't need inkscale to match text colors!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On the flip side, fonts can, somewhat perversely, be used to allow inkscale on the web today. The idea is, somewhat perversely, to encode the images that need to be inkscale as glyphs in a custom font. (This may not be so perverse if the images are in fact being used to overcome character set limitations, e.g. spotty Unicode support.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The End.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Update: a friend who shall remain nameless found the following Stack Overflow discussion of how to implement something close to inkscale:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7415872/change-color-of-png-image-via-css">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7415872/change-color-of-png-image-via-css</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The closest thing to inkscale, at the moment, seems to be the CSS "filter" property, e.g. as described here:<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://dev.w3.org/fxtf/filters/#FilterProperty">http://dev.w3.org/fxtf/filters/#FilterProperty</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/filter">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/filter</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The "filter" property (in its webkit-specific form) is intriguingly demonstrated here:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://codepen.io/rss/pen/ftnDd">http://codepen.io/rss/pen/ftnDd</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and here:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/css/filters/index.html">http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/css/filters/index.html</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I may be missing something, but it seems like the "filter" property, though offering something close to inkscale, isn't there yet.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In particular, the "filter" property offers grayscale() and sepia(), but inkscale support (at least as I have defined it) would require something like inkscale(). I.e. grayscale() and sepia() are mapping the image along two specific background/foreground scales, rather than mapping the image along a "current background" to "current foreground" scale.<br />
<br />
Here's a <a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2014/10/more-on-bitonal-inkscale-images.html">follow-up post I made</a> on the topic of this "inkscale" feature.</div>
</div>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-78205115659600726262014-10-23T13:04:00.001-07:002014-11-02T15:34:43.744-08:00Ebooks for Reform JewsSince I've been trying, mostly without success, to get work creating high-quality ebooks of interest to Reform Jews, I was curious to survey the state of that business.<br />
<br />
I decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that I would use the following data as a proxy for the state of ebooks of interest to Reform Jews.<br />
<br />
I took as my sample the list of previously recommended non-fiction books from the URJs list of <a href="http://urj.org/learning/my/books/">Significant Jewish Books</a>.<br />
<br />
Then, for each of these books, I created a row in a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iYO-H-aIu3nn2V425owCeZFUnsaOJ-DMJxl4UTdOu-U/edit?usp=sharing">Google Spreadsheet</a> with the following data.<br />
<ol>
<li>The Amazon sales rank for the best-ranking paper version of that book.</li>
<li>The Amazon sales rank for the Kindle version of that book, if it existed.</li>
</ol>
To do the above, I used a combination of Amazon's pages and Aaron Shepard’s <a href="http://www.salesrankexpress.com/">Sales Rank Express</a>.<br />
<br />
Of course, this data is only a proxy for what I really want to get at. I am using URJ's list as a proxy for the vague (and much broader) notion of "books of interest to Reform Jews." And, less dubiously, I am using Amazon paper and Kindle sales as a proxy for all paper and ebook sales.<br />
<br />
This data collection turned out to be surprisingly tricky in many cases. Amazon isn't called Amazon for nothing: it is a jungle of not-that-well-organized data. In particular, for many books, it is not clear whether a Kindle edition exists, because a link to the Kindle edition is not provided from some or all of the pages showing a paper edition. In one case, the Kindle edition was only available for a previous edition of the book, which had a slightly different title! So you have to do a careful, separate search for a Kindle edition if one seems to not exist.<br />
<br />
Anyway, enough of my kvetching, and on to the results.<br />
<br />
Kindle editions are available for 31 out of the 50 books (62% of the books). As to what the <i>quality</i> of these Kindle editions is, I have my doubts. In my experience, Kindle ebooks vary greatly in quality, but all are lower quality (e.g. have more typos) than their paper counterparts.<br />
<br />
Somewhat surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a strong relationship between the rank of the paper book and the presence of an ebook. I would have expected publishers to be more pragmatic in their choice of which titles they have chosen to convert from their back catalog, letting worse-ranked titles languish in paper-only obscurity.<br />
<br />
The best-ranking paper book without an ebook was Primo Levi's <i>The Periodic Table</i>. Its paper rank was 30,845.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, of the 15 books whose rank was worse than (i.e. higher than) 500,000, about half (8 of them) were available as ebooks!<br />
<br />
Perhaps low-quality ebook conversion is so cheap that publishers don't worry about a paper book's low performance too much in deciding whether to convert it to be an ebook. What factors they do consider in making the decision, I would love to know.<br />
<br />
In four cases I deem significant, ebooks actually out-rank their paper counterparts.<br />
<ol>
<li><i>A Tale of Love and Darkness</i></li>
<li><i>The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit</i></li>
<li><i>The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: A True Story</i></li>
<li><i>The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land</i></li>
</ol>
This comparison is a little arbitrary since I don't think ebook and paper book rankings can be directly compared, since there are many more paper books for sale there than there are ebooks for sale. Even if there were exactly the same number of ebooks and paper books for sale, it would only tell you whether the ebook sells better, relative to all ebooks, than the paper book sells, relative to all paper books. In other words it would not tell you whether the ebook sells more copies than the paper book.<br />
<br />
Still, for lack of a better metric, comparing ebook rank to paper book rank is interesting.<br />
<br />
In <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iYO-H-aIu3nn2V425owCeZFUnsaOJ-DMJxl4UTdOu-U/edit?usp=sharing">my spreadsheet</a>, I've used orange as the background color for all cases in which the ebook has a better rank than its paper counterpart.<br />
<br />
I only consider the four best-ranked cases of this to be significant since I assume that down in the poor-performing end of the rank distribution (let's say, rank worse than (i.e. higher than) 500,000), there is a lot of noise.Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-78172384553819385342014-10-17T12:37:00.000-07:002016-01-13T22:28:14.552-08:00More on bitonal (inkscale) imagesHere are a four updates to my <a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-web-needs-inkscale-images.html">previous post</a>.<br />
<ol>
<li>Rename: "inkscale" instead of "bitonal"</li>
<li>Web icons show the demand for inkscale</li>
<li>Harry Potter examples</li>
<li>Proposals to standards committees</li>
</ol>
<div>
<b>1. Rename: "inkscale" instead of "bitonal."</b> The mental model is a single-color printing process, i.e. one color of ink on some color of paper. I also considered, but rejected, "foreground-scale" and "currentColor-scale."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>2. Web icons show the demand for inkscale.</b> In my previous post, I mentioned two ways of implementing inkscale using today's standards. One way is fonts, and the other way is SVG. What I did not mention is that this is not just a theoretical capability: people are widely implementing icons for their websites using both of these technologies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that the font approach is fundamentally a hack, not a real, long-term solution. And, while the SVG approach feels better, it fails to address raster images. This failure is not much of a problem in the realm of icons, since raster icons are probably best avoided anyway!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>3. Harry Potter examples. </b>There are many cases where you would <i>not</i> want to use inkscale. For example, most grayscale photographs should be rendered as grayscale, not inkscale. But there are many drawings for which the decision requires a careful judgment call.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Take, for example, the following screen snip from the beginning of a Harry Potter chapter:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6q1Z_k4Vt0_rJCE1UKmD5PGwgknF48qSSNbZbtDWh4nT8ujSBTCo4H5BpbwdJLw86735BfuQK9fHTAEsOKUlvHq7tYfIuVWpnch095u8M_S4yaJ2qSt-lmSQ1b3idC6KjR6RSV2Yiafw/s1600/Hagrid.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6q1Z_k4Vt0_rJCE1UKmD5PGwgknF48qSSNbZbtDWh4nT8ujSBTCo4H5BpbwdJLw86735BfuQK9fHTAEsOKUlvHq7tYfIuVWpnch095u8M_S4yaJ2qSt-lmSQ1b3idC6KjR6RSV2Yiafw/s1600/Hagrid.PNG" height="217" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
Though this doesn't look great, the problem is only made worse by converting to inkscale (which, in this case, means inverting):</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpzzcCSLDHw9_YLy7enrpN9lEcOE28HmSn6_Wj9GOJZfdE6CKbGsTF2SU8YsWjJS-WYe20m_SWj4DJ1RXVFO0uVFhaA2nNrkUsCJXg7nTXc0izq4xhguiW2uEWysZjOePf18xYjwRQtp4/s1600/Hagrid-inverted.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpzzcCSLDHw9_YLy7enrpN9lEcOE28HmSn6_Wj9GOJZfdE6CKbGsTF2SU8YsWjJS-WYe20m_SWj4DJ1RXVFO0uVFhaA2nNrkUsCJXg7nTXc0izq4xhguiW2uEWysZjOePf18xYjwRQtp4/s1600/Hagrid-inverted.png" height="217" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
To reaffirm your faith that there are many examples where inkscale is a clear win, here's another screen snip:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-uWhCkP2fWiMurKzGinboCFo_8ja1DO4pE1Yet8fDjRUQUxXdQ8h_Mo7qhYIvNB_cHUvExqCCgorymbUQNG0OuilORZwPLOO2zTZhtNyJSWLI7NORKmFpKl2fUIasNOqxzg2zh_dmkxQ/s1600/Hogwarts-letter.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-uWhCkP2fWiMurKzGinboCFo_8ja1DO4pE1Yet8fDjRUQUxXdQ8h_Mo7qhYIvNB_cHUvExqCCgorymbUQNG0OuilORZwPLOO2zTZhtNyJSWLI7NORKmFpKl2fUIasNOqxzg2zh_dmkxQ/s1600/Hogwarts-letter.PNG" height="320" width="244" /></a></div>
<div>
And here it is with its two images converted to inkscale:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9s3Y2RasWuuu_eVAJDEczoldwhJa6hbWSM2Y22lR7WyJrNOn-k25Xtcl0px9IjnzzXtHE4cMa-Do3HuP11CnExHkdvUATNdiJKKk4Mm-zf7owSAA9zmgV8x57XxreU35bwjsOF-X-xW0/s1600/Hogwards-letter-inverted.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9s3Y2RasWuuu_eVAJDEczoldwhJa6hbWSM2Y22lR7WyJrNOn-k25Xtcl0px9IjnzzXtHE4cMa-Do3HuP11CnExHkdvUATNdiJKKk4Mm-zf7owSAA9zmgV8x57XxreU35bwjsOF-X-xW0/s1600/Hogwards-letter-inverted.png" height="320" width="244" /></a></div>
<div>
Here's my guess at a general guideline for whether to convert to inkscale or not: If the intensity values of the image <i>have meaning</i>, don't pervert this meaning by converting to inkscale.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For example, the Hagrid image above is not a line drawing: it uses intensity (shading) to indicate something about the implied color of its objects and the implied source(s) of lighting. It implies that his boots are dark, and that they are lit from the left.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Whereas, in the letter, the swoosh and the signature are not real, lit objects. Or rather, we are to imagine them as real objects, but we do not seek to represent them as such.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One rough version of the guideline would be the following. If the image should really have been represented in a vector format like SVG, it should probably be inkscale. Whereas, if it is appropriately represented in a raster format, it should probably stay grayscale. I'm sure there are many exceptions to this, e.g. an elaborately shaded SVG image.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Even though it takes us beyond the ideas of inkscale, I can't resist suggesting that it could be an interesting added value to the ebook if the signature appeared in a slightly different color than the text. Doing this in the paper book would presumably introduce a big increase in marginal cost, but of course in an ebook, it would have only the fixed cost of figuring out how to implement it. To satisfy the color-scheme flexibility that is in the spirit of inkscale, we might like to define the color of the signature as a slightly hue-rotated version of the text color. If the text color has no hue, i.e. is black or white, we might give it a slightly blue hue. This way, in the standard black-on-white color scheme, mimicking black ink on white paper, the signature would appear to be in dark blue ink.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>4. Proposals to standards committees. </b>I've submitted the inkscale idea for consideration as part of <a href="https://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/issues/detail?id=466">the next revision of EPUB</a> and for consideration for inclusion in the <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-fx/2014OctDec/0017.html">CSS filter effects module</a>.</div>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-1903103423417672402014-10-02T16:32:00.000-07:002014-10-02T16:50:13.719-07:00What would Isaiah do?<i>[This was originally a post I made on facebook in response to the article, "<a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/185506/orthodox-man-refuses-to-sit-next-to-feminist-activist-on-airplane">Orthodox Man Refuses To Sit Next to Feminist Activist on Airplane</a>."]</i><br />
<br />
Christians sometimes ask themselves, "What would Jesus do?" In what could be thought of as a Jewish analogy to this question, Heschel challenges all Jews to ask themselves: would your Judaism be intelligible to Isaiah [1]? In other words, "What would the Hebrew prophets have you do?"<br />
<br />
The Hebrew prophets teach us that, in analogy to God's limitless concern for us, there should be no limit to our concern for others.<br />
<br />
This means that mitzvot should never be observed in isolation of concern for others.<br />
<br />
Thus, even if I grant that avoiding contact with a member of the opposite sex is a mitzvah, it cannot be observed in isolation, i.e. it cannot be observed without considering how it causes others to feel.<br />
<br />
We are approaching Yom Kippur. Consider what Isaiah has to say, in the haftarah for YK morning, about the mitzvah of fasting, if observed in isolation of concern for others:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
58:5. Is this the fast I have chosen?<br />
A day of self-affliction?<br />
Bowing your head like a reed,<br />
and covering yourself with sackcloth and ashes?<br />
Is this what you call a fast,<br />
a day acceptable to the Eternal? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
6. Is not <i>this</i> the fast that I have chosen:<br />
to unlock the shackles of injustice,<br />
to loosen the ropes of the yoke,<br />
to let the oppressed go free,<br />
and to tear every yoke apart? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
7. Surely it is to share your bread with the hungry,<br />
and to bring the homeless poor into your house;<br />
when you see the naked, to cover them,<br />
never withdrawing yourself from your own kin. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
8. Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,<br />
and your healing shall quickly blossom;<br />
your Righteous One will walk before you,<br />
the glory of the Eternal will be your rear guard. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
9. Then, when you call,<br />
the Eternal will answer;<br />
when you cry, God will say: Here I am.</blockquote>
(Translation by Chaim Stern.)<br />
<br />
