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

[bourbon-cowboy.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for your gentle response to my (overdetermined, bred in my own upbringing) churlishness. I apologize for stepping on any toes--though of course the Talmud gets battlesome at times too. (I'm familiar with the Talmud, though I've read only teensy portions.) But you answered my question beautifully, and I apologize for having conflated two issues that really are quite separate. I knew even as I was doing it that the meat question was more rooted in real-world morality than the question about the Kindle, which really only speaks to fellow group members.

What irritated me about the "New Atheist" writers (Hitchens, Dawkins, etc) is that they took a single premise--say, that, in the book of Acts, God kills Ananias and Sephira for holding back part of their tithe--and leapt from that to a paranoid assumption about all believers: "There's nothing preventing modern Christians from believing the same thing and killing OTHER people who hold back tithes!" All you have to do is clear your throat and say, "Um, but they don't do it because they're decent people and they aren't idiots." It seems I may have done the same injustice to you, and I'm sorry. The orthodox community has far more andrews in it than it has, say, Shalom-Auslander's-dads in it. I just wanted to make sure the distinction was clear, and it was an unnecessary assurance. Continue with your---um, I wanted to say "pilpul," but that's wrong, since pilpul is bad, right? So continue with whatever the Hebrew term is for the ideas you're kicking around. Thanks! It's fun to learn.