visit to the Lower East Side

I've proofread the sefer as far as Vayikra, and yesterday I took that half down to the Lower East Side, on the first stage of its journey to computer-checking.

This particular shop is an interesting sort of place to visit. It's piled to the ceiling with dusty merchandise - as you go in, tallit bags and talleisim tower precariously above you, you almost fall over a giant box containing giant rams' horns, on your right an extraordinary jumble of hanukiot, kiddush cups, dust, books, toys, dust, cardboard boxes, and mezuzah cases.

You go a little further into the shop so as to close the door. There isn't room for two people to pass each other, so you hope there's no-one else in there. If there is, you have to shuffle back out onto the street to let them out when they're done, then you can have your turn. You don't turn round, for fear your backpack will cause an avalanche.

A little further into the shop, you can see that this is really a Torah shop. A stack of broken Torah rollers lies to one side, for spare parts. A stack of shiny new rollers lurks near the ceiling, on top of a cabinet of dusty silverware, behind plastic-wrapped Torah crowns, a Sephardic Torah case, and other Torah adornments.

All other horizontal surfaces are covered with sifrei Torah in various states of repair or disrepair. Here a tiny, fading sefer that's on its way to Israel for some restoration work. Here a new sefer, fresh from the proofreader. Here a stack of writing samples. Here a nondescript sefer a hundred or so years old, in for repair.

Looking up from these, you see sifrei Torah - no mantles, no rollers, just the rolls of parchment - stacked up in the back, reaching in the dusty gloom to the ceiling. Are they en route anywhere? Or are they just waiting until someone wants a used sefer in a hurry? How long since they were used? How long will they lie there?

The half-sefer we have brought will go from here to Brooklyn, where the man with the scan resides. It won't go just yet; the month before Purim is a busy time for soferim, and likewise for proofreaders. But it'll get to them just after Purim. Yes, the siyum isn't until May, but scanning takes time, and it's good to work ahead of schedule.

misc

First cup of tea of the day at Hadar: did usual foolish trick of attempting to remove teabag with fingers. Ouch. Drop teabag hastily. Tea splashes onto white shirt.

Declare emergency state of National Do Your Laundry Whilst Wearing Your Clothes Day, in (vain) hope of not being the only person walking around in a wet shirt.

Shirt still dampish by work-time. Turns out that dry ink crumbs brush off clothes just fine, but only when the clothes aren't dampish. Shirt now has attractive speckles of ink across the front.

Decide that Bleach Your Shirt Whilst Wearing It Day has no hope whatsoever of catching on, and leave that task for later.

This is why traditional scribes wear black and white, you know. If it's black, it doesn't show the inkstains, and if it's white, you can bleach them out.

In other news, the Torah's coming along nicely. We're in parashat Pinchas.

Proofreading, part 30

The very observant will note that this series has talked a lot about letters, but really not about layout at all. The reason for this is that while letter forms are relatively inflexible and easy to get wrong, layout is relatively very flexible and (these days) pretty hard to screw up, so it's not part of the proofreading process.

If you were making a chair, you wouldn't need to check that it had four legs; you'd know darn well if it didn't have four legs. These days, layout errors for scribes like me are of that order of magnitude.

It was not always so. More about that some other time.

Proofreading, part 29

I summarised my attitude towards women writing Torahs by saying that the full citizen, the adult male in good standing, may participate in the transmission of the community's symbolic centre, and the adjunct classes of women, children, and slaves, may not; today, it is a matter of principle that women not be an adjunct class and therefore may participate on the same basis as men.

This is not how the language of halakha expresses itself, naturally. Halakhically, the issue is framed in terms of the mitzvah of tefillin – those who are Biblically-commanded and socially-accepted as tefillin-wearers may write the sacred scrolls; others may not. Women are not Biblically commanded to wear tefillin, therefore they may not write the scrolls.

It seems simplistic to say that in communities where halakhic validity and gender equality are equally indispensable, women do wear tefillin, and that said wearing is held by said communities to be equivalent to men's. Simplistic, but when an immutable principle meets an overwhelming imperative, on some level the answer is simple. The community says in its actions “this is what we do, this is what we expect of people, this is how it's going to stay” - and once that sentiment is in the heart of a community, we don't wrench it out, so the halakha must perforce adjust to accept it.