Particularly resonant with the airplane issue is Isaiah's idea of "never withdrawing yourself from your own kin."<br />
<br />
What would Isaiah have done, had he been on that plane?<br />
<br />
<b>Notes</b><br />
<br />
1. The quote from Heschel I have in mind is the following, from "To Be a Jew: What Is It?" in <i>Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity</i>, p. 9.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Our way of life must remain to some degree intelligible to Isaiah and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, to Maimonides and the Baal Shem.</blockquote>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-59041033108092943872014-10-02T15:56:00.002-07:002014-10-02T15:56:45.161-07:00Condemnation and Consolation<i>[This is something I wrote last year that appeared in my temple's newsletter. It was in response to a request for comments on a Yom Kippur sermon that many temple members found provocative: some in a good way, some in a bad way.]</i><br />
<br />
Though we won't have another prophet until The Anointed One comes, we must keep the prophetic voice alive.<br />
<br />
This voice, as typified by Isaiah, is a bewildering combination of condemnation and consolation.<br />
<br />
It may seem to contain contradictions, in making us responsible for so much of what is wrong with the world, while reminding us that there are limits to what we can control.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most important reminder of our limits is Shabbat.<br />
<br />
Consider the Haftarah for Yom Kippur Morning, from Isaiah.<br />
<br />
As is the prerogative of prophets, Isaiah speaks for God when he asks, in apparent disgust, "Is this the fast I have chosen?"<br />
<br />
The answer is of course "no." The fast he has chosen is not just refraining from eating on one day. The fast he has chosen is also refraining, every day, from the self-indulgence that prevents us from caring for others. The hardest fast of all. The one that seems to place all the responsibility on us.<br />
<br />
But, the portion concludes by reminding us that to be rewarded we must not only fix the world, but also "keep from trampling the Sabbath."<br />
<br />
So we must not only fix the world, but also be mindful that we cannot fix it all. There is a remainder (one seventh?) that only God can and will fix.<br />
<br />
We are offered the additional consolation that when all of this is done, we will ride high and our fast will be over:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I will cause you to ride upon the heights of the earth,<br />and I will feed you with the portion of Jacob your father<br />–The Eternal One has spoken.</blockquote>
This year (5774), Yom Kippur (Shabbat Shabbaton) fell on Shabbat.<br />
<br />
Yom Kippur seems particularly well-suited to the condemning part of the prophetic voice, while Shabbat is more suited to the consoling.<br />
<br />
What's a rabbi to do, in composing a sermon for such a day?<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-69943704840783172662014-09-15T10:10:00.002-07:002014-11-04T11:16:22.247-08:00HTML needs bitonal imagesThis post only exists to provide a link to its new location.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-web-needs-inkscale-images.html">It can be found here with its new title.</a>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-35800879721744366382014-09-11T17:07:00.002-07:002014-11-04T11:16:08.562-08:00The web needs bitonal imagesThis post only exists to provide a link to its new location.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-web-needs-inkscale-images.html">It can be found here with its new title.</a>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-64239931870908416002014-06-30T16:54:00.002-07:002014-06-30T16:54:55.434-07:00Ebooks from SourcesHere’s a link to a minimal, work-in progress web site advertising my ebook consulting services: <a href="http://bdenckla.github.io/efs/">http://bdenckla.github.io/efs/</a>.Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-40213613355199760032014-05-01T10:10:00.000-07:002014-05-01T12:42:49.126-07:00The Prophet Lorax<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://seussblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/the-lorax-book-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://seussblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/the-lorax-book-cover.jpg" height="320" width="234" /></a></div>
<br />
One of the most profitable aspects of my Jewish journey has been learning about the Hebrew Prophets, particularly the Latter Prophets. A basic but ongoing challenge to that learning is just trying to understand what a prophet is in our tradition.<br />
<br />
Initially, like many people, I thought that the main feature of a prophet is his prediction of the future. In other words, I viewed a prophet as a seer.<br />
<br />
But, now I think the main feature of a prophet is his seeing the <b>present</b> more clearly than other people. A prophet's predictions of the future serve only to emphasize his points about the present. To exhort people to change their behavior <b>now</b>, a prophet predicts rewards and punishments.<br />
<br />
Although the behaviors the prophet wants to change are often personal, the rewards and punishments he predicts are usually societal, or even global. This system of reward and punishment that the prophet predicts may not appeal to us, or it may appeal to us but seem a naive fantasy. Either way, it may be a "turn-off."<br />
<br />
I want to encourage people to get turned back on to the prophets. To that end, I think it may help to view the predicted rewards and punishments as only <b>tactics</b> that the prophets use to achieve goals of <b>the good and the holy</b>.<br />
<br />
So, though these tactics may not appeal to us, I earnestly hope that the goals still do.<br />
<br />
Particularly at risk is the goal of the holy. The goal of the good is one respected and pursued by many. Good is of course always threatened by evil. And, nowadays, it is threatened by a relativism that has made the categories of good and evil unfashionable. But the greater threat is to the concept of the holy, which is so out of fashion in some circles, and so perverted in others, that I fear for its survival.<br />
<br />
<b>A prophet speaks inconvenient truths to try to make us good and make us holy. He also offers us hope that this daunting task can indeed be done. </b><br />
<br />
Another journey I'm on is raising kids. One of them got <i>The Lorax</i> by Dr. Seuss as a birthday present. As I read it to them, I realized, hey, this guy <i>The Lorax</i> is a prophet!<br />
<br />
Well, maybe he's not a prophet, if that seems blasphemous to you, but at least he's a darn good (and fun) illustration of the most important features of a prophet.<br />
<br />
I won't review the book here, but suffice it to say that the Lorax spoke inconvenient truths to try to make the Once-ler good. In the end it is the Once-ler, not the Lorax, who offers hope, though, in the form of a seed.<br />
<br />
The idea of the holy is missing, or, rather, must be supplied by the reader. Perhaps it is better that way.<br />
<br />
The idea of divine inspiration is missing, too. It is missing both from the Lorax and from my discussion of prophets. Perhaps it is better that way.<br />
<br />
In closing, let me provide a couple of links showing other people's exploration of the idea of the Lorax as a prophet.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ravenfoundation.org/blogs/religion/the-gospel-according-to-dr-seuss-part-2-the-lorax-the-prophets-and-the-ipad/">The Lorax, the Prophets, and the iPad</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://daysofawe.net/lorax.htm">The Lorax and Deuteronomy</a>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-57903760644733033892013-08-09T13:43:00.000-07:002013-08-23T09:45:00.733-07:00My People's Giant Passover HaggadahThanks to the suggestion of <a href="http://www.templeisaiah.com/rabbi-joel-nickerson">Rabbi Joel Nickerson</a>, I have been enjoying <i>My People's Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries </i>(henceforth MPPH).<br />
<i><br /></i>
It got me thinking about the design challenges of Jewish books.<br />
<br />
Like many Jewish books, MPPH contains many related texts.<br />
<br />
So a design challenge of such a book is to use resources such as layout and font to show how its texts are related. Making these relationships clear makes it easier for the reader to know his or her location within the complex structure of such a book. And it makes it easier for the reader to navigate within such a book.<br />
<br />
A Talmud is a great example of such a book. Take a look at <a href="http://www.joshua-parker.net/portfolio/resourceguides/talmud_layout.pdf">this neat PDF</a> (by Joshua Parker) to get a sense of how a Talmud addresses the challenges of presenting multiple related texts.<br />
<br />
Part II of MPPH is a sequence of sections. Each section contains a number of elements. The elements are of the following types and "multiplicities" (how many are expected).<br />
<ol>
<li>1 Haggadah passage (Hebrew and/or Aramaic)</li>
<li>1 Translation of the Haggadah passage into English</li>
<li>1 Summary of the meaning of the passage (a "signpost")</li>
<li>0..n Ceremonial instructions, each belonging to a location within the Haggadah passage</li>
<li>0..n Images</li>
<li>8..11 Commentaries on the passage</li>
</ol>
(Note that Part II is not be confused with Volume 2. Like many Jewish books, another design challenge of MPPH is that its sheer length requires it to be split into multiple volumes!)<br />
<br />
MPPH uses various techniques to show how the elements of a section are related.<br />
<br />
The most notable technique it uses is what I will call the anchor spread. (I'm using "spread" to mean two facing pages.)<br />
<br />
Here is an example. (I've provided it only at low resolution since I'm only interested in the layout, not the content.)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvrKZRoAUAzML57YifBp99Elhma42xjPJKkX5rqK6MzXzosaX15J8f_u5Usv4lA7ba0IcAZ1nUr8F3jWgpHkVFl_gucp_S5PpaTLLJzM4ekD5XQhHLNU8B2sG-wZrzcXoveFCTyLRplj4/s1600/MPPH+-+A+long+answer+-+spread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvrKZRoAUAzML57YifBp99Elhma42xjPJKkX5rqK6MzXzosaX15J8f_u5Usv4lA7ba0IcAZ1nUr8F3jWgpHkVFl_gucp_S5PpaTLLJzM4ekD5XQhHLNU8B2sG-wZrzcXoveFCTyLRplj4/s320/MPPH+-+A+long+answer+-+spread.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
At the center of the spread is the beginning of the Haggadah passage in question, with English on the left and Hebrew/Aramaic on the right.<br />
<br />
Surrounding the passage and its translation are the beginnings of the commentaries. Each commentary beginning is followed by an indication of the page on which the rest of the commentary appears. This indication is also known as a jump line or continuation line. (The Haggadah passage itself has no jump line since it continues immediately after the anchor spread.)<br />
<br />
So in some ways the anchor spread resembles the first page of a newspaper section on which many articles are started, but most or all need to be finished elsewhere.<br />
<br />
The anchor spread design got me thinking... what if jumps were not needed, i.e. what if the complete commentaries surrounded the complete Haggadah passage?<br />
<br />
I.e. what would it be like if you could really see where you were within the "landscape" of the section?<br />
<br />
To partly answer this question, I did the following.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>I extracted the elements of the "4 questions section" from a digital version of MPPH. I hope I didn't break any laws (or breach any contracts) in the process. Just in case, I will not reveal the details of how I did this. I'm sure what I did was ethical, but of course ethics and the law are not always aligned.</li>
<li>I laid these elements out on a single giant page using the <a href="http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus">Scribus open source desktop publishing software</a>.</li>
<li>For $10.90, I had a print shop print this out for me on a large-format printer, something like the following.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr6YIC1qFgXom5D1MTVOm1Xf7JLspGki9EF1DhX6oxi4B9K-cGiEqFEyb38JQoU4J9XG68WQfZtIZMMf5XZ14FfrUybpVBuGDyoutEElYmfp6Xrh49CGhfMoXTRhCDRe4vxr_URSxEDys/s1600/PlotWave300_text_v1_m56577569830573380.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr6YIC1qFgXom5D1MTVOm1Xf7JLspGki9EF1DhX6oxi4B9K-cGiEqFEyb38JQoU4J9XG68WQfZtIZMMf5XZ14FfrUybpVBuGDyoutEElYmfp6Xrh49CGhfMoXTRhCDRe4vxr_URSxEDys/s1600/PlotWave300_text_v1_m56577569830573380.jpg" /></a></div>
Here's the result (bill shown for scale):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGZ4rlyQHV9VFxvIvYtvTuhdxwcEWN9szwif0lOy7BGBejiI6K_Gfvr3xhDiMZR7ZqmRl0_RUTp0yVuoRtML6G5-4f2u1-gfs2xGHJb0-sq6NhXV_4k4h5iwy8W8eqpA7TJfHRV9Hd-L4/s1600/4+questions+photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGZ4rlyQHV9VFxvIvYtvTuhdxwcEWN9szwif0lOy7BGBejiI6K_Gfvr3xhDiMZR7ZqmRl0_RUTp0yVuoRtML6G5-4f2u1-gfs2xGHJb0-sq6NhXV_4k4h5iwy8W8eqpA7TJfHRV9Hd-L4/s320/4+questions+photo.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/159222887/MPPH-4-questions-redacted">Here's a link to a redacted PDF version of it on Scribd</a>. This version is redacted to avoid copyright infringement. (Hopefully the picture of the un-redacted version above is low enough resolution to avoid anyone considering this copyright infringement.)<br />
<br />
That was fun, but many questions remain. Could you do the whole book this way? How would you bind, or otherwise package, such a giant book? As a flip chart on an easel?<br />
<br />
About ten years ago, Michael Hawley published <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/hawley.html">the world's biggest book</a> (at least at that time). I wonder what could be learned from that experience.<br />
<br />
Going in a different direction, how can this "jumpless" large format experience be emulated (or improved upon!) digitally? A goal being, how can you, as seamlessly as possbile, zoom out to see structure, and zoom in to view content in detail, <i>without</i> <i>losing a sense of your place within the structure</i>?<br />
<br />
I'm sure smart people have come up with interesting approaches to such problems and look forward to learning more about them. Perhaps I'll report what I find out in a subsequent post.Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-58482667292050674912013-02-03T21:41:00.000-08:002013-02-03T22:37:52.307-08:00How I made our computer quietOne of the two (!) fans in our computer's power supply has been getting more and more raucous over the past few months. I don't know whether this means it was close to actually stopping, but it was certainly close to actually driving me crazy. So, somewhat out of character for me, I decided to finally try to do something about it. Big mistake.<br />
<br />
I found the following three options for what to do.<br />
<ol>
<li>Lubricate the fan.</li>
<li>Replace the fan.</li>
<li>Replace the power supply.</li>
</ol>
I decided to replace the power supply. It seemed a little wasteful, but lubricating the fan didn't seem guaranteed to succeed and I was scared off of replacing the fan by warnings about capacitors holding a charge for hours.<br />
<br />
A brief digression. I found it amusing to see, in an online discussion of what lubricant to use, a British person asking for the equivalent of "gun oil" since shops in his country don't commonly sell it, or sell guns, for that matter! (It was speculated that "sewing machine oil" would be similar.)<br />
<br />
So I was determined to get a new power supply but not spend a huge amount of time figuring out what the best one would be. I fear I waste a lot of time shopping online for things, optimizing on margins that don't matter. Well it turns out it would have been worth spending some time figuring out what <i>a correct one</i> would have been, leaving aside the question of what <i>the best one</i> would have been.<br />
<br />
I found some random site that offered a nice-looking lookup of power supply by computer name, and trusted it. Big mistake.<br />
<br />
It turns out there has been a lot of evolution of the ATX power supply standard over the years. As is so often the case, there's a good Wikipedia article covering it. I only wish I had read it before plugging my new power supply in. (Digression: since it is so often the case that there is a good Wikipedia article about things, I've recently donated to Wikipedia, and plan to do so regularly, and encourage you to do so, too, if you find it useful.)<br />
