Robert Cottrell" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Roving Eye, SpotlightOctober 13, 2016

Spotlight Site: Daf Yomi

daf-yomiBack when the world was young, and blogging was the New Big Thing — which is to say, around 2004 — mainstream publications took a deep breath and, for the most part, decided to go with the flow, adding these new-fangled “blogs” to their websites, sometimes in great profusion. If one blog was good, ten blogs must be better, right?

And in fact it worked quite well. If you were a mainstream publication — The Economist, say, for which I was working at the time — then your website was pretty much the contents of your print paper. Adding blogs made for a way of adding new daily content at a lower marginal cost, on the expectation that journalists would positively enjoy writing in a more informal and speculative register, and with more scope for introducing their own personalities, which was, indeed, generally the case.

Over time, the sea of content adjusted to a new level. Websites in general became more like blogs — which is to say, frequently updated, skewed towards the “hot” issues of the moment, more opinionated, and drawing off one another’s work. Journalists, meanwhile, having discovered that their niche blog was attracting only a tiny fraction of the traffic going to the website as a whole, wanted to fold their writing back into the main site, and were encouraged to do so by their publishers, who likewise regretted squandering good — even bad —  writing on niche audiences. In effect, blogging prevailed.

A model of how a blog can add value to a mainstream publication by doing something eccentric and focused, something with a life and a coherence of its own.
All of which is a roundabout way of getting to Adam Kirsch’s Daf Yomi blog for The Tablet (this Tablet is an online magazine of Jewish news and culture, not to be confused with the British Roman Catholic newspaper of the same name). The Tablet — both Tablets — are admirable in all sorts of ways, but Kirsch’s Daf Yomi is emerging — for me — as one of the more notable literary achievements of recent times. It is the blog-as-exploration, rather than the blog-as-argument. It is a model of how a blog can add value to a mainstream publication: not by doing more of what the publication is doing already (more news! more gossip! more sport!) but by doing something eccentric and focused, something with a life and a coherence of its own. A blog needs a mission.

The term Daf Yomi describes the scholarly regimen of reading and considering the entirety of the Talmud at the rate of one page per day. Which is exactly what Kirsch does, writing up his notes on the various issues raised at the rate of one post per week, a post which is always action-packed with surprise, perplexity and delight.

Any one of Kirsch’s posts is a good starting point, but if I had to name a favourite, it would probably be the The Goring Ox, which teases out the prescriptions of the Talmud on issues of negligence and damage:

“To start with, the rabbis notice a glaring logical contradiction in the biblical law. According to Exodus, an ox that kills a human being is to be stoned to death immediately; yet it is only after goring three times that the ox earns the designation ‘forewarned’. How, then, could any ox ever be forewarned, when it wouldn’t live long enough to kill three times?”

There is worse to come:

“Indeed, the distinctions go even further. An ox, the Mishna says, can be ‘forewarned with regard to Shabbatot’: That is, an ox that has a habit of goring on Shabbat would not be considered forewarned for goring on a weekday. This distinction initially seems to make no sense—surely an ox doesn’t keep track of the calendar, so how could the distinction between Shabbat and weekday be meaningful to it? According to the Jerusalem Talmud, the Koren edition notes the reason is that people wear different clothes on Shabbat, which might confuse the ox, leading it to gore people it perceives as strangers. According to Rashi, the difference has to do with the fact that the ox does not work on Shabbat, which might leave it feeling friskier than usual. Whatever the reason, if an ox that usually gores on Shabbat suddenly takes it into its head to gore on a Monday, its owner would only pay half damages, since it would be considered innocuous for weekdays.”

It is writing like this which makes me think well of the Internet. You might say that without the Internet I would be obliged to read the Talmud myself, so I am lured into laziness. But the much more likely equilibrium would be that I never read the Talmud at all. Thanks to the Internet I have the Talmud read for me by an expert commentator who reports his highly entertaining findings each week without charge. I shall profit from such largesse while I can.

 

Robert Cottrell is editor of The Browser, which recommends five or six pieces of exceptional writing available online each day. He was previously a staff writer for The Economist and the Financial Times.

Tags

Robert CottrellSpotlight Sitewebsites

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleSpotlight Site: Deserter
Next articleAuthor of the Month: Zsuzsa Selyem

You may also like

Author Interview: Rion Amilcar Scott

Spotlight Artist: Scheherezade Junejo

Poet of the Month: Simon Perchik

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

The Mixed Blessing of Audiobooks

Senior Articles Editor Aaron Grierson weighs in on the strange evolution of how we consume information and literature.

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
Half the Kingdom/Det halve rige

"I neither cut off a toe, nor shaved off a heel/ just minced my way through it all/ with a...

Close