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“In Yiddish’s arsenal of gently mocking dismissal, no single feature is quite as interesting as the “shm-” replacement”

In Yiddish’s arsenal of gently mocking dismissal, no single feature is quite as interesting as the “shm-” replacement. Linguistically, this is a relatively unusual operation whereby the initial consonant or cluster of consonants is replaced by the segment “shm-” to express one’s general disdain for the thing in question. The English phrase “fancy-shmancy,” for example, is a direct borrowing from…

How to pronounce כלאים and פתאים

The word is pronounced kil’ayim and not kilayim, as there is a sheva under the ל. People sometimes mispronounce it as kilaim, as if there is a hirik under the א of כלאים. This reminds me of another common mistake. If you google you will find that many refer to the concept of “shomer pesaim (petaim).” Yet this is a mistake. The verse in Psalms 116:6 reads: שֹׁמֵר פְּתָאיִם. The second word is…

“despite the lasting hold of brainwashing on the public imagination, the scientific community has always regarded the term with some skepticism”

The term “brainwashing” was originally used to describe the thought-reform techniques developed by the Maoist government in China. Its usage in connection with cults began in the early seventies. Stories of young people being transformed into “Manchurian Candidate”-style zombies stoked the paranoia of the era and, for a time, encouraged the practice of kidnapping and “deprogramming” cult members.…

“Burnout may be our contemporary condition, but it has very particular historical origins”

Burnout may be our contemporary condition, but it has very particular historical origins. In the nineteen-seventies…, real wages stagnated and union membership declined. Manufacturing jobs disappeared; service jobs grew. Some of these trends have lately begun to reverse, but all the talk about burnout, beginning in the past few decades, did nothing to solve these problems; instead, it turned…

“The Torah is warning against twisting our basic moral code on behalf of the oppressed”

The oft-quoted maxim tzedek tzedek tirdof (Deuteronomy 16:20) — usually translated as “justice, justice shall you pursue” — does not repeat the word zedek simply for effect. The real point is that society must pursue justice justly. Here the Jewish tradition has another lesson to teach us. On one hand, the Torah repeatedly warns about injustice to the poor: “You shall not pervert judgment of the…

“Why did the rabbis in the early period (for the most part) divide people based on righteousness and virtue, and in the later period based on ethnicity?”

Why did the rabbis in the early period (for the most part) divide people based on righteousness and virtue, and in the later period based on ethnicity? This is a question I hope to treat in fuller detail in a later publication. For now, at least, let me propose the following three suggestions. The first is the growing cultural and religious influence of Christianity on Judaism in late antiquity.…

“Every impeachment reinvents what impeachment is for, and what it means, a theory of government itself”

Every impeachment reinvents what impeachment is for, and what it means, a theory of government itself. Every impeachment also offers a chance to establish a new political settlement in an unruly nation. The impeachment of Samuel Chase steered the United States toward judicial independence, and an accommodation with a party system that had not been anticipated by the Framers. Chase’s acquittal…

“Because impeachment happens so infrequently, it’s hard to draw conclusions about what it does, or even how it works, and, on each occasion, people spend a lot of time fighting over the meaning of the words and the nature of the crimes”

The U.S. Senate has held only eighteen impeachment trials in two hundred and thirty years, and only twice for a President. Because impeachment happens so infrequently, it’s hard to draw conclusions about what it does, or even how it works, and, on each occasion, people spend a lot of time fighting over the meaning of the words and the nature of the crimes. Every impeachment is a political…

“To believe that Presidents can do anything they like is to give up on self-government”

In 1787, the delegates in Philadelphia narrowed their list down to “Treason & bribery, or other high crimes & misdemeanors against the United States.” In preparing the final draft of the Constitution, the Committee on Style deleted the phrase “against the United States,” presumably because it is implied. “What, then, is an impeachable offense?” Gerald Ford, the Michigan Republican and House…

“The ‘high’ in ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ has its origins in phrases that include the ‘certain high treasons and offenses and misprisons’ invoked in the impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk”

The “high” in “high crimes and misdemeanors” has its origins in phrases that include the “certain high treasons and offenses and misprisons” invoked in the impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk, in 1450. Parliament was the “high court,” the men Parliament impeached were of the “highest rank”; offenses that Parliament described as “high” were public offenses with consequences for the nation. The…

“all but one of England’s original thirteen American colonies had been founded before impeachment went out of style”

The Englishman responsible for bringing the ancient practice of impeachment back into use was Edward Coke, an investor in the Virginia Company who became a Member of Parliament in 1589. Coke, a profoundly agile legal thinker, had served as Elizabeth I’s Attorney General and as Chief Justice under her successor, James I. In 1621—two years after the first Africans, slaves, landed in the Virginia…

“When we read in the book of Genesis about Pharoah’s sar ha-mashkim…we are not reading about a maître d’ who brought him fruit juice”

When we read in the book of Genesis about Pharoah’s sar ha-mashkim, his cupbearer or “chief butler,” as the King James Version calls him, we are not reading about a maître d’ who brought him fruit juice. The word “butler” is an old English form of French boutellier, from bouteille, which nowadays means a bottle but once meant a wine cask, and the King James had it figured out right. Philologos,…

"...studying Talmud...connects the (presumably) pluralistic ideas of the learner with the very activity in which they are engaged" -@YehudaKurtzer #Talmud #pluralism

Even as the Shoah and the State of Israel were essential drivers of Greenberg and Hartman’s commitments to pluralism, neither thinker entirely derived their ideas from these historic events. In fact, both tried to locate pluralism as a critical feature of the classical rabbinic tradition. In articulating Jewish pluralism, they were bringing to the surface a feature of the rabbinic tradition that…

“Most traditional forms of alcohol are made for immediate consumption”

Most traditional forms of alcohol are made for immediate consumption: They will spoil within a few days of fermentation. This is true for most forms of grain beer before the addition of hops as a preservative (a European invention of the ninth century) and for most other fruit-, sap-, or starch-based alcohols before the invention of distillation (Bruman 2000, Huetz de Lemps 2001, Jennings et al.…

“The origins of alcohol distillation are still somewhat obscure”

The origins of alcohol distillation are still somewhat obscure. Greeks in Alexandria had already developed the distillation of plant essences for medicinal purposes by the fourth century c.e. The technique was further developed by Arab chemists for the extraction of essential oils for perfumes, and it probably was passed back to Europe during the medieval period, perhaps through Spain. The…

“Unlike its role in other societies, wine eventually replaced beer and other drinks altogether among Greeks (except Spartans), Etruscans, and Romans of all social classes”

In Europe, credible evidence for alcoholic beverages, especially drinking vessels in funerary contexts, dates back to at least the Neolithic, although it is probable that forms of alcohol such as fermented honey (mead) may have existed even earlier (Dietler 1990, 1996; Sherratt 1991; Vencl 1994). Both grain beers and mead are attested during the Iron Age (first millennium b.c.e.) through…

Alcohol “constitutes an especially revealing focus of analysis for anthropologists and historians”

In brief, alcoholic drinks are not simply reducible to a uniform chemical substance with physiological effects. They constitute a form of material culture subject to almost unlimited possibilities for variation in terms of ingredients, techniques of preparation, patterns of association and exclusion, modes of serving and consumption, aesthetic and moral evaluations, expected behavior when…