<br />
So, I plugged my new power supply in, and everything seemed fine, but when I came back a few hours later, there was a strange smell in the room and the computer was off and would not turn back on, even with the old-but-noisy power supply plugged back in. Woops.<br />
<br />
So, making good on the promise implicit in the title of this post, that's how I made our computer quiet. Very quiet. One might even say silent.<br />
<br />
I lack some combination of the skill and the inclination to figure out exactly what happened, but my not-too-wild guess is that you shouldn't plug a 20-pin power supply into a 24-pin motherboard. I guess I was hoping that if it wouldn't work, it just wouldn't work. Meaning, I hoped that if it wouldn't work, it would fail in the following three ways.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>obviously</li>
<li>immediately</li>
<li>non-destructively</li>
</ol>
<br />
Well, it did fail obviously. But not immediately, and not non-destructively.<br />
<br />
Was my wishful thinking a product of "overly digital" thinking? Though digital systems have plenty of non-obvious, non-immediate, destructive failure modes, somehow I think analog systems have even more.<br />
<br />
And power supplies are about as analog as you can get. In fact, they're not even analog: they're power! Power is the analog of nothing! Or, put it this way, I've never heard of power being used as the analog of anything. Voltage, certainly. Current even, sometimes. But power, never.<br />
<br />
Returning from that digression, my point is, that what probably happened is that things did work, initially, and then once something heated up, over time, something on the motherboard melted or burned.<br />
<br />
It turns out that those 4 extra pins are supplying "redundant" 3.3, 5, and 12 V lines, as well as ground. Not having them forces the other pins to carry more than their "fair share" of the current. Unfortunately I guess the weak point in the system was on the motherboard, not in the power supply. Otherwise plugging the old power supply back in would have worked.<br />
<br />
So then I set about spending several should-have-been-sleeping hours researching the current offerings of Dell and HP. In other words, my mistake has led me to the most wasteful option, the following implicit option number 4.<br />
<ul>
<li>Replace entire computer.</li>
</ul>
Whenever I research buying a new computer I'm always shocked by the way in which each manufacturer divides their products into confusing, overlapping market segments, where it seems like the same computer is being offered over a 4x price range with the only obvious difference being different case design. (It turns out there are deeper differences, you just have to spend several hours to start to get a grasp of them. Whether these differences justify the 4x price range... well, if the market bears it, I guess the answer is revealed to be "yes.")<br />
<br />
So, I'll be spending a little quality time over the next few days setting up a hopefully-nice new Windows 8 machine.<br />
<br />
Still to be determined whether I will shell out $100 to upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro. I am curious to try to run Ubuntu under the "Hyper-V" virtualization built into Pro, but probably I should just save $100 and use VirtualBox, like I do with great success and ease on MacOS on my MacBook Pro.<br />
<br />
Also, will we ever want to connect to the machine using Remote Desktop? For that, you need Pro.<br />
<br />
Decisions, decisions.<br />
<br />
But at least these decisions are back in the realm of software, where I feel more comfortable.<br />
<br />
Because if there's one take-home lesson from this experience, it is that I shouldn't have felt comfortable in the realm of power. She is a cruel mistress, the analog of nothing.Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-65326609338661536602012-12-28T14:50:00.001-08:002012-12-28T14:58:39.749-08:00The Chapman Exchange<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">I spotted the following use of the old "2L-5N" (2 letter, 5 number) dialing instructions on a sign on a fence at </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Rancho Park Golf Course in Los Angeles.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-jXvmIX4UfvEaLNPoI1C5bKJOAU-0VpBRFxofwE0RjV2Oss41t1zr1a80dvNG27FHCunr4kwlOpi4T2tqqpOxCfyQ_AA6NWOFwswQ25ePT4cwyEylfYDyuWohyphenhyphene-lhvPWqo4B1fHfwXQ/s1600/Cyclone+Fence+Sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-jXvmIX4UfvEaLNPoI1C5bKJOAU-0VpBRFxofwE0RjV2Oss41t1zr1a80dvNG27FHCunr4kwlOpi4T2tqqpOxCfyQ_AA6NWOFwswQ25ePT4cwyEylfYDyuWohyphenhyphene-lhvPWqo4B1fHfwXQ/s400/Cyclone+Fence+Sign.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">The sign advertises the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Cyclone Fence Division of American Steel & Wire Co.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">It also mentions United States Steel. Was </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">American Steel & Wire Co. just a part of that (USS)?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Anyway, the address given is 5532 San Fernando Road, Glendale, Calif.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">And the phone number, the reason for my interest, is CHapman 5-2635.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">The sign also advertises locations in Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Though the use of 2L-5N is what most caught my attention, the typography is pretty neat, too. In particular, the big fat font used for the main text of "CYCLONE FENCE."</span>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-77901918203595857972012-11-16T23:13:00.000-08:002012-11-16T23:24:09.090-08:00Digitizing your booksHere's what I've learned so far about digitizing books for personal use.<br />
<h2>
How should you scan your documents?</h2>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1dollarscan.com/images/logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1dollarscan.com/images/logo.png" /></a></div>
The scanning service I've tried is called 1DollarScan. It works well. For a base price of $1 per 100 pages, they will (destructively) turn your book into a PDF. They offer various extra services, each of which costs an additional $1 per 100 pages. Some of these extras are listed below.<br />
<ul>
<li>600 dpi (instead of 300 dpi)</li>
<li>Ship from Amazon.com. That way you can "pretend" any book on Amazon is available as a PDF!</li>
<li>OCR. I gave it a try but was not particularly impressed. So now I plan to do the OCR myself using Acrobat. Acrobat has an amazing option called "ClearScan" that replaces recognized characters with their representation in a custom font. I'm still keeping the original scans for reference, in case ClearScan messes up, but so far it has offered me about 18x compression at what appears to be an increase in quality!</li>
<li>Use book title as file name. I gave it a try, and it was fine, but now I plan to just name my files using their ISBN, e.g. "ISBN 1234567890". I plan to put the title and author in the PDF metadata. This keeps file names short, though it makes them unfriendly. I'm assuming this unfriendliness won't be a problem since I'll find things by searches of content as well as file name, where the content will include the title metadata as well as the OCR data for the images. If you do go with titles in file names, note that many titles can't be exactly represented as file names since they contain characters prohibited from file names. E.g. on Windows, a colon is prohibited, but it is a very common character separating title from subtitle! As one would expect, the title field of the PDF metadata has no such restrictions.</li>
</ul>
<h2>
Now, where should you put your scanned PDF?</h2>
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<a href="https://developers.google.com/drive/images/drive_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://developers.google.com/drive/images/drive_logo.png" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/images/badges_v2/profile/btn_brn_122x44.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.scribd.com/images/badges_v2/profile/btn_brn_122x44.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
I've tried storing PDFs on Dropbox, Google Drive, and Scribd. I think Google Drive is the best overall. Here is a comparison of what these services offer.<br />
<ul>
<li>Dropbox</li>
<ul>
<li>No file size limit</li>
<li>2 Gb overall limit for free accounts</li>
<li>Offline access</li>
<li>Native viewers (Acrobat, Preview)</li>
<li>Native search (Windows Explorer, Mac Finder)</li>
</ul>
<li>Google Drive</li>
<ul>
<li>25 Mb file size limit for in-browser viewer and in-browser search</li>
<li>5 Gb overall limit for free accounts</li>
<li>Offline access</li>
<li>Native or in-browser viewer</li>
<li>Native or in-browser search</li>
</ul>
<li>Scribd</li>
<ul>
<li>100 Mb file size limit; much smaller for ClearScan?</li>
<li>No overall space limit for free accounts</li>
<li>No offline access</li>
<li>In-browser viewer</li>
<li>In-browser search</li>
</ul>
</ul>
For reference, the books I've scanned have been in the 100-200 Mb range. So to accommodate either Google's 25 Mb limit or Scribd's 100 Mb limit, you would have have to split such PDFs up. In Acrobat, you can do this by adding bookmarks at the beginning of each desired section and then telling it to split the document accordingly.<br />
<br />
Or, you can compress your documents using Acrobat's ClearScan and then they will probably fit even Google's 25 Mb limit. So far, I haven't gotten Scribd to accept ClearScan files that were bigger than 100 Mb before they were compressed, though. My guess is that when they are converted to Scribd's format, they end up being too big again.<br />
<br />
One thing I noticed about Scribd's viewer: it doesn't show you the full resolution of your document, at least not if it is 600 dpi. I suppose you can download the PDF if this is a problem, but that might be mildly annoying.<br />
<br />
Unlike Scribd, Google Drive allows files greater than 100 Mb. But, a PDF bigger than 25 Mb won't be searched or shown in the built-in viewer. In other words it is just an opaque (dumb) bunch of bits.<br />
<br />
Okay so that's what I have to share about my experiences digitizing books. What follows is a postscript on the narrow issue of how to fix PDF search on 64-bit Windows.<br />
<h2>
Postscript: How to fix PDF search on 64-bit Windows</h2>
One of the big advantages of having your books digitized with OCR is the ability to search within a book and among all your books. To my dismay, this was not working for me on Windows.<br />
<br />
The reason, I discovered, to my horror, is that on 64-bit Windows, PDFs won't be indexed unless you install a special "IFilter" program from Adobe. Once I did this and rebuilt the index, PDF search started working.<br />
<br />
In my opinion, this is really bush league stuff from an otherwise major league company like Adobe. Though a little weird, I respect their choice to not have a 64-bit version of Acrobat. The 32-bit version works fine and I suppose Acrobat is unlikely to require more than the 2 Gb or so of memory that would trigger the need for a 64-bit version. But, they should have figured out how to install this 64-bit IFilter thing along with the 32-bit application, when it is being installed on a 64-bit OS.<br />
<br />
I try not to indulge in Windows-bashing or Mac booster-ism unless I have something specific to say. So I guess I'd modify the adage<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.</blockquote>
to<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you don't have anything <i>specific</i> to say, don't say anything at all.</blockquote>
<div>
Here I have something specific to say. Mac's built-in PDF support is nice. You get a viewer (Preview) and search right out of the box. On Windows, it is mildly annoying that one must install a viewer (usually Acrobat Reader) on each new machine, but it is close to infuriating that indexing (search) doesn't work even when you do that install! Without some intrepid Googling to figure out that this is a 64-bit problem, you won't be able to figure out why indexing works on some machines and not others. (The answer is that some machines are running 32-bit Windows and some machines are running 64-bit Windows!)</div>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-12328288740447150392012-10-17T23:19:00.002-07:002012-10-17T23:48:33.084-07:00The daleth and the resh, part 1 of 2 <h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>Here's what the Hebrew letters <em>daleth</em>
and <em>resh</em> look like.</p>
<blockquote>
<font size="7">רד</font>
</blockquote>
<p>
With that in mind, consider the following excerpt about Isaiah 33.8.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>
The RSV, NRSV, NAB, and NIV follow 1QIsa<sup>a</sup> in
reading
<blockquote>
<em>ʾdym</em> [‘ê·ḏîm] [עֵדִ֔ים]
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/edim_5707.htm">concordance</a>]
“witnesses”
</blockquote>
instead of the MT
<blockquote>
<em>ʾrym</em> [‘ā·rîm] [עָרִ֔ים]
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/arim_5892.htm">concordance</a>]
“cities.”
</blockquote>
“Witnesses” seems appropriate to the meaning of the
passage, and the interchange of <em>resh</em>
for <em>daleth</em> is understandable in light of the similarity
of the letter shapes. The NJV also calls attention to this
reading in a footnote.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Harold Scanlin,
<em>The Dead Sea Scrolls & Modern Translations of the Old
Testament</em>,
p. 130
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
This got me thinking, how should one go about writing a sacred
text in a way that avoids such problems?
</p>
<p>
Or, more generally, how should one go about writing a text that
needs to be transmitted with high fidelity,
i.e. faithfully. Sacred texts are just a specific example of
this. The situation reminds me of an old FedEx slogan:
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%" align="center">
<tr>
<td>
When it Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
So, sacred texts are those where it absolutely, positively must
be copied right. Yet, historically, they have fallen far short
of this. At least, this is true of the sacred texts of Judaism,
which are the only ones I know anything about.
</p>
<p>
The following is a rambling set of comments on the topic of
faithful transmission of text. I'd like to be able to call it
something more profound, like an "extended meditation," but it
is really just a ramble. As the title suggests, it is the first
of what I hope will be a two-part whole.
</p>
<h2>Avoid homoglyphs</h2>
<p>
The first rule of faithful transmission is "avoid homoglyphs."
Well, really it should be "avoid homoglyphs and
near-homoglyphs," but that isn't as catchy. Anyway, it is just a
fancy way of saying "use letterforms that look different."
</p>
<h3>Hebrew homoglyphs</h3>
<p>Hebrew is littered with near-homoglyphs. We've already seen the
issue with <em>daleth</em> and <em>resh</em>; here it is again,
along with various other issues.
</p>
<font size="7">נג כב עצ זןו רדך סם </font>
<p>A more detailed presentation of these issues is available on
the following web page. (Note that it shows Sofit and Fey Sofit
in their cursive form. Their printed forms are not easily
confused.)
</p>
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/Similar_Letters/similar_letters.html">Similar
Hebrew Letters</a>
</blockquote>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>DIGRESSION</td>
<td>
By the way, this "Hebrew for Christians" site is an
example of a general pattern:
<blockquote>
Some of the best resources for studying the Tanakh are for
studying the Old Testament.
</blockquote>
Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, or just a thing,
neither good nor bad, I will perhaps opine on in another blog
post. But I will remark here that it feels a little strange to
me. But that feeling itself is a little strange, since when I
step back and think about it, it is not surprising that it
should be the case. Our sacred texts our sacred to them,
too. And, while numbers don't tell all, I'll just point out that
there are something like 150 times as many Christians as Jews in
the world.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3>English homoglyphs</h3>
<p>
Anyway, back to homoglyphs (and near-homoglyphs). To be fair to
Hebrew, English is not immune to this problem. Or, rather, the
Latin alphabet and Arabic digits are not immune to this
problem. For example consider the following characters.
