One year

It was May 13. 2023 when we moved into the new house. We'd taken ownership a few days earlier, but had waited for the new carpeting before we moved in. Then two months later we moved out for three months while 25% of the house was gutted and rebuilt. Then in February we had the deck built - 21 square meters or 226 square feet, not including the spa, taking up nearly half of the yard. We put in the no-dig garden over summer and in April we dug that out and built raised garden beds, taking up another quarter of the yard. We also installed two heat pumps, replaced all the curtains, changed a lot of the electrics, painted the hallway and updated the kitchen. We've spent so much time working on the house, it's hard to believe we've had anytime to enjoy it. 

And we did it on a shoestring. All up, we've probably spent about NZ$100,000. (The budget was $50,000.) We re-used most of the bathroom fixtures. I dug the holes for the deck posts myself. The spa was bought on eBay for $200 and just needed a new pump, which cost $250. Most of the curtains were on sale and we hung them ourselves. The french door was bought from a recycler. I did much of the painting and the deck staining and built the garden beds. There were only a few indulgences: Rae got a rain shower for the guest bath; I got a shower dome for the en suite. There were a few unexpected expenses: Our sleigh bed frame wouldn't fit in the new bedroom so we ended up buying another (straighter) frame, but even then we got it second-hand. The only new furniture we bought - two dressers, a shoe rack and am outdoor sofa - were all very cheap.

But we love it. We love the new layout, we love going out on the deck, we love getting in the spa, we love sitting in the living room, we love entertaining guests, we love the new pantry. It's a far cry from the dowdy house with the weird layout we looked at just over a year ago. When we found out our offer had been accepted, we were both a little disappointed - we'd bid on several houses that we were much more excited about. But after we put in the carpet and drapes, we could really start to feel the house coming together. And when the renovation was finished, and we got to move into the new master bedroom, it was really exciting. And when the deck was built, and it suddenly had that "indoor/outdoor" feel, we could not have been happier. 

There's still a mountain of things to take care of, but there always will be. Last weekend I took off the back door, which was peeling badly, stripped it and painted it and now it looks great. I also started painting the handrails. Down the side of the house, which was full of weeds last summer, we've started to cover it with cardboard and mulch. The cardboard we collect from the dumpster behind the local shops, and the mulch is available for free.

Before and after of the back door:

Drasha 18 May 2024

 Leviticus 24:19-20 

If any party maims another: what was done shall be done in return—fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

This portion is a call-back to Exodus 21 with its more pedantic, “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.“

A literal reading would appear to be a barbaric form of justice and retribution. Furthermore, it doesn’t distinguish between intentional and accidental damage. If you hit another car and the other driver suffers a fractured rib, should your rib be fractured as well? Who is going to do it? And how does it help the other driver get his car fixed, or get back to work? This parshah appears to be an affront to our modern sensibilities and conceptions of how justice should be administered. However, the sages turned this literal reading on its head.

In a 2016 article in Scientific American, called The Psychology of Disproportionate Punishment researchers found humans are prone to “intergroup bias.” When online participants were shown a video of a crime and asked to deliberate on appropriate punishment, they were generally reasonable and fair. However, when asked to make a split-second decision, the results were dramatically different: If the person was considered an “outsider,” they were subjected to vicious retribution.

The article concluded, “While our slow, thoughtful deliberative side may desire to maintain strong standards of fairness and equality, our more basic, reflexive side may be prone to hostility and aggression to anyone deemed an outsider.” 

So perhaps the Torah isn’t justifying violence so much as demanding restraint and restricting the retribution to be no worse than the crime. Morris J Fish, in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, argued that proportionality is a moral principle of punishment. 

“Eye for an eye” seems to have been borrowed from Babylonian laws. The Code of Hammurabi (circa 1750 BCE) states:

• If a man has destroyed the eye of a man of the gentleman class, they shall destroy his eye .... 
• If he has destroyed the eye of a commoner ... he shall pay one mina of silver. 
• If he has destroyed the eye of a gentleman's slave ... he shall pay half the slave's price.

The Torah introduces two key differences. First, in Babylonian law crimes against one's social betters were punished more severely, whereas the Torah states, “You shall have one standard for strangers and citizens alike.” Second, in the Code of Hammurabi the punishment for theft is death whereas the Torah values human life ahead of personal property.

