As technology advances....

[rhu]

• Displaying the Tetragrammaton on a computer screen was not a problem because the image has to be repainted dozens of times a second, so we don't have to worry about erasing. With e-Ink (and I don't know if the Kindle uses this as well), once an image is drawn to the screen it stays there until changed. Are there now halachic problems with displaying text containing the Tetragrammaton?

• If cells are extracted from a living animal and cultured into foodstuffs, does that violate ever min he-chai, the law that says we may not eat a limb torn from a living animal?

Comments

[sethg]

E-ink is still not writing, because (a) E-ink images are made by selectively flipping over miniscule balls that are black on one side and white on the other, rather than making a mark on a permanent or even temporary medium, and (b) there is the indirection of doing it through a computer rather than by hand. If I was looking for halakhic precedents I would look for what the rabbis of old said about writing divine names with mosaic tiles. Note that according to The Thirty-Nine Avoth Melachoth of Shabbath you're allowed to eat food with words on it on Shabbat if the words are made with the same material as the substrate; icing on a cake that says "Happy Birthday" is problematic, but the same words engraved onto the cake's frosting are not.

Of course, having seen machmirisms like "Hash-m", we all know what the actual practice is going to be. :-/

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

So I can read Rabbi Slifkin's books on a Kindle but not the rabbis who put him in cherem? :-)

[sethg]

"You got your din gavra in my din cheftza!"
"You got your din cheftza in my din gavra!"

[cnoocy]

Do the rabbis have a ruling about using explicitly ephemeral media? Is it permitted to write the Tetragrammaton using Scrabble tiles, for instance?

[sethg]

I don't know about the Tetragrammaton, but some permit playing Scrabble™ on Shabbat, so it seems that arranging tiles in a way that forms words is, arguably, not really writing.

[cnoocy]

Are there rulings about flip-dot displays?