crow

and he paused for a second and then said, “when you’ve been taught from a young age that crying is weak and you should train yourself never to cry for any reason, you assume that everyone else has trained themselves too, so anyone who cries has to be doing it on purpose. it took me a long time to realize that wasn’t true.”

"You are completely off, you have gotten multiple basic facts wrong, you also lack x and y context"

Depending on the size and amount of coral you eat, eating coral wouldn’t be bad for you. Are you swallowing large enough chunks to cause intestinal blockages? or grinding it up and using it as an additive? People use coral as a source of calcium in vitamins.

But yeah, it all goes back to "seems easier to just use regular ol' marble dust.

...related important question: are we sure that coral is considered alive, and an animal of any kind, like, halakhically speaking?

I mean:

Coral doesn't bleed (which is the important part about eating a still living animal)

They don't have lungs or gills

They generally don't move? (I guess corallimorphs can...kinda crawl? But otherwise no they don't move).

How is coral really different from like, fungi above water? Sure it can be a collective mass (mushrooms and their mycellium colonies!), but it's not capable of bleeding, and it doesn't have lungs or gills, and it doesn't really move. It just kinda...spreads.

No because fungi are bottom feeders of the ground and yet mushrooms are kosher.

The issue is whether or not these are creatures according to Torah. From Leviticus 11:

These you may eat of all that live in water: anything in water, whether in the seas or in the streams, that has fins and scales—these you may eat.

But anything in the seas or in the streams that has no fins and scales, among all the swarming things of the water and among all the other living creatures that are in the water—they are an abomination for you

and an abomination for you they shall remain: you shall not eat of their flesh and you shall abominate their carcasses.

Everything in water that has no fins and scales shall be an abomination for you.

Now, I am going to reference Bible hub here mostly because they have a nice Strong's Hebrew concordance feature that sefaria doesn't have that is easy to copy and paste from.

But basically I would argue that the important words we have to distinguish here are:

the teeming

שֶׁ֣רֶץ (še·reṣ)

Noun - masculine singular construct

Strong's 8318: A swarm, active mass of minute animals

life

הַחַיָּ֖ה (ha·ḥay·yāh)

Article | Adjective - feminine singular

Strong's 2416: Alive, raw, fresh, strong, life

and creatures

נֶ֥פֶשׁ (ne·p̄eš)

Noun - feminine singular

Strong's 5315: A soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion

So. Is coral an active (teeming) mass of minute animals? Well. It is a living colony in the same way that mushrooms are colonies of living things. But other things that swarm or teem are like... krill. shrimp. Locusts. Flies. Ants.

Y'know, stuff that moves. Swarms. Coral doesn't teem or swarm. It's static.

Which leaves us with living and creatures.

I would argue again that "living" implies regular movement — for example, you can have living waters. (Same root word for mayyim chayyim).

But also the other terms which appear beside the root word for life/living over and over again are basically:

Creeping, moving (Strong's 7430 רָמַשׂ ramas)

Flesh (Strong's 1320 בָּשָׂר basar)

Flying or soaring (5774 עוּף)

Having a soul (or literal breath) (5315, נֶפֶשׁ)

And nefesh is of course, also the last one in that list!

So is coral alive in the way Torah usually means things are living beings? Well, coral doesn't creep or move. It also doesn't have blood (which, arguably, means it can't have a carcass. It sort of has bones! But no carcass). It...MIGHT have flesh? I'm sort of unclear about this.

It can't fly or soar.

Which leaves us with:

Do corals have flesh? and,

do corals have souls? And if not metaphorically souls, do they have breath?

Well, coral do respirate. But so do plants. And neither of them have lungs. Also according to @montereybayaquarium's website coral get oxygen from algae? (Don't worry Monterey bay aquarium no one is actually going to eat the coral, this is all hypothetical)

Coral reefs get their bright colors from the algae — called zooxanthellae — living in their tissues. The zooanthellae provide the coral polyps with oxygen and nutrients produced from photosynthesis. In return, the coral polyps provide zooanthellae with carbon dioxide (a byproduct of the polyps’ “breathing” oxygen) and shelter.

Coral polyps can have mouths, but they don't really breathe with lungs. So I'm not sure they have that kind of nefesh (breath of life). And corals are like, a bunch of skeletal base material with living polyps on the top. But are they fleshy? But all their color comes from the algae living in them.

For this I go back to the presence of blood being a big factor, because again, mushrooms have flesh but don't have blood, and so halakhically...that fungi is a plant.

Also apparently Octocorals don't have those exoskeletons? So at that point how would we know something is an octocoral versus like...a seaweed?

I think either seaweed isn't meant to be kosher, or actually corals are kosher because seaweed is. Oysters have gills and hearts. Scallops have a gajillion eyes. Really easy to see those aren't plants.

Basically if you look at a coral does it have a breath and soul, does it fly or creep, does it bleed, does it have flesh, does it move around in general? Could it possibly be a plant, halakhically speaking? (Not by scientific taxonomy!) Would bronze age folks look at it and go "yeah, that's a plant."? Also important: what IS a plant? Halakhically?

well it sounds like part of the problem here is that you're not actually letting yourself practice these skills, you just keep throwing yourself at the books expecting to brute force your way to higher understanding. that's not how learning works. there's a reason actors aren't generally handed their scripts for the first time on opening night, you know? the best understanding of the material is going to come with time and rehearsal and collaboration with the rest of the cast and crew.

(don't @ me about any shows where the gimmick is everyone getting their lines the night of, that's not what I'm talking about and you know it.)

anyway. what else are you reading, other than the texts you're trying to understand? look up reviews and analyses and discussion questions of the books you're reading. (hell, some books come with discussion questions right in the back.) see what other people are saying. learn from their insights and decide whether or not you agree with them. lots of classics like Wuthering Heights literally have lists of themes on their Wikipedia pages.

look up things about the author and try to figure out how their own life experiences have shaped the book they've produced. when did they write it? where did they write it? who helped them do it? what are their influences? why did they write it? why did they make the choices they did? what did they get right? what did they get wrong? what are you noticing about the book that the author may not have intended? why?

keeping track of your observations physically can be really helpful for slowing down, engaging thoughtfully, and organizing your ideas. I like Jananie Velu's video here is a pretty good starting guide: