creation - Is a "Golem" the same thing as a person created through Sefer Yetzirah?

Is a "Golem" the same thing as a person created through Sefer Yetzirah? Please be clear with your answer.

halacha - Self-defense (in a case of one's capital, not a capital case)

There is a well known rule that if A is threatening B's life, B may kill A, if necessary, to prevent that.

Is there any such rule in non-capital cases? Specifically:

• If A is threatening B with physical injury, can B injure A to prevent it?


• If A is threatening B with monetary harm, can B financially injure A to prevent it?

If so, then:

1. Does B's injury of A have to be proportionate to what A would have otherwise done? For example, if A is seeking to inflict $100's worth of damage on B's possessions, can B, to prevent that, inflict $100's worth of damage on A's? $100.25's worth? $1,000,000's worth? Likewise, if A is seeking to damage B's person to a certain degree (monetary degree in terms of nezek, or to some degree as defined by some other standard), can B damage A to the same degree? to a higher degree?


2. Would B have any liability to A thereafter (in bes din)?

Of course, for practical guidance in any specific case, each person should consult his rabbi; this question is about general rules.

internet - Is this really in the Talmud?

I've seen this before on anti-semetic sites - is it really in the Talmud?

Extracts from the Jewish text the Talmud

"Just the Jews are humans, the non-Jews are no humans, but cattle" Kerithuth 6b, page 78, Jebhammoth 61

"The non-Jews have been created to serve the Jews as slaves" Midrasch Talpioth 225

"Sexual intercourse with non-Jews is like sexual intercourse with animals" Kethuboth 3b

"The non-Jews have to be avoided even more than sick pigs" Orach Chaiim 57, 6a

"The birth rate of non-Jews has to be suppressed massively" Zohar 11,4b

"As you replace lost cows and donkeys, so you shall replace non-Jews" Lore Dea 377, 1

Answer

rosends got it right.

But I'll go through the quotes anyhow.

A. Non-Jews aren't humans. Keritot 6b.

There are a handful of specific technical laws in the Bible that pertain to "an adam" which the Talmud interprets as "Jews only"; for a non-Jew we are more lenient. The idea simply is that most of the Torah's laws were intended for a Jewish audience, so sometimes "an adam" was taken for granted to mean "a Jew." NOWHERE do we ever find "you can kill/rob/rape/disgrace etc. a non-Jew because they're not human." Instead, some technical laws were intended on a focus within the Jewish population. For instance:

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  If you use the special formula for Temple oil and apply it to a commoner, not a high priest, you get in really big trouble with G-d. But you only get in really big trouble if you apply it to a Jewish commoner. If you apply the oil to a non-Jew, you don't get in big trouble. That's the instance in Keritot 6b. (As for why the distinction: the concern is that you'd try to make everyone "ritually special", which would make no one ritually special, and would ruin the centralization. This became a problem in Jewish history as seen in the books of Judges and Kings -- people would set up their own idolatrous pseudo-Temples wherever they wanted, and find whatever pseudo-priests they could.) The Torah really wasn't concerned about what non-Jews do with it.

  
  
  


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  Suppose a Jewish woman cheats on her husband and has a child from that union. If the "boyfriend" was Jewish, we call the child a mamzer and they're prohibited from marrying into the mainstream. If the boyfriend wasn't Jewish, the child is a regular Jew and can marry normally. Again, presumably the Torah was more concerned with what people were more likely to do, which is mess up within their community, and therefore bothered to add a penalty in that case.

  
  

B. Something from Medrish Talpiot

A non-authoritative work that was done long after the Talmud. I don't know what it says and frankly I don't care. You also have to realize that many medieval works were done around the time of the Crusades with massive Christian persecution, so the message many Jews needed to hear to stay alive was an "us good, them bad" one. Update: Fred checked the Midrash Talpiot and couldn't find this quotation anyhow. Thank you Fred!

C. Relations with non-Jews. Ketubot 3b.

Close, but no cigar. It's not in the Talmud there, but something similar to it appears in one of the commentaries (Tosafot, a family of rabbis in France in the 1100s) there. Again it's a technical discussion about which penalties apply if someone has relations with someone they shouldn't (see A above); the Torah was more concerned about applying penalties in the common case, which was people messing up with their neighbors, not a far-away foreigner.

D. Avoid non-Jews. Orach Chaim "57,6a"

Orach Chaim is a section of Shulchan Aruch, a work that was done a thousand years after the Talmud. Chapter 57 is a rather cut-and-dry piece about the morning prayers, and it has only two subsections; nothing at all to do with non-Jews here. So I have no idea what this one is about.

E. Birthrate -- Zohar.

I have no idea. The Zohar was "discovered" in the 1200s. It's not the Talmud. Fred checked the Zohar anyhow and couldn't find it. This one also is totally bizarre in light of Deut. 7:7: "It was not because you had greater numbers than all the other nations that God embraced you and chose you; you are among the smallest of all the nations."