You can't run a religion like that, changing the rules of the society every time you sniff hurt feelings. This is a halakhic sledgehammer, and swinging it too freely will destroy the halakhic structure. But societies where gender equality is well-grounded and gaining demonstrate that gender equality does not render a society inherently unstable (on a century of evidence; give it another five centuries and we'll be better placed to tell), and thus one may say with a fair amount of certainty that applying the halakhic sledgehammer to the principle of gender equality will not render the halakhic structure inherently unstable either.

We've got off the topic of proofreading rather, but there again, proofreading is the process that ensures the stability of the Torah text, which itself is symbolically the stability of the Jewish people, so it's vaguely associated. Anyway, that's about all I've got to say concerning proofreading at the moment.

Proofreading, part 28

Most readers here, I imagine, live in countries where rights and responsibilities in the social plane are officially not apportioned with reference to gender. Broadly, this is because it is a matter of principle that women and men function as equal members of society. How well this actually plays out in practice is another matter, but in principle, that's how it is.

It is then implausible to expect the religious plane to stand orthogonal to the social plane. To function as a full citizen in one plane and an adjunct citizen in another plane requires either a superhuman suspension of disbelief or an impaired existence in one or both planes.

This isn't good for religion's chances – if you're used to functioning fully in a social plane, you're not going to take kindly to being told you have lesser status in a religious plane. But further, it encourages the idea that the religious and social planes are and must be distinct. As someone who sees religion as an enhancement to, not a removal from, the social plane, this doesn't work for me.

Like it or not, social climate filters into Jewish life, and in social climates which foster egalitarianism, there will exist egalitarian Jewish life, in which the idea of women as an adjunct class is in principle both redundant and repugnant. Given such a change in the makeup of society, it is not implausible for its women to write Torahs. Naturally there are communities in which women are, and are content with being, adjuncts, and certainly these communities shouldn't have women writing their Torahs, but these are not communities I choose to live in.

The halakhic aspect to follow.

Proofreading, part 27

Of course, people say “um, no actually” to me, being female. It wasn't the handless guy's fault he had no hands, it's not my fault I'm female. He just didn't have the physical makeup to write a valid Torah and that was too bad; I don't have the physical makeup to write a valid Torah and that's too bad also.

Really, I do know a lot of decent people who have to say “um, no actually” to me, and they do act like yesterday's posited rabbi - feeling really sorry that he's got to say “um, no actually” to this person who's put in so much effort and so badly wants to be part of the community and it isn't their fault they can't participate through this activity.

So why's it different? why am I expecting the handless guy and the Braille-writer to suck it up, while I go right ahead and write Torahs?

You could say I'm just a hypocrite, a case of “one rule for us, one rule for them.” Some people do say that. I see where they're coming from.

Way I see it, women doing men's things isn't exactly a physical makeup thing, it's about how gender affects one's communal status. Women are barred from Torah writing in the context of societal strata; some classes of people may participate, some may not. In particular, the full citizen, the adult male in good standing, may participate in the transmission of the community's symbolic centre, and the adjunct classes of women, children, and slaves, may not.

This is perfectly sensible as far as it goes, except that in our days it is a matter of principle that women not be an adjunct class.

Such a statement requires some unpacking. More on that tomorrow.

Proofreading, part 26

Backtracking a bit to the experience of writing.

I talked about producing letters as not necessarily being writing. Specifically, embossing (the process of creating a shape by pressing up from the other side) isn't really writing.

We might say: ah, but Braille is created by embossing, and today there are lots of people for whom writing in Braille is experientially the same as writing. So why couldn't you emboss letters and make a Torah for the blind? At any rate, a Braille Torah?

Leaving the technical difficulties aside (rolling an embossed document into a scroll is asking for trouble), it's an interesting proposal.

There's a case recorded - I forget the reference, I'll look it up if anyone cares deeply – where a guy with no hands wrote a Torah with the pen held in his teeth, and the Torah was ruled invalid, because holding the pen in one's teeth is not what most people perceive experientially as writing.

The guy had written a whole Torah, remember. That's a hell of a lot of work - I mean, it takes me a whole year, and I've got two perfectly good hands. He's written a whole Torah with the pen in his teeth, and he's got no hands - I would speculate that the rabbi who ruled his Torah invalid felt like a real heel. You couldn't be any kind of decent person and feel really sorry that you've got to say “um, no actually” to this person who's put in so much effort and so badly wants to be part of the community and it isn't their fault they can't participate through this activity.

But you've got to, and I think that's also the case for Braille Torahs. Holding the pen in one's teeth, or writing Braille, is definitely some people's experience of writing, but that doesn't mean it's the cultural experience of writing, and it seems that that's what matters here.

Ramifications of this attitude tomorrow.