 Image: Pluck! by the Busy Brain (License: CC-BY 2.0) Last year, while preparing the text of Gale & Goodman’s popular seder for Tu Bishvat, The Trees are Davvening, I came across an important and fairly modern story that testifies to important Jewish values of bal tashḥit (not needlessly wasting or wantonly destroying) in the context of our relationship with non-human life and nature. The problem I immediately encountered was one of attribution — the story featured Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook (1865–1935), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, while the story as I remembered it featured the fifth and sixth rebbes of ḤaBaD. The story in The Trees are Davvening quoted verbatim the story as recounted by Rav Aryeh Levin (1885-1969) in A Tzaddik in Our Time: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, p.107 by Simcha Raz (Feldheim 1975).
Once when Rav Kook was walking in the fields, lost deep in thought, the young student with him plucked a leaf off a branch. Rav Kook was visibly shaken by this act, and turning to his companion he said gently, “Believe me when I tell you, I never simply pluck a leaf or a blade of grass or any living thing, unless I have to.” He explained further, “Every part of the vegetable world is singing a song and breathing forth a secret of the divine mystery of the Creation.” For the first time the young student understood what it means to show compassion to all creatures.
A remarkably similar story first appears in Likkutei Dibburim, Vol. I, page 177 in English (1957-58). Likkutei Dibburim is a collection of talks given in Yiddish between 1929 and 1950 by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the previous rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidim. In his retelling, Rabbi Yosef Yitzḥok Schneerson (1880-1950) recalls when he was about 11 16 and was walking with his father, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (1860-1920) in the fields near Bolivke:
One day in the summer of 1896, I was strolling with my father in the field in the country resort of Bolivke, near Lubavitch. The crops were almost ripe; the grain and the grass rippled in a gentle breeze.
“Behold G!dliness”, my father declared. “Every movement of each single ear of grain and blade of grass was included in the Primeval Thought of Adam Kadmon, He who watches and gazes until the end of all generations. Divine Providence causes this thought to be realized for the sake of a specific G!dly intent.” As we walked on, we found ourselves in a forest. I continued, proceeding deep in contemplation of what I had just been told concerning Divine Providence, overwhelmed by the gentleness and earnestness of my father’s explanation.
As people often do, I plucked the leaf from a tree that I passed by without taking particular notice, and held it for a while in my hand. As I walked on, engrossed in thought, ever so often I tore off small pieces from the leaf and tossed them to the ground.
My father then said: “The Ari z”l teaches that…every leaf is a created being with Divine vitality which G!d created with a specific intent and role in the ultimate purpose of creation…
“We were just discussing the subject of Divine Providence and without any thought at all you plucked the leaf, held it in your hand, played with it…tore it up into little pieces, and scattered it in various places.
“How can a person act so light-mindedly in relation to one of G!d’s creations? This leaf is something created by the Almighty for a particular reason. It has a G!d-given vitality, it has a body and it has a life. In what way is the leaf’s ‘I’ smaller than your ‘I’?”…
While a similar observation could have been made by Rav Kook (who elsewhere writes eloquently on nature and human responsibility) it must be considered likely or possible that Simcha Raz or Rabbi Aryeh Levin misattributed this story to Rav Kook. On the other hand, the two variants of this story might testify to a traditional pedagogical approach for conveying the meaning of bal tashḥit to students.
Although these stories directly relate to the tradition of bal tashḥit, similar teachings can be found in earlier Talmudic sources. See Midrash Rabbah, Bereishis 10:6 (translation by Rabbi Mordechai Torczyner):
א”ר סימון אין לך כל עשב ועשב, שאין לו מזל ברקיע שמכה אותו, ואומר לו גדל, הה”ד (איוב לח) הידעת חקות שמים אם תשים משטרו בארץ וגו’, לשון שוטר
Rabbi Simon said: Every single blade of grass has a Mazal [lit. constellation] in the rakia (heavenly firmament) which strikes it and says, ‘Grow!’ This is the meaning of the verse (Job 38:33), ‘Do you know the laws of the heavens, and can you place their control [mishtar] over the earth?’ Mishtar is an expression of shoteir [meaning, an enforcing officer].)
(Many thanks to Rabbi Shmuel Klatzkin for offering the source reference to Likkutei Dibburim above. He adds, “As you recall, [Simcha] Raz’s book mentions some beautiful words of encouragement the Rebbe gave to Rabbi Levin.”)