F. Replacement -- "Lore Dea."

I think you mean "Yoreh Deah" (and if you're making mistakes like that, you really don't know what you're talking about, do you?) That's another section of Shulchan Aruch. It's actually talking about viewing slaves (not "all non-Jews") as property that should be replaced. It's a troubling statement, and it falls into the broader question about how Judaism allowed slavery a very long time ago.

electrochemistry - Deriving a reduction potential from two other reduction potentials

Given:

\begin{align} \ce{Co^{3+}(aq) + e- &-> Co^{2+}(aq)} & E° &= \pu{+1.82 V} \\ \ce{Co^{2+}(aq) + 2e- &-> Co(s)} & E° &= \pu{-0.28 V} \end{align}

what is the standard reduction potential for $\ce{Co^{3+}(aq) +3e- -> Co(s)}$?

If I add up these two half-equations to get the desired half-equation, I get $E^\circ = \pu{+1.54 V}$. But the correct answer is $\pu{+ 0.42 V}$!

Am I missing something?

blessing - Why is the wording of the beracha upon shaking the arba minim only on lulav?

The beracha upon shaking the arba minim is 'על נטילת לולב'? Why is the focus on the lulav specifically rather than a more general blessing like 'על נטילת ארבעה מינים'?

loanwords - Is one transcription of "Andrew" more standard than another?

I recently looked at the disambiguation page for Andrew on the Japanese Wikipedia, and found that there were several "アンドルー"s, and several "アンドリュー"s.

I couldn't discern any trend that one form tended to be from an earlier time period and the latter was from a later time period, or that one form was from certain languages and the other was from other languages.

Are both forms considered normal transcriptions of "Andrew", or is one form considered more normal than the other?

Answer

Check the top line on Wikipedia:

日本ではしばしば習慣的にアンドリューとも表記されるが、英語での発音は [ˈændruː] であり決して r の後に /j/ を付けて発音されることはない。

"It is frequently habitually written 'andoryuu' in Japan, but as a matter of fact the English has no 'y' sound after the R." So, "andoryuu" is the habit but "andoruu" is supposed to be more accurate. Does it sound right to you?

I notice as well that アンドルー・ロイド・ウェバー has had his name changed to アンドリュー on his Wiki page, so I'm thinking that "andoruu" is sometimes corrected to "andoryuu" by well meaning folks, but someone on Wikipedia is annoyed by this because it doesn't match up to their imaginary perfect representation of IPA in katakana.

medicine - Unconsciousness in Jewish Thought

Yes, that pun was intended.

We know that sleep is 1/60 of death, and dreaming is 1/60 of prophecy (Brachos 57b). This is because it's a partial death, in which a piece of the Neshamah leaves the body - just enough to be noticeable, but not too much. Likewise, the Neshamah gets a glimpse of the future during its out of body experience, which we see as dreams (Maharsha).

What happens when one goes into a coma? The mind is totally unconscious; there are no dreams in a coma. Furthermore, it's not at all what Hollywood would have you believe: one does not wake up from a coma feeling refreshed. Does this mean that the Neshamah is trapped inside the body like it is when a person is awake? Does a larger portion, or all of, the Neshamah leave the body, and it's too much to be refreshed or dream?

Answer

After doing a bit of looking into the topic, I think I may have found some sources to answer this question. I'll wait until others comment, to hear what they think, before I select this as the correct answer.

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As discussed in this Chabad article and this question, there are five levels of the soul: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chaya, and yechidah. As mentioned in both of those sources, the neshamah refers to the thinking part of a person, the ruach is the emotional part of a person, and the nefesh is the life force and desires of a person.

When we drift off into the subconscious, we still are able to think on some level. It's for this reason that we're able to interpret the 1/60 of prophecy contained in dreams. This is because not all of the neshamah has left the body - 59/60 of it remains. But in the unconscious state, the brain focuses its energies on the basic needs in order to keep the body alive. There is no thinking done whatsoever. It's like the entire neshamah has left and no thinking is occurring, in order to leave the nefesh to keep the body alive.

Another proof can be brought from Bava Basra 10a:

Yosef the son of R' Yehoshua had been ill and fell into a trance. His father asked him: "What did you see?" He replied, "I saw a world upside down, the upper below and the lower above." He said to him, "You saw a well regulated world."

From the fact that he saw a higher level of Olam HaEmes than one sees in dreams, which reflect but 1/60 of what the neshamah normally sees, it's quite possible that more of his neshamah went up to Shamayim, and thus he was able to bring back a clearer picture.

TL;DR: If I am correct, the entire neshamah leaves the body, and one is all but dead in the unconscious state.