</p>
<ul>
<li>1 (the digit one)</li>
<li>I (the letter capital I as in India) (henceforth "CI")</li>
<li>l (the letter lowercase el) (henceforth "LL") </li>
</ul>
<p>
Putting all three together, you get "1 I l." How much these
differ depends on whatever font is operative. For some
edification and entertainment, I recommend typing "1 I l" in at
one of the following sites:
</p>
<blockquote>
<a href="http://flippingtypical.com">flippingtypical.com</a><br>
<a href="http://wordmark.it">wordmark.it</a>
</blockquote>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>NOTATIONAL<br>ASIDE</td>
<td>
I chose "India" as an example of a word starting with I
since that's the choice of
the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet">NATO
phonetic alphabet</a>, which is designed to give letters
different-sounding names, solving a problem analogous to the
one we are discussing here.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3>Are homoglyphs "wrong"?</h3>
<p>
I think we have to let sans serif fonts off easy on the CI/LL
distinction. Though the distinction can be made with full
strokes, not just serifs, I feel that it is not really in the
charter of a sans serif font to have to make distinctions like
that.
</p>
<p>
More generally, we can't say that any font is wrong if it fails
to make one or more of these distinctions. Fonts serve a variety
of purposes; their design goals span concerns of form, function,
and the great gray area in between. Many of these goals are at
odds with each other, and hence trade-offs must be made. In the
service of one goal, another goal may be sacrificed, or at least
compromised. For example, if simplicity of letterform is allowed
to trump distinctness of letterform, then perhaps one, CI, and
LL would be allowed to be very similar or even the same.
</p>
<p>
That having been said, for most purposes, distinctness of
letterform is a very important goal for a font. Thus a font
intended for general use should give this goal great weight in
making its design trade-offs.
</p>
<h3>One and CI</h3>
<p>
My particular interest is the one/CI distinction. The most
common problem here is a one that looks like CI. The
above sites allowed me to quickly identify the following fonts
on my computer as "offenders" in this area.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%" align="center">
<tr>
<td>Hoefler Text</td>
<td>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-iszNWMZeg001fALu13fH1K9pn0cDWjdG7KrnMYLr02l1HrHt3zC3_HoMZLFiBR0WCwDVsJC90U2nvLDVfuzBxmCVv_-tDHMkwb1OfB7OiP7xF1GVNLsULHwGu32Ac_R6oxWnzxkRFSI/s1600/Hoefler+Text+-+one+CI+LL.png">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Big Caslon</td>
<td>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLuWd71LaOWCuVq9x8ZHKJAKnyZBRdBAQzlbESIv9fI8C3y5CeR8ElpE-lzozauQUyMLGspJoW2_8LM63dXgFWRaz1GVT0qlZls8UtGKbzEEy41BQSY1UeBGQ9Qp9RYNhcU9RnPf6b1NQ/s1600/Big+Caslon+-+one+CI+LL.png">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
A Roman-style one (henceforth "R1"), i.e. a one that looks like
CI, is common as part of what are called old-style numerals or
old-style figures (OSF). Such a one may be distinguishable (with
effort) from CI since it is usually only x-height. Even then,
when mixed with a small caps CI, the problem may persist. This
might seem an obscure situation, but the use of small caps for
acronyms is a somewhat common style.
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.typotheque.com/blog/gores_choice">Here's the
story of how Vice President Al Gore caused the one in the
Brioni font to be changed from Roman to Arabic to make it
easily distinguishable from CI.</a>
</p>
<h3>Roman ones and the Great Isaiah Scroll</h3>
<p>
Let's get back to the sacred. Strangely enough, my first
experience of one/CI confusion happened while reading about some
famous <em>daleth/resh</em> confusions of more than two thousand
years ago! The <em>very</em> perceptive reader may have noticed
the opportunity for one/CI confusion in the prickly-looking
abbreviation "1QIsa" that appears in my opening quote.
</p>
<p>
"1QIsa" is an interesting opportunity for confusion. On the
positive side, it has a one and a CI, making slight differences
between the glyphs easier to see than if they appeared
independently and the reader had to find and compare far-flung
examples. Also on the positive side, many readers would know,
from context, that the third glyph is a CI since it begins an
abbreviation for Isaiah. Slightly fewer, but still many readers
would know, from context, that the glyph before the Q is
supposed to represent a number.
</p>
<p>
But here begins the real problem. When the one resembles a CI,
is the reader to infer that the convention is to use Roman
rather than Arabic numerals? For the trivial case of the number
one, it doesn't really matter, since they represent the same
thing. But for the case of the number eleven, confusion could be
serious, since R1 glyphs would make eleven look like the Roman
numeral representation for two. And, as it turns out, there was
a Cave 11 at Qumran, containing, among other things, the Great
Temple Scroll (11QT<sup>a</sup>).
</p>
<p>
Let's see how the Great Isaiah Scroll is referred to in the NJPS
translation of Prophets (Nevi'im) that was first published in
1978 (ISBN 0-8276-0096-8). (This is not the first publication of
its translation of Isaiah; that was in 1973.)
</p>
<div align="center">
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0HyECzozByShnFFbiMMhDpKmefp482X0OtMVxjSxBYaiTfZLBZ756H_AP7DyWguzcCIYoPQU-cX99XvbO44DeAp8LxqahrCL79viuywJOwA5bhSE5f-vbrJlEM45L5UyhqEChNg7jOQ/s640/Cover+of+_The+Prophets_.png">
</div>
<p>
First, we should note that the NJPS Prophets abbreviates Isaiah
to just "Is" as opposed to the more standard "Isa." Perhaps
that standard had not been established yet, and in any case
that's not our issue here.
</p>
<p>
Our issue here is that its typesetting of "1QIs" visits the
whole gamut of the one/CI/LL confusion. The one is represented
</p>
<ul>
<li>confusingly, an R1</li>
<li>incorrectly, as LL</li>
<li>correctly, as an Arabic one (henceforth "A1")</li>
</ul>
<p>
The CI is represented
</p>
<ul>
<li>incorrectly, as an LL</li>
<li>correctly, as a CI</li>
</ul>
<p>
Below are scans of examples of its different settings of
"1QIs<sup>a</sup>." The page numbers and the representations of
one and CI are listed in the first row. Apologies that these are
bilevel rather than grayscale images.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%" align="center">
<tr>
<td>356: R1 / LL</td>
<td>368: LL / CI</td>
<td>369: R1 / CI</td>
<td>468: A1 / CI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiARSnjIg5WNJXQDQLLCY5govwmXROthDr1-JEFvuXM9PYYWlEB5CAxpdoCLy8yTo-HwOb7-fYrZMpIfbIYdjAtztXuc1VdiCPypxjI-__O7rePhhScpN5P7Y2hxRGmX__-tFpNunjaSZs/s200/NJPS+Pr+356+detail.png"
/> </td>
<td><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1iqxya4nekuKQurX0Tp6YzbIepAPmVk0F8HtSKXWnI6WLIXk7jVTzi5b2FVna_B6DQLD7IvloTScklVbFxC5nh3vAvI6fnz-fAOLoKvCU2spFyPhD99CaF7Uif4r6hMtvCexlSlnmyo/s200/NJPS+Pr+368+detail.png"
/> </td>
<td><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4mhHaVumzUZZHuFnkqjFUMg7lLuXfYUnXCUU5pIFPZfjMhbvr47YZkJhqohYahOti0-LzyteT1asfwiG_kiOPJkTnOHkF_aJfxvpY8GYV4jh22mRNfWqaTYF5PR2onn1jXDytaHClb3I/s200/NJPS+Pr+369+detail.png"
/> </td>
<td><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRjw12rabT4n27zShHS4ppBobR8hJf0pBLpQtyfy_CIoqHP9wcPOGtk85L-vQVSdDgDTEZXPBzwb2oZzhob1mMIROMo_8cv-h2RxPO-AM0_WW-uHosGt7bnIIeTNJ0QXeRJ5pZ5V3Ftoc/s200/NJPS+Pr+468+detail.png"
/> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
This was all fixed, to A1/CI, in the 1985 NJPS Tanakh. More
generally, the 1985 Tanakh moved to using A1 rather than R1 in
footnotes.
</p>
<p>
And then came the digital age.
</p>
<p>
What promise it offered, and continues to offer! Yet, what
typographic barbarisms it has facilitated. I suppose that only
from great heights can great falls happen. Another way I've seen
it well-put is:
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%" align="center">
<tr>
<td>
To err is human; to really screw things up requires a computer.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
Don't get me wrong, my Kindle version of the NJPS Tanakh is one
of my prized possessions, inasmuch as something so intangible
can be thought of as a possession. But somehow one/CI confusion
in "1QIs" crept back in, with a vengeance. In particular, the
one is usually represented as a CI.
</p>
<p>
Below are scans of examples of its different settings of
"1QIs<sup>a</sup>." The Kindle locations, Kindle and printed
page numbers, and the representations of one and CI are listed
in the first row.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%" align="center">
<tr>
<td>16293 / 762 / 633: CI / CI</td>
<td>16330 / 762 / 640: A1 / CI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgJlRrd0xnEu46BBVWizy93m7JkYUZ1pnaUFr8WPraJB7dLMOpua5aDMgIIFA3FRoxiafoZhRRSrWGL8O_9aGnlvzCf-2LqWZarImywmiKD3sxAvN80pQW3YTfbuz3zcqtG4nhJ-cMjxs/s1600/Kindle+1Q+-+CI+instead+of+one.png">
</td>
<td>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7SGzUUlQEji24l5krjsSz93bC7XRqQuxoguo0KdAG2cwr9yCB26yYaLlsHCCLUxQxnxxsk1MBDOFr86oC9FNPHWXVgple9Jb13GBzltNntvollZWlK7JrCM1va-FUxiy1AS7X6a98JgE/s1600/Kind+1Q+-+correct.png">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>DIGRESSION</td>
<td>
In typical great heights/great falls fashion, Kindle
locations offer citations of intriguingly high resolution,
but all footnotes have been converted to endnotes, and thus
all Isaiah footnotes appear to be on the last page of
Isaiah, 762. Within the hyper-linked Kindle world, this
doesn't really matter. For citations that "work" for the
printed version, you need to follow the endnote's hyperlink
"backward" to find the real page.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
In the Kindle edition, how can we know whether the one is being
represented by a CI or an R1? Well, for one thing it is
visually identical to other CI glyphs, but, more deeply, if you
copy and paste it, it is a CI; and if you search for IQI
(CI-Q-CI), you'll find those instances that use it.
</p>
<p>
An important consequence of this is that if you search for 1QI
(one-Q-CI), you <em>won't</em> find the IQI (CI-Q-CI)
instances. And here we really find form spilling over into
function. So far all my complaints about the typesetting of
"1QIs" could be dismissed as the whinings of an aesthete with
too much time on his hands. I would mostly disagree with this
characterization, but would have to admit that function was only
impaired, not destroyed by these problems. If we narrowly define
function as transmitting the meaning, "Isaiah manuscript from
Cave 1 at Qumran," then these problems probably did not destroy
function for most readers. They probably just made it more
difficult to decode this meaning, i.e. they only impaired
function.
</p>
<p>
But the digital version adds (or should add) a new function: the
ability to search. And this was not just impaired but destroyed
by the misrepresentation of one as CI.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>DIGRESSION</td>
<td>
When one is represented as one in the Kindle edition, it
shows up as an Arabic, yet old-style, figure. This and other
research leads me to believe that Georgia is the font used
by the Kindle Reader for Mac. Or at least it is the font
used when a serif, proportional font is requested. Note that
you can't easily change fonts on any Kindle-reading
platform. That's why I said it is "the font," not "the
default font." On Kindle hardware, the font seems to be PMN
Caecilia, which has a lining one, i.e. a non-old-style
one. Some fonts may have an option for both lining and
old-style figures, and perhaps even an option for both an
Arabic and Roman old-style figure for 1. I'm not sure if
either of these fonts do, but the relevant question here is
what does their default one look like.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2>Conclusions</h2>
<p>
If you have the luxury of making up your own alphabet, avoid
homoglyphs. This luxury is rarely available; the only recent
example I can think of is the invention of the Klingon
alphabet. I wonder how distinguishable its glyphs are.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>DIGRESSION</td>
<td>
Another "I wonder ..." about a recent example: did anything
analogous to <em>daleth/resh</em> confusion ever happen with
the Book of Mormon?
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
Back to obvious conclusions: if you, like most of us, are stuck
using someone else's alphabet, choose your fonts so as to avoid
homoglyphs. For example, avoid fonts with Roman ones if the text
you're setting might use them in a way that would cause
confusion. Perhaps you don't need to avoid the font altogether
if it provides an Arabic one as an alternative.
</p>
<p>
Finally, let's zoom out to a theological question: if Isaiah's
words are holy, why didn't G-d give him a better alphabet to
record them in?
</p>
<p>
My suggestion is, the Hebrew alphabet is no more the alphabet of
G-d than the Hebrew language is the language of G-d. Indeed
problems like <em>daleth/resh</em> confusion serve a useful
purpose. They remind us that we are reading holy words, not
G-d's words. Holy words bring us closer to G-d, but they are
written in man's imperfect alphabets, and in man's imperfect
languages.
</p>
<p>
To me, the very notion of "G-d's words" unacceptably diminishes
G-d by seeing him as acting within the limits of language and
therefore possibly constrained by language.
</p>
<p>
Like anyone else (perhaps more so), I can't claim to know much
about G-d. But I'm pretty sure he is without limits. (So I'm
also pretty sure he is not a "he" or a "she"!) And I'm pretty
sure that if G-d had an alphabet, we surely could not read it.
</p>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-45251695253596693472012-10-11T12:42:00.002-07:002012-10-11T12:42:33.606-07:00More on Qumran, Isaiah, and the NJPS <h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>This post is another follow-up to my post,
"<a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2012/09/qumran-isaiah-and-njps.html">Qumran,
Isaiah, and the NJPS</a>," covering some possible unnoted Qumran
influences.</p>
<p>In my earlier post, I said</p>
<blockquote>
It is possible that the Qumran influenced the NJPS Isaiah in
ways that were not noted, but that is more difficult or even
impossible to know.
