The creativity of the written and oral traditions
Torah Calligraphy consists of hand scribed text in ink on parchment that is secured to wood rollers, with the text in columns. Text flows from right to left. When the congregations finish the annual reading cycle, the parchment is rolled back to the left roller, and the cycle begins anew. The last letter of the Torah scroll is a Lamed, the first letter of the scroll is a Bet. A Lamed and a Bet in that order spells out the Hebrew word for ‘heart’.
Because vowels are missing in the Torah scrolls Judaism has developed the tradition of the written and oral Torahs. Vowels often provide diverse meanings to words and sentences. Think of the English consonants R and D. Adding vowels could spell out red, read, road, etc.
The first sentence of the Torah scroll is shown below without and with vowels.
http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/torah-reading/BERESHIT/01BERESHIT.HTM
For easier viewing, note the first word of the Torah scroll shown below without and with vowels.
Because centuries passed between the adoption of an official Torah text the compilation of the oral tradition in the Talmud and in the mikraot gedolot compilation of the text and commentaries of the Hebrew Scriptures, The oral Torah allowed for significant creativity in exploring, clarifying and expanding the impact of the written Torah, both in terms of religious practice (Halacha) and stories (Agadah).
We study the stories of our people to better understand our own stories and how to tell our own stories.
The geography of the printed page
But when it comes to a book format – pioneered the geography of the page. Printed page sections from different time periods and different circumstances of the Jewish people. Reflects a midrashic perspective that there is no absolute chronology in the Torah. Moses can visit the talmudic academy.
The Talmud Page
The Mikraot Gedolot Page
https://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudPage.html
Almost anticipating the Web Site
“I can’t help feeling that in certain respects the Internet has a lot in common with the Talmud. The Rabbis referred to the Talmud as a yam, a sea – and though one is hardly intended to ‘surf’ the Talmud, something more than oceanic metaphors links the two verbal universes. Vastness and an uncategorizable nature are in part what define them both. The Hebrew word for tractate is masechet, which means, literally, “webbing.” As with the World Wide Web, only the metaphor of the loom, ancient and inclusive, captures the reach and the randomness, the infinite interconnectedness of words. I take comfort in thinking that a modern technological medium echoes an ancient one.”
Jonathan Rosen, The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey between Worlds (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2000), 7, 8, 11.
In the on-line magazine, Computer-Mediated Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor David Porush writes that the Talmud is an early example of hypertext.
“A page of Talmud is structured around a single text surrounded by concentric layers of commentary and commentary on commentary. By form and content, it announces the unfinished quality of constructing knowledge and the collective construction of shared values. Even in its layout on the page, the Talmud suggests a kind of time and space destroying hypertextual symposium rather than an authoritative, linear, and coherent pronouncement with a beginning and ending written by a solitary author who owns the words therein…. The notion of private self, or the notion of singular origin of knowledge, pales into insignificance in the face of this talmudic-hypertextual-Internet-like vision of communally-constructed knowledge.”
David Porush, “Ubiquitous Computing vs. Radical Privacy: A Reconsideration of the Future,” Computer-Mediated
Website development: Itamar Arjuan
Communications Magazine, vol. 2, no. 3, March 1, 1995, 46. http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/last.html.
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