Given that one important aspiration of the Open Siddur Project is the development of a web application for anyone to edit, maintain, and share the content of a personal prayerbook that they can craft online, I’m very concerned at how well web browsers today display the Hebrew language with all of its diacritical (vowels, cantillation) and punctuation marks. Indeed, the Open Siddur Project has an international scope, so ostensibly, we wish to support text in every language Jews speak or have ever spoken liturgy or liturgy-related text (the creative content of Jewish spiritual practice). Combine a digital font or fonts that support the full range of human written languages with a platform that correctly displays such fonts, and you have one basis for an excellent potential collaborative publishing platform.
So for the last year, I’ve been working on a series of tests to determine how well some popular and some less well-known web browsers perform in supporting the technology for displaying Hebrew text. In particular, I’m interested to see which browsers are failing to use a web standard called CSS @font-face to properly display Unicode Hebrew fonts that support the full range of Hebrew diacritics and which contain excellent font logic for diacritical positioning. I’m also keen on seeing which browsers might even be failing at recognizing bidirectional (BIDI) and right-to-left (RTL) text, given that Hebrew is read RTL and it’s not uncommon to find עִבְרִית and other left-to-right (LTR) languages written together with one another.
With these tests I also hoped to find some simple way by which an individual browsing the web could troubleshoot whether the problem is in their browser, their browser’s settings, or in a web page, when they find a web page that is poorly displaying Hebrew. I learned a great deal in the process and so I also made a page for web designer/coders to learn the correct way to craft a web page that will correctly display Hebrew.
Cross-posted to the Open Siddur Project.
2011 Gregorian. Such a quiet year for the Omphalos.
Even before New Year’s a year past, this blog had begun a mostly uninterrupted slumber beginning in 2009, what with most of my activity focused on directing the Open Siddur Project (2009-present), studying at Yeshivat Hadar (2009-2010), teaching with the Teva Learning Alliance (2010-2011), studying Hebrew and pedagogy in the Experiential Education program in the Davidson School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2011-present), and currently, studying the complexity of modern Israel along with more Hebrew in the Kesher Ḥadash program of the Davidson School.
Most of these activities were documented publicly semi-privately via my twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts, with all the caveats that proprietary social networks provide for archiving and redistributing creativity. Over the next few months, I hope to look back over the last few years and share publicly whatever output I’ve produced privately that might be worthwhile to share.
Through this effort I hope to document and construct a somewhat coherent narrative of my work since I left post-hurricane Louisiana after working there as an urban/environmental/GIS planner 2006-2008. Privately, I tell variations of this story to friends without the benefit of illustrations, but with the benefit of long walks and digressions. I think it’s time I explain myself, in the manner of Italo Calvino’s Marco Polo in Invisible Cities — with pantomime, gesticulation, unexplicated esotericism, and a translation that relies entirely on your patience and interest. Before my Kublai Khan, I have to present endless yarns spun from ever accumulating navel lint, an assemblage of obtuse details the connection of one to the other might otherwise seem ponderous, but I hope not pretentious. So bare with me, please.
I still hope to work and contribute as an urban/environmental planner, public historian and educator. I still harbor sage-like aspirations. I’m still hopelessly entangled in a great vein of string spun by others to document their own progress through the vast labyrinth of psychedelic and gnostic insight. Freedom, compassion, creativity, and awareness remain the touchstones of my intention, the grounding for my empathy and the foundation of my commitment in my work. Twelve years ago I learned some wonderful things while bicycling along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and the consequence of this gnosis is that I now can’t help but see prisons and cages everywhere. Facilitating creative activities, constructing open spaces, helping to recover lost wisdom — these express my intentions. And I’m still searching for that loose alliance of friends who share these objectives in bringing more people into the next age.
 Varady's Fabulous Flying Keyboard (Level 1) Behold my Flying Keyboard!
Ever want a keyboard configuration you could switch to for odd characters‽ You know, so you could add an Ḥ in Ḥanukah without copying and pasting from this page (or your favorite “Character Viewer” program).
Well I made such a keyboard configuration that you can download and install on your very own computer. (Only works for Windows OS, alas.) Download, unzip and install.
The keyboard layout includes glyphs mapped onto the universal and international standard Unicode character encoding schema. You’ll have to use the layout along with a font (e.g. DejaVu Sans) that supports all of these glyphs. Such fonts are installed with the popular, cross-platform, free/libre and open source LibreOffice application.