</blockquote>
<p>But it occurred to me later that I might be able to find some
unnoted influences by looking at verses where other translations
were influenced. In particular, I might be able to find some
unnoted influences by looking at all verses mentioned in
Scanlin, since his coverage of the NJPS (which he calls the NJV)
is not exhaustive.</p>
<p>Doing this, indeed I did discover at least one unnoted
influence, but I also discovered some other things of interest
in these verses, which I allowed myself to digress into.</p>
<h2>Executive summary</h2>
<p>The only verse in which I'm pretty sure there is an unnoted
Qumran influence is 8.2. Possible influences include 19.18,
45.2, and 45.8. Things of non-Qumran interest show up in 14.30
and 33.8.</p>
<h2>The Details</h2>
<h3><a href="http://biblos.com/isaiah/8-2.htm">Isaiah 8.2</a></h3>
<p>The NJPS appears to be using the imperative form of 1QIsa-a
without note.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">NJPS<br>page<br>632</td>
<td>
[[8.1] The LORD said to me, “Get yourself a large sheet
and write on it in common script ‘For
Maher-shalal-hash-baz’;] and call reliable witnesses, the
priest Uriah and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah, to witness
for Me.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[no footnotes relevant to the issue at hand]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 127).</p>
<blockquote>
The MT and 4QIsa-e have a first person future verb for "I will
call as witness(es)," [wə·’ā·‘î·ḏāh] [וְאָעִ֣ידָה]
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/veaidah_5749.htm">concordance</a>]
while 1QIsa-a reads <em>wh`d,</em> an imperative form, "and have
it attested," as in NRSV. The NIV translates the MT (with
4QIsa-e), "And I will call in Uriah the priest and Zechariah
... as reliable witnesses for me." Some translations translate
the consonants of the MT, but change the vowel of the first
letter from <em>w<sup>e</sup></em> [wə] [וְ] to <em>wa,</em> [wā]
[וָ] changing it to the past tense
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/vaaidah_5749.htm">concordance</a>]. The
future tense of the NIV, however, is a legitimate tense shift in
prophetic literature, reflecting the prophet's certainty that he
will be the agent of God's message. In any case, it does not
seem necessary to resort to the 1QIsa-a reading.
</blockquote>
<h3><a href="http://biblos.com/isaiah/14-30.htm">Isaiah 14.30</a></h3>
<p>Here the NJPS is not influenced by Qumran, in that it chooses
"it will slay" instead of "I will slay." But, in a footnote, it
offers an emendation of unspecified source.
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">NJPS<br>page<br>648</td>
<td>
[[14.29] Rejoice not, all Philistia,<br>
Because the staff of him that beat you is broken.<br>
For from the stock of a snake there sprouts an asp,<br>
A flying seraph branches out from it.]<br>
The first-born of the poor shall graze<br>
And the destitute lie down secure.<br>
<em>I will kill your stock by famine,</em><br>
And it shall slay the very last of you.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] Emendation yields “It shall kill your
offspring with its venom <em>(zar‘ekh berosho)</em>
[zar‘ekh:
זַרְעֵ֑ךְ <a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/zarech_2233.htm">concordance</a>.]
[berosho: ?].”
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 128).</p>
<blockquote>
The RSV and NRSV follow 1QIsa-a in translating, "I will slay,"
instead of "he/it will slay." The Isaiah scroll seems to
better fit the context in which this passage is preceded by
another first person singular verb. Among the ancient
versions, only the Latin agrees with 1QIsa-a. Burrows finds
the Qumran reading quite convincing (1955:307), and the
NEB/REB concur. However, HOTTP prefers the MT, explaining the
shift to third person as a reference back to "the venomous
serpent" of 14:29.
</blockquote>
<p>Primarily, the emendation in the NJPS note substitutes
offspring for stock and venom for famine. But, secondarily, the
emendation would bring the last two lines into "person
agreement." I.e. it would read
</p>
<blockquote>
It shall kill [...]<br>
And it shall slay [...]
</blockquote>
It is perhaps interesting to note that the 1QIsa-a variant also
has such "person agreement," albeit in the opposite direction
(changing both lines to first person), i.e.
<blockquote>
I will kill [...]<br>
I will slay [...]
</blockquote>
<h3><a href="http://biblos.com/isaiah/19-18.htm">Isaiah 19.18</a></h3>
<p>
It is unclear whether one or more of the "many Hebrew
manuscripts" referred to in the footnote is from
Qumran. I.e. there is some Masoretic as well as Qumran support
for "Sun City."
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">NJPS<br>page<br>656</td>
<td>
In that day, there shall be several towns in the land of Egypt
speaking the language of Canaan and swearing loyalty to the
LORD of Hosts; one shall be called Town of <em>Heres</em>.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] Meaning uncertain. Many
Heb. mss. read <em>ḥeres,</em> [חֶרֶס] “sun,” which may refer
to Heliopolis, i.e., Sun City, in Egypt. Targum’s “Beth
Shemesh” (cf. Jer. 43.13) has the same meaning.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 129).</p>
<blockquote>
In a note, NIV cites Q (= Qumran) along with some MSS of the
MT in support of the reading "City of the Sun." Other
versions, including RSV and NRSV, read "City of the Sun" in
the text without adding a textual note. This follows the
general practice of many translations that do not cite textual
variants if there is any manuscript support in the Masoretic
tradition.
</blockquote>
<p>
In the body text, the NJPS has chosen to transliterate rather
than translate "Heres," whereas most Bibles choose to translate,
either to "destruction" (from הֶ֫רֶס)
(<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/2041.htm">concordance</a>)
or “sun” (from חֶרֶס). It is slightly surprising that the NJPS
does not note the possibility of "destruction."
</p>
<h3><a href="http://biblos.com/isaiah/33-8.htm">Isaiah 33.8</a></h3>
<p>
I mentioned this verse in
my <a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2012/09/qumran-isaiah-and-njps.html">original
post</a> but bring it up again here because the note is odd. It
is odd because the alternative that 1QIsa-a offers for "cities"
is usually understood to be "witnesses," not "a pact."
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">NJPS<br>page<br>685</td>
<td>
Highways are desolate,<br>
Wayfarers have ceased.<br>
A covenant has been renounced,<br>
<em>Cities</em> rejected<br>
Mortal man despised.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] 1QIs-a reads “A pact.”
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 130).</p>
<blockquote>
The RSV, NRSV, NAB, and NIV follow 1QIsa-a in
reading <em>ʾdym</em> [‘ê·ḏîm] [עֵדִ֔ים]
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/edim_5707.htm">concordance</a>]
“witnesses” instead of the MT <em>ʾrym</em> [‘ā·rîm] [עָרִ֔ים]
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/arim_5892.htm">concordance</a>]
“cities.” “Witnesses” seems appropriate to the meaning of the
passage, and the interchange of <em>resh</em>
for <em>daleth</em> is understandable in light of the similarity
of the letter shapes. The NJV also calls attention to this
reading in a footnote.
</blockquote>
<h3><a href="http://biblos.com/isaiah/45-2.htm">Isaiah 45.2</a></h3>
<p>
Here the NJPS implicitly disavows Qumran influence, in that the note
says that the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain, and only the
meaning of the MT Hebrew is uncertain. Yet, the NJPS chooses
"hills," which is close to the "mountains" of 1QIsa-a.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">NJPS<br>page<br>714</td>
<td>
I will march before you<br>
And level <em>the hills that loom up;</em><br>
I will shatter doors of bronze<br>
And cut down iron bars.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] Meaning of Heb. uncertain.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 130).</p>
<blockquote>
The second line in the MT reads, "I will level the
swellings/rough places." The Hebrew word rendered "swellings"
[wa·hă·ḏū·rîm] [וַהֲדוּרִ֖ים]
[<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/vahadurim_1921.htm">concordance</a>]
occurs only here in the OT. 1QIsa-a reads <em>hrrym</em>
"mountains," which is followed by the NIV, NAB, and RSV/NRSV.
</blockquote>
<h3><a href="http://biblos.com/isaiah/45-8.htm">Isaiah 45.8</a></h3>
<p>
The NJPS notes no Qumran influence, yet its use of "sprout" instead
of something like "be brought forth" is the kind of thing one would
expect from Qumran influence.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">NJPS<br>page<br>714</td>
<td>
Pour down, O skies, from above!<br>
Let the heavens rain down victory!<br>
Let the earth open up and triumph sprout,<br>
Yes, let vindication spring up:<br>
I the LORD have created it.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[no footnote]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 130).</p>
<blockquote>
The RSV and NRSV follow the 1QIsa-a reading <em>wyprch</em>
[ויפרח] for the MT <em>wyprw,</em>
[ויפרו <a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/veyifru_6509.htm">concordance</a>]
a difference of only one letter, <em>cheth</em> [ח]
for <em>waw,</em> [ו] which yields the translation, "that
salvation may sprout forth [RSV]/spring up [NRSV]," instead of
"that they may bring forth salvation." The NAB follows the same
Qumran reading. The NEB and GNB, in dynamic equivalent
renderings, demonstrate that both the MT and Qumran express a
common idea. The NEB translates, "that it may bear the fruit of
salvation," and the GNB has "[it] will blossom with freedom and
justice." Neither translation has a textual note here. HOTTP
prefers the Qumran reading, but as can be seen, there may be
little difference in the translation of the MT or Qumran.
</blockquote>
<p>
To me, the most notable thing has nothing to do with Qumran, but
rather that translations that are part of Christian Bibles seem
to universally use "salvation" where the NJPS uses "triumph."
Whether it is brought forth or sprouts seems secondary.
</p>
<p>
This is just speculation, but I wonder if what we're seeing here
is a case of harmonization of Isaiah with Christian ideas. Or,
on the other hand, a reluctance on the part of the NJPS to use a
word like "salvation" that has such strong Christian resonances.
</p>
<p>
For what it's worth, the NJPS does not shy away from using the
word "salvation," for instance in the following four verses of
Isaiah.
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10%">
<tr>
<td>49.6</td>
<td>
For He has said:<br>
“It is too little that you should be My servant<br>
In that I raise up the tribes of Jacob<br>
And restore the survivors of Israel:<br>
I will also make you a light of nations,<br>
That My <em>salvation</em> may reach the ends of the earth.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>49.8</td>
<td>
Thus said the LORD:<br>
In an hour of favor I answer you,<br>
And on a day of <em>salvation</em> I help you—<br>
I created you and appointed you a covenant people—<br>
Restoring the land,<br>
Allotting anew the desolate holdings,
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>51.8</td>
<td>
For the moth shall eat them up like a garment,<br>
The worm shall eat them up like wool.<br>
But My triumph shall endure forever,<br>
My <em>salvation</em> through all the ages. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>56.1</td>
<td>
Thus said the LORD:<br>
Observe what is right and do what is just;<br>
For soon My <em>salvation</em> shall come,
<br>And my deliverance be revealed.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
Here's a possible explanation for the use of "salvation" in the
verses above as opposed to its non-use in 45:8. In the verses
above, "salvation" is being used as the translation of words
rooted in יְשׁוּעָה (yeshuah)
(<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/3444.htm">concordance</a>),
whereas in 45:8, the word is rooted in יֵ֫שַׁע (yesha)
(<a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/3468.htm">concordance</a>).
</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The only verse in which I'm pretty sure there is an unnoted
Qumran influence is 8.2. I discovered some other interesting
stuff along the way, though.
</p>
<h2>Postscript</h2>
<p>I was excited to learn that Scanlin is available in electronic
form through Logos Bible Software.
</p>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-41719319608826014972012-10-04T13:55:00.004-07:002012-10-04T13:56:13.589-07:00Qumran, Isaiah, and Stern <h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>This post is a follow-up to
<a href="http://dencklatronic.blogspot.com/2012/09/qumran-isaiah-and-njps.html">
Qumran, Isaiah, and the NJPS</a>, answering a question posed
there by Rabbi Stein himself. How has Qumran influenced Stern's
translation of the Isaiah haftarot that appear in the URJ
chumash (TAMC)?</p>
<h2>Executive summary</h2>
<p>Stern and NJPS both note a Qumran variant of 40.6 but do not
let it influence their body texts.</p>
<p>Stern and NJPS seem to ignore the Qumran variant of 49.24,
"tyrant". But, neither do they cling close to the literal meaning
of the Masoretic here, "the just". They both opt for "victor."</p>
<p>Stern's Isaiah body text seems to be influenced by Qumran in
51.19 and 60.19, though this influence is not noted. The NJPS body
text is influenced by Qumran only in 60.19, but both places are
noted.</p>
<h2>The Details</h2>
<h3>Isaiah 40.6</h3>
<p>Stern and NJPS both note a Qumran variant of 40.6 but do not
let it influence their body texts.</p>
</p>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td width="50%">NJPS page 698</td>
<td width="50%">Stern (TAMC) page 1223</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
A voice rings out: “Proclaim!”<br>
<em>Another asks,</em> “What shall I proclaim?”<br>
“All flesh is grass,<br>
All its goodness like flowers of the field"
</td>
<td>
A voice rings out, “Announce!”<br>
<em>Another asks,</em> “What shall I announce?”<br>
“All flesh is grass,<br>
and all its grace like a flower in the field"
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] 1QIs-a and Septuagint read “And I asked.”
</td>
<td>
[footnote:] Or, vocalizing differently, following the text
of an Isaiah manuscript discovered at the Dead Sea, as well
as the Septuagint: "And I ask."
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</p>
<h3>Isaiah 49.24</h3>
<p>Stern and NJPS seem to ignore the Qumran variant of 49.24,
"tyrant". But, neither do they cling close to the literal meaning
of the Masoretic here, "the just". They both opt for "victor."</p>
<p>Because of that point of interest, and because it is a verse
for which Qumran has influenced many other translations, I
include it here.</p>
<p>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td width="50%">NJPS page 725</td>
<td width="50%">Stern (TAMC) page 1252</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Can spoil be taken from a warrior,<br>
Or captives retrieved from a victor?
</td>
<td>
Can spoil be taken away from a warrior?<br>
Can a victor's captives escape?
