Musing on ecology, economics, and Mishna

I am subscribing to a very interesting blog, which often publish thought provoking posts. The latest one is touching on social and economic cost of our behavior. You can click here to link to the post so you can read it in it’s entirety. The comments are also quite interesting.

…anything that is a commons will have this tendency to retain and increase value, as long as the cost of repair is kept at least as low as the cost of damage.

I started kicking it around in other contexts and the answer seemed to come out the same. It made me understand more about urban graffiti and about vandalism. Then, more recently, I saw this article, about chewing gum. So it costs 3p to buy a piece of chewing gum and 10p to clean up after it.

And it made me think. Wouldn’t that look a little unfair to a non-chewer? The chewer gets the benefit, the manufacturer makes the profit, and the taxpayer foots the bill.

We are inheritors of the tradition which values social justice and communal fairness so much, that our forefathers invested uncounted years in documenting seemingly minute details of fair and just ways to relate to each other, and to community. Today we seem to satisfy our desires for improvements by protesting the status quo and hotly debating issues we have no control over instead of “noodling” over specific, constructive ideas for change we can actualize in our own personal lives.

 

פּושׁקנצא- the she-raven

B”H

Don’t bother looking up pushkantza in your Hebrew dictionary. It ain’t there. You can tell by the spelling (the final alef) that this is not a native Hebrew word. The modern Hebrew term for raven is orev shachor עור שׁחור, literally, a black crow. I wondered if pushkantza might be of Aramaic origin, or possibly even Polish. But a quick look in the Aramaic/Hebrew/English dictionary answered the question. It’s Aramaic.

There are three ways to spell (and say) this word:

1. As it appears in our text: פּוּשְׁקָנְצא pushkantza
2. פִּישְׁקָצא pishkatza
3. פֻּשְׁקְצא pushk’tza

Likutei Moharan 3:1 quotes the agadah of Rabbah bar bar Chanah in Bava Basra 73b. There’s an interesting daf yomi on Bava Basra 73 that not only has an explanation of how we might frame the agados of Rabbah bar bar Chanah, but also speaks to the meaning of the story itself, with interpretations by the Vilna Ga’on and Marharsha.

IN DEFENSE OF THE RAVEN — I must say these folks did not have a very good understanding of the corvids. Ravens are very social birds. They maintain familial ties and young birds stay with their parents for up to two years before setting off on their own. Not only is it untrue that ravens don’t feed their young, but in fact, juvenile ravens stay with their parents and help raise their younger siblings. The young ones not only have parents to feed them but brothers and sisters also. So… while the analogies in the agadic interpretations are interesting, they not based on any real understanding of corvid behavior.

shir ‘Az

 

Moshiach ben Yosef

B”H

Greetings, all:

In the last class we continued our study of Likutei Moharan. In this text, reference is made to Moshiach ben Yosef. R. Avram assigned us to research Moshiach ben Yosef.

I wanted to point everyone to an article on Moshiach.com by R. Emanuel Schochet that gives a nice, fairly detailed but not laborious treatment of the subject. I found it a useful overview.

The specific article is located at: http://www.moshiach.com/topics/in-depth/moshiach-ben-yossef.php

Please add your findings on this topic by subnitting a comment to this post.

b’shalom,

shir ‘Az