 Varady's Fabulous Flying Keyboard (Level 2) I was tired of using the Windows Character Viewer to access a number of useful character glyphs including the Ḥ. So I made my own keyboard layout using the proprietary but free-without-fee program called “Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator v1.4.” (Windows only, although it’s also possible to do something similar for Macs and Linux.) If you want to hack the keyboard layout I made, I’ve included the layout in a directory named “source” in the zip which also includes the images above.
Mac keyboard layouts are directly modifiable using a 3rd party free-without-fee tool called Ukelele. Re: Linux, like much of the rest of the configuration on *nix type systems, keyboard layouts for the X Window System are defined in easily editable text files. See this page for more info.)
UPDATE: For Windows users, Steg adds this useful information,
Go to your System Setttings and find the Language/Keyboard settings and add the input method “U.S. Extended”. Then start using it. To type a Ḥ type option-x and then H.
 The GPL+FE icon I drew. (CC0) UPDATE: I managed to convince the army of volunteer editors to approve an article I wrote on the GPL+FE (General Public License with font exception clause). This after my initial disastrous foray into wikipedia article posting. For those counting, this is my third approved article on Wikipedia.
Lately, for the Open Siddur Project, I’ve been putting together a font package for more easily distributing extant free/libre licensed Unicode Hebrew fonts. These fonts tend to be licensed with SIL’s Open Font License (e.g., EzraSIL and Cardo), or the GNU General Public License (GPL, e.g., Maxim Iorsh’s Culmus Project fonts). Because of the differences between fonts and other software code in their usage, there arose some conflicts which necessitated an exception to the GPL specifically for fonts. Unfortunately, the GPL font exception statement is somewhat buried in the Free Software Foundations GPL FAQ. Because important information on the GPL+FE is nowhere on the Internet included in one single post, I’ve reformatted it and shared it below.
From the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License FAQ, “How does the GPL apply to fonts?“:
Font licensing is a complex issue which needs serious consideration. The following license exception is experimental but approved for general use. We welcome suggestions on this subject—please see this this explanatory essay and write to licensing@gnu.org.
To use this exception, add this text to the license notice of each file in the package (to the extent possible), at the end of the text that says the file is distributed under the GNU GPL:
As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
The drafter of the GPL+FE statement above, explained the need for the GPL+FE in the following post, “Font Licensing” (FSF 2005).
Font Licensing
by novalis Contributions — last modified May 17, 2010 16:43
By David “Novalis” Turner
There has been some recent confusion about font licensing. Since I wrote the font exception, let me tell you a bit about where we are, and how we got there, and what this all means to you.
First, in the US, the copyright status of fonts is somewhat confused. A font face — that is, the look of a font, is not copyrightable (see Eltra Corp. v. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294 (4th Cir. 1978)). But font “programs” (truetype fonts, for example) are. Another ruling has extended the definition of “programs” to include certain outline data. Why this outline data is not equivalent to a font face, nobody knows. Helpfully, the copyright office has also issued contradictory statements on this. I don’t know how font copyright works in other countries.
What this means is that no font is going to affect the distributability of a printed document in the US. Further, merely referencing the font (as in the CSS font-face: caslon;) does not create a derivative work of that font. So why did we worry about font licensing at all?
The situation we were considering was one where a font was embedded in a document (rather than merely referenced). Embedding allows a document to be viewed as the author intended it even on machines that don’t have that font installed. So, the document (a copyrighted work) would be derived from the font program (another work). The text of the document, of course, would be unrestricted when distributed without the font.
This isn’t an artifact of the GPL; it’s just the way fonts work. Proprietary fonts often explicitly forbid embedding. So, if you want to send your document off to a printing service, the printing service needs to buy another copy of the font.
I was unhappy with even this amount of influence for fonts, because (a) it’s rarely what font authors intend and (b) it’s possible that some applications do embedding behind the user’s back. The situation seemed to me to be similar to the case of the runtime libraries which GCC automatically includes in its output (and which are licensed to permit inclusion in proprietary software). So, I wrote the font exception you see on our web site.
The reason the exception is so limited is that we’re worried about someone extracting a font from a document, and redistributing it. Extraction is, in my view, the major issue that a font license must confront. Because I haven’t been able to come up with a license which correctly handles embedding and extraction in all cases, I’ve restricted this exception to unaltered fonts. This means that someone can’t use embedding as a way to distribute a modified version of a font under restrictive terms. If you have suggestions for how to write a license which better handles extraction, please let us know. We haven’t had time to give this as much thought as we’ve given some of the other issues involved in free licensing. We’re especially interested in hearing from font creators at licensing@gnu.org.
|
|