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[no footnote]
</td>
<td>
[no footnote]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</p>
<p>"The just" comes from the
Masoretic <a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/6662.htm">
<em>tsaddiq</em></a> (צדיק). (If you and/or your browser are
Hebrew impaired, the letters are tsadi, dalet, yod, and
qof.)</p>
<p>"Tyrant" comes from the
Qumran <a href="http://concordances.org/hebrew/6184.htm">
<em>arits</em></a> (עריץ). (If you and/or your browser are Hebrew
impaired, the letters are ayin, resh, yod, and
tsadi-sofit.)</p>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 131). (Note that
his transliteration of עריץ is <em>`ryts</em>.)</p>
<p>
<blockquote>
The phrase "captives of the just" in the second half of 49:24 is
somewhat awkward in this context. The NIV, RSV/NRSV, NEB/REB,
and NAB all follow the 1QIsa-a reading <em>`ryts</em>
(tyrant/ruthless), citing the manuscript evidence from
Qumran. GNB also translates "tyrant" without a textual note,
since GNB does not cite textual variants that have the support
of at least one Hebrew manuscript. HOTTP recommends that
translations follow the Qumran reading.<br>
<br>
[NIV: New International Version]<br>
[(N|)RSV: (New |)Revised Standard Version]<br>
[(N|R)EB: (New|Revised) English Bible]<br>
[NAB: New American Bible]<br>
[GNB: Good News Bible]<br>
[HOTTP: Hebrew Old Testament Text Project]
</blockquote>
</p>
<h3>Isaiah 51.19</h3>
<p>NJPS notes a possible variant in "several ancient versions",
whereas Stern seems to accept this variant without note.</p>
<p>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td width="50%">NJPS page 730</td>
<td width="50%">Stern (TAMC) page 1317</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
These two things have befallen you:<br>
Wrack and ruin—who can console you?<br>
Famine and sword—<em>how shall I</em> comfort you?
</td>
<td>
These two things have befallen you:<br>
devastation, destruction—who will console you?<br>
famine and sword—who can comfort you?
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] Several ancient versions render "who can."
</td>
<td>
[no footnote]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</p>
<p>Here's what Scanlin has to say about it (p. 131-132).</p>
<p>
<blockquote>
This verse ends in the MT with the question, "How can I
comfort you?" In 1QIsa-a the word for comfort begins with the
letter <em>yod</em> instead of <em>aleph</em> (third person
instead of first). The NAB, NIV, RSV/NRSV, and NEB/REB all
follow the Qumran reading, although HOTTP believes the MT
should be followed in translation and considers the 1QIsa-a
reading an assimilation to the third person verb used earlier
in the verse. There is no compelling reason to doubt that in
the prophetic style, God would be speaking in the second half
of the verse. The acceptance by most modern translations of
this Qumran variant illustrates how an evaluation of
manuscript evidence can be combined with a decision regarding
literary appropriateness. This has been the traditional
approach of translators when dealing with textual problems. A
new trend, as exemplified by HOTTP, tends to evaluate variants
such as found in 1QIsa-a here, as just as likely to be the
result of an ancient scribe adjusting the text in response to
some perceived difficulty. Accordingly, modern translators
would be advised to be a bit more cautious in accepting
textual variants of this type.<br>
<br>
[MT: Masoretic Text]<br>
[NAB: New American Bible]<br>
[NIV: New International Version]<br>
[(N|)RSV: (New |)Revised Standard Version]<br>
[(N|R)EB: (New|Revised) English Bible]<br>
[HOTTP: Hebrew Old Testament Text Project]
</blockquote>
</p>
<h3>Isaiah 60.19</h3>
<p>
Stern makes pretty much the same bracketed
addition as NJPS, but does not note any sources for it. One
could even imagine making this clarifying addition without
influence from ancient sources, but I doubt this was the case
with Stern.
</p>
<p>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td width="50%">NJPS page 748</td>
<td width="50%">Stern (TAMC) page 1370</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
No longer shall you need the sun<br>
For light by day,<br>
Nor the shining of the moon<br>
For radiance <em>[by night]</em>;<br>
For the LORD shall be your light everlasting,<br>
Your God shall be your glory.
</td>
<td>
No more shall the sun be your light by day,<br>
nor shall the moon's glow brighten [your night];<br>
the Eternal will be your everlasting light,<br>
and your God [will be] your glory.<br>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
[footnote:] So 1QIs-a, Septuagint, and Targum.
</td>
<td>
[no footnote]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</p>
<p>Here's what Scanlin (p. 132) has to say about it. (I
assume <em>blylh</em> is the transliteration of בלילה. (If you
and/or your browser are Hebrew impaired, the letters are bet,
lamed, yod, lamed, and he.))</p>
<p>
<blockquote>
The NJV and RSV/NRSV follow the addition of <em>blylh</em>
[] "in the night" in 1QIsa-a. As in several other cases
such as 53:11, this Qumran addition gives the parallelism of
the verse better balance. However, one must be cautious about
accepting readings that could have been motivated by the
scribe's sensitivity to Hebrew poetic style. This is why HOTTP
does not advise translators to follow 1QIsa-a here, even
though many modern translations do.<br>
<br>
[NJV: New Jewish Version (NJPS)]<br>
[(N|)RSV: (New |)Revised Standard Version]<br>
[HOTTP: Hebrew Old Testament Text Project]
</blockquote>
</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Like NJPS, Stern's Isaiah shows Qumran influences.</p>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-56548608619309442002012-09-01T22:49:00.001-07:002012-09-26T11:02:33.310-07:00Qumran, Isaiah, and the NJPS <h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>A great question was raised by one of the members of my Torah
Study group: how, if at all, have the Dead Sea (Qumran) Scrolls
influenced the URJ (Plaut/Stein) Torah we use?</p>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://www.urjbooksandmusic.com/images/P/381580.jpg">
<div>
Cover of the URJ (Plaut/Stein) Torah
</div>
</div>
<p>My attempt to answer this question has led me down a lot of
interesting paths.</p>
<p>I don't attempt to answer that question here, but I will answer
a smaller, related question. That question is, how, if at all,
have the Qumran Scrolls influenced the NJPS English translation of
the book of Isaiah? ("NJPS" stands for "new JPS", i.e. the
(relatively) new version of the Jewish Publication Society's
English translation.)</p>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://www.jewishpub.org/images/products/238.jpg">
<div>
Cover of the NJPS Tanakh
</div>
</div>
<p>So, here I won't be talking about any of the five books of the
Torah, I'll just be talking about the book of Isaiah. As a
reminder, the book of Isaiah is in the section of the Tanakh
(Hebrew Bible) called Nevi'im (Prophets).</p>
<p>Since a complete scroll of the book of Isaiah was discovered at
Qumran, translations of Isaiah are a good place to look for
influences from Qumran. In fact it is the only book of the Tanakh
for which a complete scroll was discovered at Qumran. This scroll
is referred to as the Great Isaiah Scroll, or, less dramatically,
as 1QIsa<sup>a</sup>.</p>
<p>Here is a quick notational detour. 1QIsa<sup>a</sup> breaks
down to mean the following.
<ul>
<li>1Q means that this manuscript was found at Cave 1 at Qumran.</li>
<li>Isa means that this manuscript is of the book of Isaiah.</li>
<li><sup>a</sup> (superscript 'a') distinguishes this
manuscript from other Isaiahs found in Cave 1,
e.g. 1QIsa<sup>b</sup>. From here on, we'll use a dash instead
of a superscript, e.g. we'll use 1QIsa-a instead of
1QIsa<sup>a</sup>.</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>Several
other, incomplete scrolls of Isaiah were discovered at Qumran,
too, e.g. 1QIsa-b, 4QIsa-a, 4QIsa-b,
etc.</p>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Great_Isaiah_Scroll.jpg/800px-Great_Isaiah_Scroll.jpg">
<div>
The Great Isaiah Scroll of Qumran
</div>
</div>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://www.billdawers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Screen-shot-2011-09-26-at-9.08.12-PM.png">
<div>
Some detail from the Great Isaiah Scroll of Qumran
</div>
</div>
<h2>Executive summary</h2>
<p>So, how, if at all, have the Qumran Scrolls influenced the NJPS
English translation of the book of Isaiah?</p>
<p>A short answer is: Qumran is mentioned 16 footnotes. In all 16,
only manuscript 1QIsa-a is mentioned. (The NJPS footnotes refer to
it as 1QIs-a, i.e. Isaiah is abbreviated to "Is" not "Isa".)</p>
<p>In only 4 of those places does the footnote correspond to an
actual influence on the body text. In the other 12 places, Qumran
is only mentioned in the footnote.</p>
<h2>The Details</h2>
<p>It is possible that the Qumran influenced the NJPS Isaiah in
ways that were not noted, but that is more difficult or even
impossible to know.</p>
<p>So, we'll confine ourselves to influences that can be seen in
the body text and footnotes. In particular, let's start with the
four influences on the body text.</p>
<p>Below, we use italics to indicate which span of text the
footnote is commenting on. (The NJPS uses superscripted lowercase
letters and dashes to do this.)</p>
<p>Below, the column label "c.v (p)" means "chapter.verse (page
number)". An additional chapter and verse in curly braces
sometimes follows. This is to provide the chapter and verse used
by Christian Bibles. E.g. the first selection below, Isaiah 8.23,
is identified as Isaiah 9.1 in Christian Bibles.</p>
<table border="1">
<caption>Body text influences of Qumran on the NJPS</caption>
<tr>
<th width="6%">c.v<br>(p)</th>
<th width="47%">body text</th>
<th width="47%">footnote</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>8.23<br>{9.1}<br>(633)</td>
<td>
For <em>if there were to be</em> any break
of day for that [land] which is in straits, only the former
[king] would have brought abasement to the land of Zebulun
and the land of Naphtali—while the later one would have
brought honor to the Way of the Sea, the other side of the
Jordan, and Galilee of the Nations.
</td>
<td>
So 1QIs-a; the others have “there is not.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14.4<br>(645)</td>
<td>
you shall recite this song of scorn over the king of Babylon:<br>
<br>
How is the taskmaster vanished,<br>
How is <em>oppression</em> ended!
</td>
<td>
Reading <em>marhebah</em> with 1QIs-a (cf. Septuagint). The
traditional reading <em>madhebah</em> is of unknown meaning.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>37.27<br>(694)</td>
<td>Their inhabitants are helpless,<br>
Dismayed and shamed.<br>
They were but grass of the field<br>
And green herbage,<br>
Grass of the roofs <em>that is blasted<br>
Before the east wind.</em>
</td>
<td>
So ms. 1QIs-a; cf. 2 Kings 19.26. The usual reading in
our passage means, literally, “and a field [?] before
standing grain.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>60.19<br>(748)</td>
<td>
No longer shall you need the sun<br>
For light by day,<br>
Nor the shining of the moon<br>
For radiance <em>[by night]</em>;<br>
For the LORD shall be your light everlasting,<br>
Your God shall be your glory.
</td>
<td>
So 1QIs-a, Septuagint, and Targum.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here are the 12 influences that are only seen in a footnote.</p>
<table border="1">
<caption>Footnote-only mentions of Qumran in the NJPS</caption>
<tr>
<th width="6%">c.v<br>(p)</th>
<th width="47%">body text</th>
<th width="47%">footnote</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3.24<br>(623)</td>
<td>
And then—<br>
Instead of perfume, there shall be rot;<br>
And instead of an apron, a rope;<br>
Instead of a diadem of beaten-work,<br>
A shorn head;<br>
Instead of a rich robe,<br>
A girding of sackcloth;<br>
<em>A burn instead of beauty.</em>
</td>
<td>
The complete Isaiah scroll from Qumran, hereafter 1QIs-a,
reads “For shame shall take the place of beauty”; cf. note
k.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9.8<br>{9.9}<br>(635)</td>
<td>
But all the people <em>noted</em>—<br>
Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria—<br>
In arrogance and haughtiness:
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads “shouted.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9.16<br>{9.17}<br>(636)</td>
<td>
That is why my Lord<br>
Will not <em>spare</em> their youths,<br>
Nor show compassion<br>
To their orphans and widows;<br>
For all are ungodly and wicked,<br>
And every mouth speaks impiety.
</td>
<td>
Cf. Arabic <em>samuḥa</em>. 1QIs-a reads <em>yḥmw</em>.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11.6<br>(640)</td>
<td>
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,<br>
The leopard lie down with the kid;<br>
<em>The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling</em> together,<br>
With a little boy to herd them.
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads: “The calf and the beast of prey shall feed”;
so too the Septuagint.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>21.8<br>(658)</td>
<td>
<em>[like] a lion he</em> called out:<br>
“On my Lord’s lookout I stand<br>
Ever by day,<br>
And at my post I watch<br>
Every night."
<td>
1QIs-a reads “The watcher.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>29.5<br>(675)</td>
<td>
“And like fine dust shall be<br>
The multitude of <em>your strangers;</em><br>
And like flying chaff,<br>
The multitude of tyrants.”<br>
And suddenly, in an instant,
</td>
<td>
Manuscript 1QIs-a reads “haughty men.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>33.8<br>(685)</td>
<td>
Highways are desolate,<br>
Wayfarers have ceased.<br>
A covenant has been renounced,<br>
<em>Cities</em> rejected<br>
Mortal man despised.
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads “A pact.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>34.4<br>(687)</td>
<td>
<em>All the host of heaven shall molder.</em><br>
The heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll,<br>
And all their host shall wither<br>
Like a leaf withering on the vine,<br>
Or shriveled fruit on a fig tree.
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads “And the valleys shall be cleft,/And all the host of heaven shall wither.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>34.5<br>(688)</td>
<td>
For My sword shall <em>be drunk</em> in the sky;<br>
Lo, it shall come down upon Edom,<br>
Upon the people I have doomed,<br>
To wreak judgment.
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads “be seen”; cf. Targum.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>40.6<br>(698)</td>
<td>
A voice rings out: “Proclaim!”<br>
<em>Another asks,</em> “What shall I proclaim?”<br>
“All flesh is grass,<br>
All its goodness like flowers of the field"
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a and Septuagint read “And I asked.”
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>43.19<br>(709)</td>
<td>
I am about to do something new;<br>
Even now it shall come to pass,<br>
Suddenly you shall perceive it:<br>
I will make a road through the wilderness<br>
And <em>rivers</em> in the desert.
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads “paths”; cf. v. 16.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>49.12<br>(724)</td>
<td>
Look! These are coming from afar,<br>
These from the north and the west,<br>
And these from the land of <em>Sinim</em>.