Regardless of the intent, the Rabbis in the Gemara found “eye for an eye” impossible for practical reasons:

• Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai argues it is impossible to inflict the exact same injury on the perpetrator as that suffered by the victim, with the example of a victim who is partially blinded in one eye.
• Beit Hezekiah notes the process of inflicting injury on the perpetrator may result in a more unjust outcome, using the example of maiming a person causing complications leading to death. 
• Sa‘adia Gaon asked, “If a blind man should blind the eye of a sighted person, what should the punishment be?”

They all agreed the Torah must refer to monetary compensation. Maimonides wrote:

How do we know that the intent of the Torah's statement with regard to the loss of a limb, "an eye for an eye," is financial restitution? That same verse [in Exodus 21] continues "a blow for a blow." And with regard to the penalty for giving a colleague a blow, it is explicitly stated: "When a man strikes his colleague with a stone or a fist…he should pay for his being idled and for his medical expenses." Thus, we learn that the word tachat (תחת) mentioned with regard to a blow indicates the necessity for financial restitution, and so one can conclude that the meaning of the same word with regard to an eye or another limb is also financial restitution.

Ayin tachat ayin, eye for eye. 'תחת' (tachat) literally means “under” but contextually means “in place of.” Consider how it is used in Genesis 22 when Abraham offers the ram as a sacrifice in place of his son Isaac, and again in Genesis 44 when Judah begs Joseph keep him in place of his brother Benjamin.

Lastly, Exodus 21 says, “if a ransom is demanded, the owner may redeem his life by the payment of whatever is demanded.” And Numbers 35 says, “You may not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer.” In other words, kofer, a monetary payment for atonement, can take the place of bodily punishment for any crime except murder, and that exception is only because the Torah places such a high value on human life that there can be no possible compensatory payment.

(I will add that even for murder, the Talmud set such a high bar that they effectively did away with the death penalty, and today all major branches of Judaism reject capital punishment.)  

Rabbi Jonathan Kligler notes, “The Talmud even develops a comprehensive set of standards for compensation, taking into account damages, pain, medical expenses, unemployment, and mental anguish.” However, their standards were a bit funny:

• For damages, the court appraises how much a slave would be worth before and after the injury.
• For pain, the court evaluates how much money a person would be willing to take in order to be made to suffer in the same way.
• For loss of livelihood, the court uses the pay scale for a “watchman of cucumbers.” (When I read that, I thought it must be a joke, but Isaiah 1:8 says “The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field.” Apparently, it was a thing, although "cucumbers" was a generic term for melons.)

It should be noted there is not a single case where punishment involved amputation or mutilation in all Hebrew Scripture. This is not a question of rabbis reinterpreting Torah for a more enlightened age, but hints that the Oral Torah always taught that this was not to be taken literally.

This begs the question, why didn’t the written Torah just say this? Maimonides suggested that had the Torah simply ordered the aggressor to pay damages, this would have actually diminished the value of life. A wealthy man would have thought it sufficient to pay the victim and be done with it. The Torah is teaching that if one person harms another, he should understand how it would feel to have the same done to him, contemplate the profound damage to the quality of life he has caused, beg forgiveness from the injured party, perform Teshuva and ensure a similar act will not be repeated.

Rabbanit Judith Levitan put it similarly: “Perhaps the seemingly harsh language of the Torah is an echo of the victim’s roar of pain. It is a reminder that whatever compensation is provided, money remains an imperfect way of making up for the loss suffered. What is lost – the ability to see, to walk, to feel safe, to trust - can never be fully replaced. The victim’s experience and memory of the violent act can never be fully erased… We need the raw emotion of the written law, tempered with the logical and measured approach of the oral law, to help the victim acknowledge the pain and then contain it.”

So “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” is not a barbaric and outdated form of retribution. In fact, Leviticus (va-yikRA) 19 specifically forbids this: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow [Israelite] as yourself.” Instead, it is a call for empathy and restraint, seeking a way to make the victim whole whilst reminding the perpetrator that this is not possible, and telling us all we should always be mindful about how we treat others.

Dry measurements

I spent last night filling 40-litre bags of mulch (don't ask) which got me to thinking: Why does the metric system use the same volume measurement (litres) for liquids and dry goods, while the US does not? Even worse, why does the US use the same terms for entirely different concepts?

