No Peace for Pinchas

פִּינְחָס בֶּן-אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן-אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן, הֵשִׁיב אֶת-חֲמָתִי מֵעַל בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, בְּקַנְאוֹ אֶת-קִנְאָתִי, בְּתוֹכָם; וְלֹא-כִלִּיתִי אֶת-בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, בְּקִנְאָתִי לָכֵן, אֱמֹר:  הִנְנִי נֹתֵן לוֹ אֶת-בְּרִיתִי, שָׁלוֹם

Pinhas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Kohen turned My wrath away from Israel through My zealotry which he exercised among them and I did not destroy Israel. Therefore I hereby grant him My covenant of peace. (free translation)

The vav in the word "Shalom" is famously written with an intentional crack, but that will not be the subject of this post. Instead we will talk about the practicalities of Pinchas and why he doesn't get much peace after all.

The maftir readings for all Jewish holidays occur in Parshat Pinchas. Most established congregations have at least two Torah scrolls, one for the regular reading and one for the special readings when a second scroll is required. Naturally this second scroll is constantly being rolled to Pinchas and then moved around within the parasha. This leads to the section where Pinchas occurs wearing out a lot faster than the rest of the scroll. This week over sukkot, I noticed several damaged letters and even some whole words rubbed out in or around the maftir reading. Apparently this is very common in scrolls only ever used for maftir. In fact, the original yeriot of that section were replaced years ago and this is the second round of fading.

I'm not sure what can be done to prevent it, but if it were up to me I would rotate the assignment of Torahs to readings every few years. Unfortunately there are no pictures for this post. I noticed the first faded letter on shabbat and I neglected to take pictures while doing the touch-ups.

Hilchos Legibility I

I titled this post with a "one" even though I don't plan on doing a series because a major component of the specs for any product is usability, and for manuscripts that means legibility so I'll probably be writing about it a lot. Last week I finally got around to getting certified as a sofer by the Vaad Mishmereth STa"M, the self-declared international regulatory body for scribes. (They used to do a lot of consumer protection seminars and things. Now they license sofrim under the assumption that if the scribe has an up-to-date license a consumer can trust him.) In true Israeli style this involved under one hour of testing and paperwork that blew up into a full-day ordeal thanks to travel time, waiting time, and another-two-hours-because-that's-how-we-do-things time. I can now compete with my friends' tzav rishon (Israeli draft board) stories.

Anyway, on to the topic. One of the questions on my written exam was "what if the leg of an ayin is horizontal and short?" I answered that it is passul (invalid) because it looks like a tet. No idea how they graded it, but I think I was justified the very next day while trying to read something in yeshiva.

This is one style of the font family commonly known as "rashi script." In fact this is the kind used in the older prints of books found in yeshiva libraries. Look at the tet and the ayin (the 9th and 19th letters going right to left); it wouldn't be too hard to confuse them if you didn't see them in the context of the whole alphabet in order.

A (sometimes-serious) Glossary to Bava Basra

I haven't been writing this week so here is something from the holy walls of the Yeshiva.

There are plenty of Yeshivish dictionaries out there. There is even a New Testament translated into Yeshivish, but all of the dictionaries focus on making fun of the way people talk, or in one case teach others how to talk funny too. This glossary is more technical, and focuses more on what people are saying than how they say it. It isn't a Yeshivish lexicon per se but another Talmudic one presented with most sincere apologies to Rabbeinu Marcus Jastrow.

Agud: See גוד-אגוד
bas-habas-haben: A great-grand-daughter. She inherits before a daughter because as far as inheritance is concerned, she might as well be a son.
Beit Rova: n. pl batei rova. A quarter.
Ben: The son. He is first in line to inherit
Bor: n. Any one of several varieties of hole. More specific definitions are forbidden, especially in the form of context clues
Bur: n. A major ignoramus (spelled the same way in Hebrew)
Chazaka: n. (maybe) v. (could be one of these too) an assumption of fact; an assumption of ownership; an act of taking possession; the process of acquiring squatter's rights; a tenous claim of some sort of entitlement to use someone else's property (v. Reuven v. Din Torah)
Chenvini: n. v. gavra esp. one who only plays bit parts; a storekeeper; is known to keep meticulous records of everything, but cannot be trusted to send a kid out with a delivery.
Cur: A unit of area equal to 10 Lessekh which equals an unspecified number of  Batei Rova. No one knows or cares how many. The important thing is that there are more than 4 of them. Computing the number of batei rova requires algebra(v. סתרי תורה)
Din: n. a fortiori reasoning (because it's one of those latin words we learn in Yeshiva); Law/legal battle; a loud cacaphonous noise (v. definition 2)
Eishes Ish: A woman whose chief role in this mesechta is to be told she can't sue her ex-husband because she isn't actually divorced
Gavra: n. A man who makes his living acting out some of the most improbable legal battles in Jewish history. He is usually dishonest but wins anyway
Get: n. document, bill of divorce; exists primarily to get lost so we can talk about Chazaka
Get Mekushar: n. The direct opposite of a Get Pashut
Get Pashut: n. A document written entirely on one side of a piece of paper, not post-dated, and signed by two witnesses with a minimum of funny business
גוד-אגוד: Good fences make agood neighbor
HaHu: lit. "There was this..." Usually serves as a cue for a Gavra.
Iyov: n. Protagonist of the book of Job. He may or may not have existed, may or may not have been a blasphemer, and may or may not have encountered the various Gavras of Bava Basra during his troubles
Kilayim: n. Something that doesn't belong in Bava Basra but is mixed in to force Yeshiva guys to learn Zeraim.
Levi: n. An understudy Gavra
L'Mafreya: adj. wibbly wobbly, retrospective, retroactive timey-wimey...
Magla: n. axe; saw; shovel; some other tool that if you wanted one you would not request it in Aramaic, so who cares
Mara: n. shovel; see magla
Mara Kama: n. Original owner (but only of real estate)
Metalt'lin: n. Movable merchandise, the opposite of real estate. Under talmudic property laws, Metalt'lin can pretty much be accurately termed "fake-estate" as you suspected it should be all along
Reuven: n. The penultimate Gavra
Shimon: n. The ultimate gavra