</td>
<td>
1QIs-a reads “the Syenians”; cf. Ezek. 30.6.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Influences of 1QIsa-a are apparent in the NJPS Isaiah.
But, these influences are far from dramatic.
Some might even call them minuscule.
This is true of Qumran influences on most modern biblical
translations.
This comes from the fact that most Qumran manuscripts do not
differ dramatically from the previous main sources for biblical
translations, namely Masoretic and Septuagint manuscripts.
Perhaps it is this agreement that is the most dramatic thing
about the Qumran manuscripts!</p>
<p>Before I knew much about the Qumran scrolls, I expected they
would have a larger influence on modern biblical translations. In
particular, I naively thought to myself, "well if these are the
oldest available original language (Hebrew) texts, they will be
considered authoritative and thus resolve all difficulties."</p>
<p>This thought was naive in many different ways.</p>
<p>These are indeed the oldest available original language
(Hebrew) texts. But it is far from clear that they should be
considered authoritative. All they are (though this is a lot) is
great additional witnesses, to be considered along with the
Masoretic Hebrew texts as well as ancient translations, most
notably the Targum (in Aramaic) and the Septuagint (in Greek). The
Qumran scrolls add to, rather than "trump" these other
witnesses.</p>
<p>For example, though they are old, they're not older than the
Septuagint.</p>
<p>Also, though age is one factor to consider when weighing a
witnesses' authority, it is hardly the only factor. What's to say
an older manuscript might not have been made by a scribe who was
more error-prone, or more willing to impose his own views?</p>
<p>Finally, and this one was the biggest revelation to me, the
Qumran scribes were not necessarily more fluent in ancient Hebrew
than a modern scholar! I didn't realize that Hebrew ceased to be
an everyday language as a result of the Babylonian exile, 500
some-odd years BCE. The Great Isaiah Scroll was transcribed about
400 years later!</p>
<p>Perhaps the analogy is strained, but this is something like me
transcribing Shakespeare, which certainly contains many words I am
unfamiliar with.</p>
<p>In this light, let's imagine that the scribe of the Great
Isaiah Scroll came across the word <em>madhebah</em> in his source
for 14:4. He might have been at as great a loss as a modern
scholar in understanding this word, and thus may have chosen to
emend the dalet to a resh, making it <em>marhebah</em>
(oppression).</p>
<p>This decision seems like a good one. But it does not render the
Masoretic's <em>madhebah</em> wrong beyond a reasonable
doubt. Admittedly, this is not a criminal court case, and thus the
standard of reasonable doubt may be inappropriate. On the other
hand, to some people, these texts are in some sense a matter of
life or death, or even of the spiritual domain beyond life and
death. So some circumspection is called for.</p>
<p>To me, the NJPS has the proper level of circumspection. It
takes the dalet-to-resh emendation of 1QIsa-a and the Septuagint,
but notes it. By the way, an interesting question is whether the
NJPS would have taken the dalet-to-resh emendation of the
Septuagint without Qumran support.</p>
<p>To digress for a moment, a related question I'm interested in
is whether the Septuagint was under-appraised by Jewish scholars
until evidence from Qumran "legitimized" some of the Septuagint's
divergences from the Masoretic. It is possible that the Septuagint
was under-appraised because it was in Greek or because in many
ways it came to be used by Christians as the Old Testament that
"went with" the New. Perhaps comparing the attitude towards the
Targums would help here, since they are ancient translations in a
more persistently Jewish-associated language.</p>
<p>To digress upon my digression: Before I learned about the
Septuagint and the large contingent of Greek-speaking Jews of
Alexandria, I thought it was "un-Jewish" to refer to the books of
the Torah by their English names, since these are directly derived
from their Greek names. I thought, in my sophomoric smarty-pants
way, that this smacked of Christian influence. Now I (think I)
know better. Greek is a perfectly "legitimate" Jewish language,
historically speaking.</p>
<p>Okay I better stop writing about things that some people have
devoted their lives to, whereas I have only recently begun to
dabble in.</p>
<p>In that fleeting spirit of humility, let me conclude by listing
some sources I found helpful on these topics.</p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Reference 1 of 3. Harold Scanlin, <em>The Dead Sea Scrolls & Modern Translations
of the Old Testament</em>.</p>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RK4B9RNXL._SS500_.jpg">
<div>
Cover of Scanlin's <em>The DSS & Modern Translations of the OT</em>
</div>
</div>
<p>Among other things, Scanlin's book does what I did above, but
for the whole Old Testament, and for many translations. The NJPS
is one of the translations he covers, though he abbreviates it
NJV. He misses, or chooses not to mention, some of the NJPS
influences I list above. Thus I contribute some small thing on top
of his huge work.</p>
<p>Reference 2 of 3. Lawrence H. Schiffman, <em>The Modern Scholar: The Dead Sea
Scrolls: The Truth Behind the Mystique</em>.</p>
<div align="center">
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51+eg5NyzDL._SL175_.jpg">
<div>
Graphic for Schiffman's <em>The DSS: Truth Behind the Mystique</em>
</div>
</div>
<p>This is a recording of 14 great lectures of about 35 minutes
each, for a total of 8 hours.</p>
<p>Reference 3 of 3. Harvey Minkoff, "Searching for the Better Text: How errors crept
into the Bible and what can be done to correct them," <em>Bible
History Daily</em>.
(<a href="http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/searching-for-the-better-text-2/">http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/searching-for-the-better-text-2/</a>.)</p>
Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-6487288090701484022012-06-28T17:13:00.001-07:002012-06-29T12:33:44.575-07:00What are we reading, when we read the Torah?<div>
<span style="background-color: white;">What are we reading, when we read the Torah?</span><br />
<br />
Of course this question has thorny historical and theological dimensions to it. Yet, I will ignore those, since I am not qualified to try to address them. Actually, qualifications have never stopped me before. What really stops me is that I just don’t feel like it.<br />
<br />
Instead I will address some of the pragmatic dimensions of this question. I feel qualified to address them, since the only qualification required is a little bit of motivation, which, surprisingly, I have. After answering these questions for myself, I figured I would try to write them up. My assumption being, if I was confused about them, maybe someone else still is, or will be.<br />
<br />
So, I’m assuming the “we” of the question is someone like me. So, that leads me to the first, most superficial answer to the question. Like many Reform Jews, what I read when I’m reading the Torah is what I will call “MCRE”:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Revised Edition)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">General Editor: W. Gunther Plaut z’’l</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">General Editor, Revised Edition: David E. S. Stein</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Copyright 2005, 2006 by URJ Press</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
Here's a picture of the cover.<br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUsTp2Jhyphenhyphenj-ic4SxF48sSqwOSgeob7Dp1SvXumEqZOrfwtPqajfgm6vntulCUnDvNaNxsAdWSML3FNis10gISzxJot-qbSjfvQGsma-kQkieAyMATqLmfkwnrAPyKobPkHpROHDgCQaGs/s1600/MCRE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUsTp2Jhyphenhyphenj-ic4SxF48sSqwOSgeob7Dp1SvXumEqZOrfwtPqajfgm6vntulCUnDvNaNxsAdWSML3FNis10gISzxJot-qbSjfvQGsma-kQkieAyMATqLmfkwnrAPyKobPkHpROHDgCQaGs/s1600/MCRE.jpg" title="The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Revised Edition)" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Revised Edition)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
</div>
<div>
<br />
But, as I said, that is only a superficial answer to the question.<br />
<br />
One reason that it is only a superficial answer is that The Torah is in some sense five books not one. Plus haftarot are included. Each of these six sections (Pentateuch plus haftarot) may have different translators, commentators, and consulting editors.<br />
<br />
Mainly, MCRE's translation is the so-called “New JPS” or “NJPS.” This translation by the Jewish Publication Society traces its roots back through 1999 and 1985 editions to a “new” translation of 1962. This may not seem very new, but it is in contrast to the completely different 1917 JPS translation. Some of the covers of the more common books which feature the NJPS are below.<br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7-UTpA2eKMEo1HoI2qB1Gmc5gFBoLkpDR2cmGOWJRlkuXkyeJyqy3oxuRZdqjOL12yz5lgqL9NxEkl5IUWiRBTeMYjEzZkenVq1IB68ArhXjDi7ldcHd4mvE90xekftYQlUSl4lNrTw/s1600/NJPS+Etz+Hayim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7-UTpA2eKMEo1HoI2qB1Gmc5gFBoLkpDR2cmGOWJRlkuXkyeJyqy3oxuRZdqjOL12yz5lgqL9NxEkl5IUWiRBTeMYjEzZkenVq1IB68ArhXjDi7ldcHd4mvE90xekftYQlUSl4lNrTw/s1600/NJPS+Etz+Hayim.jpg" title="Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZDvcQRCdmoToJIUL8i6fp1qJdDCLVqlI6xs3yKdA4l5Vz8bP4N3bBtcdmoRJAi23FztpCid51UKUNCxn9QCi_HvTwjfrzExhCtxbGtvV4YswlyUSY2CpXh889pdNeFqPpAe7KgGCAeyo/s1600/NJPS+Tanak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZDvcQRCdmoToJIUL8i6fp1qJdDCLVqlI6xs3yKdA4l5Vz8bP4N3bBtcdmoRJAi23FztpCid51UKUNCxn9QCi_HvTwjfrzExhCtxbGtvV4YswlyUSY2CpXh889pdNeFqPpAe7KgGCAeyo/s1600/NJPS+Tanak.jpg" title="Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2muiW3vt3H3zXtIg6oKvs8rW3gjAgOEkcWTFjUDRkCQZCU5sMuAow8JkJpcKZcVRfm6Bc4DfAL38mChX6Ot32ABTcbE6PkF5ewqDO78vskTNaaayLqOR54dLzYWXPjYzwltuu-TOH7V0/s1600/NJPS+Torah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2muiW3vt3H3zXtIg6oKvs8rW3gjAgOEkcWTFjUDRkCQZCU5sMuAow8JkJpcKZcVRfm6Bc4DfAL38mChX6Ot32ABTcbE6PkF5ewqDO78vskTNaaayLqOR54dLzYWXPjYzwltuu-TOH7V0/s1600/NJPS+Torah.jpg" title="The Torah: The Five Books of Moses" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Torah: The Five Books of Moses</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br />
But the MCRE translation is only “mainly” NJPS. It is not fully NJPS in two respects. One is that it does not literally use NJPS; rather, it uses a gender-accurate revision of the NJPS done by David E. S. Stein (2006; 2005). The other is that it does not use any form of NJPS for Genesis and the haftarot. The translation of Genesis is by Chaim Stern z’’l (1999) and the translation of the haftarot is by Chaim Stern z’’l with Philip D. Stern (1996).<br />
<br />
For most sections of the MCRE, the commentator is W. Gunther Plaut z’’l. Indeed it is Plaut's name that is most associated with the MCRE and its "unrevised" (original 1981) edition. The exception is Leviticus, whose commentator is Bernard J. Bamberger z’’l.<br />
<br />
The following color-coded table may help summarize the different translators and commentators.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNTfFrN8ikNAtfqR5XeqprZw5Lu7bqLnlkds_XNd4hDMZqaHAkZBP0M5lpq3TACmW05gcjeIA7q_LFlQtXV6gG09wCuSFTX9sGWJyn7FPxX-GLKFLFu-6eFO0f8JRvjtbxmWSPCfZnP8/s1600/The+Torah+MCRE+trans+and+comm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNTfFrN8ikNAtfqR5XeqprZw5Lu7bqLnlkds_XNd4hDMZqaHAkZBP0M5lpq3TACmW05gcjeIA7q_LFlQtXV6gG09wCuSFTX9sGWJyn7FPxX-GLKFLFu-6eFO0f8JRvjtbxmWSPCfZnP8/s1600/The+Torah+MCRE+trans+and+comm.jpg" title="MCRE translators and commentators" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MCRE translators and commentators</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">This can all be gleaned from a look at the first few pages of the book, but I thought it might be helpful to re-present it here. Also I recommend reading some of the prefaces, introductions and forwards contained in pages xxi-li (21-51 in lowercase Roman numerals). As an aside, I have never liked the convention of numbering preface pages with Roman numerals. It is a terrible system of notation. Particularly for a book like MCRE, I can't think of any reason to continue to make Jews suffer from the bad policies of Ancient Rome.</span><br />
<br />
Now onto the question of what are we reading, at a detailed, mechanical level. Like much of Jewish literature throughout the ages, MCRE has a complex layout needed to capture what one might call "extreme intertextuality." I still find it a bit confusing. Here is a schematic representation of an example spread (two facing pages) consisting of pages 708 and 709.<br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUmTFS1RlZDCTmk8XBHLkO8tV8fQshYl4T1HWF4dXwduGHjET0VPUrAqI8VinpIslWF0m7ILvnpBljcrYYeTNgwnlxg6JYUgXRb1zumP5KdCUGzBXV3tHhX93QOL9Dt6CvOKs0EafaCQY/s1600/The+Torah+MCRE+schema+-+Sheet1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUmTFS1RlZDCTmk8XBHLkO8tV8fQshYl4T1HWF4dXwduGHjET0VPUrAqI8VinpIslWF0m7ILvnpBljcrYYeTNgwnlxg6JYUgXRb1zumP5KdCUGzBXV3tHhX93QOL9Dt6CvOKs0EafaCQY/s1600/The+Torah+MCRE+schema+-+Sheet1.jpg" /></a></div>
<div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
Items in yellow represent actual text on the page or placeholders for actual text on the page. E.g. the actual text "Leviticus 9:11-23" and the placeholder "English text". Items in orange are just expanding upon the Hebrew text above them, for the Hebrew-impaired like me. The first line is just the letter names, transliterated. The second line are the full words and/or numbers, transliterated.<br />
<br />
Sorry to say it, but you can safely ignore all the Hebrew and avoid yourself some confusion. Nonetheless, I've included it and explained it for reference. Note that a spread spans neither book nor parashat. So, the book identified on the right page (e.g. Leviticus) is always just the English name of the book identified on the left page (e.g. ויקרא (Vayikra)). Similarly, the parashat identified on the right page (e.g. Sh'mini) is always just the transliteration into the Latin alphabet of the parashat identified on the left page (e.g. שמיני (Sh'mini)). But, the chapter range covered may differ between the right and left pages, of course!<br />
<br />
Okay, but I said you could safely ignore the Hebrew. What, then, is tricky? Well, the main thing that I still find a little tricky is that though pages read from right to left, the columns of commentary within a page read from left to right!<br />
<br />
And, though it seems obvious, remember that the two columns of commentary don't belong to their respective columns above. Conceptually, it is easiest to think of them as "belonging" only to the English column, although I'm sure they are of great help in understanding the Hebrew as well, if, unlike me, you can read it.<br />
<br />
Finally, another note that seems obvious but tripped me up for a while: the commentary is numbered by verse. In particular, these are not footnotes, so don't expect to find superscripts in the English text.<br />
<br />
Okay, this seems like a good place to stop. In a future post, I hope to cover more about the content of what we are reading in the MCRE. In particular, I hope to cover what sources are used for the Hebrew text, what sources are used for the translation of the Hebrew text into English, and the relationship between the MCRE and David Stein's other recent translations.</div>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-47091791017356833492012-06-26T12:33:00.000-07:002012-06-28T22:29:58.941-07:00Spinning, Round Things<span style="background-color: white;">In nature, it seems like only really big things spin and/or are round. Like planets and stars.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is this true?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If it is true, is it meaningful, or just coincidental? E.g. is there any insight about physics to be gained from this? Is there any insight about biology to be gained from this? Like, how come I can’t just spin my wrist again and again, like I could my BMX bike’s handle bars (with a special invention so that the brake cables wouldn’t be limiting)?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This brings me to my next question: how come so many things we build spin and/or are round? Like, the most prototypical human invention (after fire): the wheel. And its more recent, but pervasive partner: the ball bearing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Does this mean we’re doing something wrong? Are we “fighting against nature”? Is it wrong to “fight against nature,” or is it in some sense the definition of invention?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or, a more balanced point of view: though nature is a good source of inspiration (e.g. airplane wings), perhaps it need not be slavishly followed (e.g., non-flapping of airplane wings).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, here are a few notes/qualifications. Above I’ve used “round” to include “spherical.” Also, I’ve ignored the “spin” of electrons, since, as my quotes suggest, my understanding is that their “spin” is an analogy to the spin of classical mechanics, not an example of it.<br />
<br />
Update: Bubbles. I didn't think of bubbles until just now. 'Nuf said.</div>
<br />Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-81929699817246263132012-06-26T11:40:00.002-07:002012-06-29T12:23:42.428-07:00The Jewish Fool in the RainLately I’ve been reading Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) and I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin’s song, “The Fool in the Rain.”<br />
<br />
This led me to ask myself, can we bring religious meaning to this song?<br />
<br />
I think we can. As to whether it is advisable, desirable, or productive to do so, let’s just say, I cannot defend myself.<br />
<br />
The usual way of bringing religious meaning to a romantic song or poem is to interpret the object of affection as God rather than a person. As such, the story of “The Fool in the Rain” becomes a story of seeking, doubting, and in the end finding God rather than a romantic partner.<br />
<br />
I take the message (moral?) to be that God should be sought carefully, so that we are not misled or even blinded by our keen anticipation and questing fervor. Or perhaps the message is that all we can do is remain open to God rather than seek God directly.<br />
<br />
The song begins, you could say, with a keen anticipation of Shabbat (recall that Shabbat is traditionally defined as starting when three stars can be seen in the sky):<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Well there's a light in Your eye that keeps shining</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Like a star that can't wait for the night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I hate to think I've been blinded, baby:</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Why can't I see you tonight?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Admittedly, this verse, like others, poses various problems to religious interpretation. For one thing, the God of Judaism does not take human form and therefore has no literal eye. Yet, we are told that humans are created humans in God’s image. So presumably human eyes reflect (however distantly) some aspect of God. Or, more simply, God created all creatures, including humans, and therefore all eyes are in some sense God’s eyes, i.e. they belong to (or at least originate from) God.<br />
<br />
As to the religious interpretation of “baby,” I have none. This is simply not an acceptable or plausible way to refer to God. Possibly Christianity would be of some help here since baby Jesus is important in it. But I will not resort to that. I do have to give mad props to the movie <i>Talladega Nights</i> for hilariously featuring a main character who, when he says grace, specifically directs his thanks to the baby Jesus.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the reason I initially thought of this crazy idea of a religious interpretation of this song is its evocative, repeated phrase “light of the love that I found.” I am reminded of the mysterious light that God created before anything was created that could radiate light, like the sun. You could resolve this by saying that God at first created only the concept of light. Or, more mysteriously, it is suggested that this first light was different in nature from later light. This first light is either gone now, or, more tantalizingly, can only be glimpsed occasionally. Mad props to G-dcast and Rabbi Lawrence Kushner for this animated teaching on that subject: <a href="http://www.g-dcast.com/bereshit">http://www.g-dcast.com/bereshit</a>.<br />
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After several stanzas of desire, doubt, and even desolation, the song concludes with the revelation that the narrator has, more or less, been looking for love in all the wrong places. Though fervent, his search has been careless: he has been on the wrong block!<br />
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<i>I'll run in the rain till I'm breathless</i></div>
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<i>When I'm breathless I'll run till I drop,</i></div>
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<i>The thought of a fool's kind of careless</i></div>
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<i>I'm just a fool waiting on the wrong block</i></div>
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Reminds me of Kohelet’s admonition,
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<i>Watch your step when you go to the house of God. Understanding is better than giving sacrifices as fools do, […]</i></div>
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Kohelet 4:17 (Kravitz and Olitzky)</div>
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I think of being on the wrong block as an error in the way he has framed the search. I picture him running up and down the same block, trying to find a certain building, but not bothering to consider, until late in the game, that he might be on the wrong block entirely.
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Along those lines, I’d like to think that what he was looking for was in fact all around him, “impeding” his search: it was the life-giving rain itself. Again Kohelet comes to mind:<br />
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<i>All rivers flow into the sea. Yet the sea is never full.</i></div>
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Kohelet 1:7 (Kravitz and Olitzky)</div>
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Like Kravitz and Olitzky, I don’t think Kohelet understood the water cycle as we do today, consisting of evaporation, precipitation, etc. But he understood that there was something cyclical going on. He cites the cyclical nature of things as examples of (or metaphors for) the general futility of things. But I wonder if it is possible to stretch the translation of Kohelet’s repeated phrase “everything is useless” to “all is without end.” This allows us to still see “without end” as “without purpose” but also as “infinite.” It allows us to see the water cycle as a wondrous, perfectly balanced cycle as well as an emblem of repeated drudgery or even misery.
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By the way, “everything is useless” is often translated as “all is vanity.” Though this has intriguing connotations of narcissism, I think it comes directly from the Vulgate’s vanitas, which had no such connotation. I don’t mean to say that the English word “vanity” is wrong. For one thing, I’m not sure it is an issue of right vs. wrong. Rather, I’m just trying to help peel back layers of meaning accumulated over the millennia.<br />
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But, I’d like to return to the song, and the idea that, weirdly, it is the rain that is the light of the love that the narrator finds. Just as the whole water cycle can be seen as depressing or wondrous, rain can be seen (and indeed can be) a positive or negative force. At one of the narrator’s desolate moments, he views the clouds and the rain as impeding his search for light and love:<br />
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<i>And the storm that I thought would blow over</i></div>
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<i>Clouds the light of the love that I found</i></div>
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But really in the end we find out that it is his own frenetic carelessness that impeded him. Don’t blame the storm, dude.
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As disconnected as many of us are from nature and agriculture, it is easy to think of rain only as an impediment, annoyance, or even a threat, in the case of floods. The desert religion of Judaism reminds us to keep things in perspective. (It also helps if you live in a climate like Los Angeles or Jerusalem, where rain goes away entirely during the summer. This helps remind you of what it would be like if rain went away entirely.) What comes to mind here is my favorite part of Exodus, where God shelters the Israelite camp with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night: another mysterious combination of water and light (of love?).<br />
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Here I must digress for a moment and give mad props to Sammy Spider’s First Haggadah, since it, unlike many haggadahs, not only mentions this part of Exodus but devotes a kickin’ full-page collage to it. Below is a scan.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4D6tS1AtEOmscbOeGGHxxAGUPRKqCAfkyWT6FjZraRSN7KvcrJCCkFvBQ9JsDO6MMatai1V0Sxto9m67g_04G3Nh08ohAMdf57Qmn7zL37SLX7wojYfvhcteHwMG1qze2PseDUfpvFw/s1600/Sammy+Spider+Exodus+Pillars+Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4D6tS1AtEOmscbOeGGHxxAGUPRKqCAfkyWT6FjZraRSN7KvcrJCCkFvBQ9JsDO6MMatai1V0Sxto9m67g_04G3Nh08ohAMdf57Qmn7zL37SLX7wojYfvhcteHwMG1qze2PseDUfpvFw/s1600/Sammy+Spider+Exodus+Pillars+Small.jpg" title="Pillars of fire and cloud from Sammy Spider's Exodus" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Pillars of fire and cloud from Sammy Spider's Exodus</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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So far I’ve mentioned only the lyrics and nothing about the music of the song. It is of course hard, and perhaps even inadvisable, to impute meaning to music, at least the kind of meaning that language can have or describe.<br />
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Still, I feel compelled to note that the song’s “A-B-A” structure, though perfectly common, includes what is to me an uncommonly satisfying return to “A”. As the rhythm suddenly resumes its original, non-frenetic pace, I for one feel a profound sense of return, as if what I have sought has been found. Is this the light of the love that the narrator has found? Note that the Hebrew word for return, “teshuva,” also means repentance.<br />
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To end this silly, rambling, hopefully-not-offensive post on a despairing note:<br />
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<i>Many words multiply futility. What gain can there be for anyone?</i></div>
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Kohelet 6:11 (Kravitz and Olitzky)</div>
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Well, I take it back, I can’t end there. Instead I’ll end with something written by a teacher of mine, Ivan Tcherepnin. He adds one very important line to a famous old French couplet:
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<i>Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment.</i></div>
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<i>Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.</i></div>
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<i>And music remains after all else is forgotten.</i></div>Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-30219689953067788572012-05-09T21:51:00.001-07:002012-05-09T22:18:44.843-07:00Lag B'OmerToday my son and I celebrated Lag B'Omer by building a fire in our driveway. Well, first we constructed a makeshift outdoor fireplace from concrete pavers (stepping stones), concrete edging, and bricks lying around the house. Well, we cheated and had to buy a couple of pieces (about $1 each) of edging since we didn't find enough lying around the house.<br />
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I'm always torn about keeping stuff lying around the house. There are times like this where it is convenient to have such stuff, but in general of course if you kept everything "just in case" your house would end up being like a garbage dump.<br />
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Anyway, enough hand-wringing about that. Too much hand-wringing might cause my eczema to act up.<br />
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So, in addition to the edging, we bought a bundle of wood from our corner 7-11. It was $8. That seems like a lot, but what do I know. It sure was convenient, though.<br />
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Anyway, here's before:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfi8VU1SnAbyZy-vCQJonxJY63ctc2J7WpO9hWczAmZSrDol9RSp2ytQXz85iuUAUCxiqxu0jAy2Vxqv2NfmKKabxy6WsPHd7_Mvu-pETkRx9thCCWOi7yTlcWCY_51jENhRU_t-l2X2A/s1600/before.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfi8VU1SnAbyZy-vCQJonxJY63ctc2J7WpO9hWczAmZSrDol9RSp2ytQXz85iuUAUCxiqxu0jAy2Vxqv2NfmKKabxy6WsPHd7_Mvu-pETkRx9thCCWOi7yTlcWCY_51jENhRU_t-l2X2A/s320/before.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
And here is during:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKq7XE3lqS-rMgCiSDIhH6CcifIWEF0EYWSztWBc6bG-e_aqqTWjeg0eh4tABQjAm2gJJByIt939aYJDpUnZeGXySrJanOwsWza0bL5Jn01mteLecyqesbU1VRfJ6WDT4kr12OJMw20lM/s1600/fire-no-flash.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKq7XE3lqS-rMgCiSDIhH6CcifIWEF0EYWSztWBc6bG-e_aqqTWjeg0eh4tABQjAm2gJJByIt939aYJDpUnZeGXySrJanOwsWza0bL5Jn01mteLecyqesbU1VRfJ6WDT4kr12OJMw20lM/s320/fire-no-flash.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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What is the point of Lag B'Omer? Well, I'm not sure we should strain to hard to figure out the "point" of any ritual. But one thing I will mention, which I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, is that if you don't celebrate Lag B'Omer, and you don't celebrate Pesach Sheni, then there are no Jewish holidays in the month of Iyyar! And we can't have that. It'd be like Cheshvan all over again.<br />
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Oh well, I can't resist mentioning one other thing, even though it is mentioned elsewhere. For the mystically inclined, note that Lag B'Omer is the 5th day of the 5th week of the Omer, and thus represents Hod she-be-Hod, or Splendor within Splendor.<br />
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Oh yeah, and by the way, since Lag B'Omer is the 18th of Iyyar, that means the moon won't rise until pretty late at night on Lag B'Omer. For example, tonight in Los Angeles it will rise at about 11:46pm. So the moon won't compete with your fire.<br />
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Shalom and good night.Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-810395304745899780.post-63444550894098178202012-02-12T11:15:00.000-08:002012-02-12T11:15:59.796-08:00The "100 100 rule" for the Earth and SunHere's what I find to be a handy rule to help get a grasp of the relative sizes of the Earth and Sun and the distance between them. I'm sure I'm not the first to "discover" this but I haven't found it elsewhere.<br />
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The rule is, the Earth-Sun distance is about 100 times the diameter of the sun, and the diameter of the sun is about 100 times the diameter of the earth.<br />
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Since there is actually a unit for the distance between the Earth and the Sun, the AU, this means the Sun is about 0.01 AU and the Earth is about 0.0001 AU.<br />
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Another way of looking at it is if the Sun were only 1km away, it would be about 10 meters in diameter, and the Earth would be about 10 cm in diameter.<br />
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Yet another way of looking at it, for those whose brains are adjusted to finance, is that the Sun's diameter is about 1% of the Earth-Sun distance and the Earth's diameter is about a basis point of the Earth-Sun distance.Ben Dencklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15363671301433589433noreply@blogger.com0