“In the beginning, God created et the heaven and et the earth” (Genesis 1:1). These are the first words of the Bible. In the original Hebrew, et is the first creation, the blueprint for creating heaven and earth. In the English translation, the word et drops out since it has no English equivalent. The word et as a grammatical form indicating a direct object linking verb and noun. It links “God created” to “heaven” and to “earth.” It is spelled alef-tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Spanning the full set of 22 Hebrew letters from alef through tav, et represents media systems. “Heaven” represents spiritual systems and “earth” natural systems.
Alexenberg, Mel. The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness (p. 109). Intellect Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
Biblical Calligraphy, Talmud Page Layout – Media Lessons
Along with the contents of both the scribal columns of the Torah scroll and the recorded discussions of the Talmudic academy, there is much to learn from the media themselves:
With the advent of the printing press, the Talmud Page layout evolved into a very sophisticated multi-dimensional study tool as will be discussed below.
The calligraphy of the Torah scroll and the pages of the Talmud and other Rabbinic texts are themselves visual. There is great skill among the scribes who penned the Torah text, and significant design elements in the layout of the Talmud with its central text being quotes from the earlier Mishnah compilation of law, and the recording of the dialogue of the Rabbi scholars, and the side text representing commentaries of the later schools, and ‘footnote’ references to other texts.
Torah Calligraphy consists of hand-scribed text in ink on parchment that is secured to wood rollers, with the text in columns. The 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’.
The Torah text requires the reader to actively add the vowel sounds to the consonants making the reading more participatory. For most Jewish populations over the centuries, reading the Torah Hebrew text from right to left meant a bi-directional consciousness because their native languages were written left to right. (Agam’s right to left and left to right Images)
And while maintaining the consonant-only text over the centuries, generation after generation of our people were free to add their contemporary meanings and understanding to the study of the written words.
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.
“The scroll of the Torah is [written] without vowels, in order to enable man to interpret it however he wishes…as the consonnants without the vowels bear several interpretations, and [may be] divided into several sparks. This is the reason why we do not write the vowels of the scroll of the Torah, for the significance of each word is in accordance with its vocalization, but when it is vocalized it has but one single significance; but without vowels man may interpret it [extrapolating from it] several [different] things, many marvelous and sublime.” Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p86, quoting from R. Bahya be Asher’s Commentary on the Pentateuch
Certain text passages such as the ‘Song of the Sea’ have their own calligraphy
Talmud Typography
“Both the typographical design of the Talmud, the major work of Jewish law and lore, and hypertext linking in the design of the Internet are structured so that they facilitate and encourage creative, associative, and multiple perspectives. The confluence between the media ecologies of the Talmud and the Internet generate common Jewish and digital age structures of consciousness.”Mel Alexenberg, “The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness”
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 printers and scholars pioneered the geography of the Talmud page with its 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. In the Midrash, Moses can visit the Talmudic Academy, although he does not understand the discussions.
Talmud page
THE PRINTED BOOK
IN 15TH! AND 16TH!CENTURY
JEWISH CULTURE1
Pavel Sládek
2012, Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia
With regards to the formation of a new “classical” canon, Renaissance printing was innovative in three
respects: 1. publishing determines whether a text becomes a “classic”;
2. the selection of specific metatexts accompanying a particular “classical” text determines its basic
contextualization and also largely the method of study; 3. the emending process narrowed the variability
of textual versions and resulted in a relative level of standardization.
Adding Commentaries to biblical texts
Examples of the second innovation include the 16th-century editions of rabbinic Bibles (Biblia Rabbinica, Mikra’ot Gedolot) and in particular editions of the Babylonian Talmud.
Daniel Bomberg’s three editions of the rabbinic Bible126 – i.e., the text of the Hebrew Bible accompanied by commentaries – established the early modern and modern canon of Jewish biblical exegesis. The second and third editions include the Torah with Targum Onkelos and Targum Yerushalmi, commentaries by Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra, and parts of a commentary by Jacob ben Asher entitled Ba’al ha-Turim. The Books of the Prophets are supplemented with commentaries by David Kimhi and Gersonides, plus several other texts.
Adding Commentaries to the printed Talmud Page
In the case of the Babylonian Talmud, the printing press was especially responsible for helping to
establish a particular study method as the standard. The individual tractates published by the Soncino family, followed by the complete Bomberg edition, established Rashi’s commentaries and a specific selection of the Tosafot as the two fundamental metatexts. We must emphasize that the rabbinic Biblesgenerally expanded the existing “library” of biblical exegesis, while Renaissance printed editions drastically narrowed the older medieval Talmudic corpus.127 This reduction consisted not only in the upgrading of two specific metatexts to the level of canon, but (when it comes to the Tosafot) also in a somewhat arbitrary selection from among older collections.128 The editors compiled the Tosafot for individual tractates of the Talmud from Tosefot Touques, Tosefot Sens, Tosafot of the circle of Perez ben Elijah and other manuscript collections. The canonic status of the newly created compilation is evidenced by the fact that it is referred to as “our Tosafot (Tosafot shelanu)” as well as by the almost complete decline of interest in all other collections of Tosafot, many of which remain unpublished to this day or were lost and are known only from citations.
The Talmud Page
Visual take aways from the Talmud Page layout:
- Multi-dimensional Perspectives
- Multi-Time dimensions erasing time barriers “present discussions”
- Multi-geographic dimensions
- Seeing Patterns – using photoshop layering
- Agam’s concept of theater presenting multiple simultaneous scenes
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.
ʽOz veHadarʼ edition of the Talmud, with elements numbered in a spiraling rainbowː (1) ʽJoshua Boaz ben Simon Baruchʼ, Mesorat haShas, (2) ʽJoel Sirkisʼ, Hagahot (3) ʽAkiva Eigerʼ, Gilyon haShas, (4) Completion of ʽSolomon ben Isaacʼ from the Soncino printing, (5) ʽNissim ben Jacobʼ’a commentary, (6) ʽHananel ben Hushielʼ’s commentary, (7) a survey of the verses quoted, (8) ʽJoshua Boaz ben Simon Baruchʼ Ein Mishpat/Ner Mitzvah, (9) the folio and page numbers, (10) the tractate title, (11) the chapter number, (12), the chapter heading, (13), ʽSolomon ben Isaac’s commentaryʼ, (14) the Mishnah, (15) the Gemara, (16) an editorial footnote.Gordon Glottal
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.
The Mikraot Gedolot Page
“Mikraot Gedolot” or Large Scriptures are volumes of the Hebrew Scriptures in which the biblical verses are surrounded by commentaries written over the centuries.