Let's start with the ounce. As a unit of weight, it's 1/16th of a pound. As a unit of volume, it's 1.8 cubic inches. For water, 1 ounce of volume is about one ounce of weight. (And one pint of water weighs about one pound.) So that makes sense for water, but not for other liquids: One ounce of canola oil weighs 0.95 ounces while one ounce of honey weighs 1.48 ounces. To deal with this confusion, "fluid ounce" is supposed to be used for volume and "ounce" for weight, but they are still often used interchangeably.

The US (liquid) gallon is defined as 128 fluid ounces of water, which is 231 cubic inches. However, the US (dry) gallon is defined as 1/8 of a US bushel, which is 268.8 cubic inches. In other words, a dry gallon has a 16% greater volume than a liquid gallon.

"Dry" gallons have become obsolete in the US, but the "dry" pint is still used in supermarkets. 

Teaspoons, tablespoons and cups have the same volume for liquid or dry measures (0.3, 0.9 and 14.4 cubic inches, respectively). That is to say, there are two cups in a "liquid" pint but 2.33 cups in a "dry" pint.

In the metric system, 1 liter is always 100 cubic centimeters, so moving between the two is very straightforward. (30 litres = 0.03 cubic meters, which is roughly 1 cubic foot.)

So I could have described my 40 litre bag as 9 "dry" gallons or 10 "liquid" gallons, but Americans would have looked at me like I was crazy.

The "official" US dry measurements are pint, quart, peck (8 quarts) and bushel (4 pecks, about 1.24 cubic feet). However, there are many other measures, usually for specific commodities:

• sack (cement, 1.15 cubic feet)
  
• dry barrel (4.08 cubic feet)
  
• dry hogshead (sugar, 8.4 cubic feet)
• bale (wool or cotton, 13.5 cubic feet)
• ton (as a measure of volume, about 60 cubic feet)
• cord (wood, 128 cubic feet)

The US liquid measures used to be based on the "minim" which was defined as one drop of water. The dram was 60 minim, the teaspoon was 80 minim, and the tablespoon was 3 teaspoons or 4 drams. Of course, this lead to large variances, depending on the temperature and water quality, so when the US system was standardized in 1893 the values were based on -- I kid you not -- the metric system. So now a drop of water is 0.05 grams in weight and 0.05ml in volume. A teaspoon is 5ml (100 drops of water) and a tablespoon is 15ml. The cup should be 236 6 milliliters but the US rounded up to 240ml. (The UK rounded to 250ml.)

One fluid ounce is defined as 2 fluid tablespoons, which is why I started by saying 1 ounce of water weighs about one ounce -- presumably they started out the same, but since the definition of fluid ounce changed, one ounce of water now weighs 1.04 ounces!

Other liquid measurements include:

• jig or shot (3 fluid tablespoons or 1.5 fluid ounces)
  
• gill (4 fluid ounces or half a cup)
  
• pottle (2 quarts or half a gallon)
• Beer barrel (31 gallons)
• Standard barrel (31.5 gallons)
• Whiskey barrel (40 gallons)
• Oil barrel (42 gallons)
  
• hogshead (2 barrels or 63 gallons)

By the way, the US is only one of three countries that have not adopted the metric system. The other two are Liberia and Myanmar. It isn't for lack of trying, however: In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested a standard kilogram from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States. However, the ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates. The Metric Act of 1866 supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures. In 1893, metric standards were officially adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States, with the definitions of US customary units based on metric units. In 1966, Star Trek started using metric measures (albeit inconsistently). In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act and in 1988 the Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act designated the metric system as "the Preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" and required most federal agencies to use the metric system by the end of 1992. Post-1994 federal law mandates most packaged consumer goods be labeled in both customary and metric units.

On the other hand, TV and screen displays throughout the world are defined in inches. Nobody knows why.

I'll end this where it all started, a UK royal decree in the 13th century: "By consent of the whole Realm the King's Measure was made, so that an English Penny, which is called the Sterling, round without clipping, shall weigh Thirty-two Grains of Wheat dry in the midst of the Ear; Twenty pennies make an Ounce; and Twelve Ounces make a Pound."