Rosetta Disk for long-term language backup

The folks at the Long Now Foundation have unveiled this 3-inch Rosetta Disk. Shown is the back with a "teaser" in eight different languages announcing: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.”

The other side, under a glass sphere, is pure nickel etched with 13,500 pages of linguistic data:

The Rosetta disk is not digital. The pages are analog “human-readable” scans of scripts, text, and diagrams. Among the 13,500 scanned pages are 1,500 different language versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, pronunciation guides and so on. Some of the key indexing meta-data for each language section (such as the standard linguistic code number for that language) are displayed in a machine-readable font (OCRb) so that a smart microscope could guide you through this analog trove.

Our hope is that at least one of the eight headline languages can be recovered in 1,000 years. But even without reading, a person might guess there are small things to see in this disk.

The motivation for the project: long-term backup!

Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep ‘em Safe) we would replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world with built in magnifiers. This project in long term thinking would do two things: it would showcase this new long-term storage technology, and it would give the world a minimal backup of human languages.

I applaud the effort to think long-term about the problem of information (and language) retrieval. I've already had reason to comment here about the rapid decay of electronic data. I'm amused, though, that the text chosen to render in 1,500 languages turned out to be the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1-3. The Rosetta Disk's creators explain that they chose Gen 1-3 "since it was most likely already translated into all languages already." (Actually, they would have found that the New Testament has been translated into even more languages than the Hebrew Bible, since Christian translators tend to make the NT the highest priority in their work.)

Despite their entirely secular, linguistic goals, the Rosetta project thus reproduces part of the most iconic text in Western culture into yet another iconic form, and in the cause of durability, which the Bible by its ancient origins itself symbolizes.

Funeral for Torah Scrolls

Thanks to Kevin Edgecomb for his comment pointing out this article in Arutz Sheva on a series of arson fires in Israel that target synagogue arks and their torah scrolls. Destruction of torah scrolls has elicited outrage and concern, and also a ritual response:

A fire in a Bnei Brak synagogue on Wednesday afternoon caused severe damage to the Holy Ark and burned four Torah scrolls beyond repair.

... The rabbis decided that the traditional mourning procession and burial ceremony for the burnt Torah scrolls will be held Friday. The procession will leave the targeted synagogue, HaRishonim, in the morning and traverse the streets of Bnei Brak until reaching the municipal cemetery, where the scrolls will be interred.

Funerals for scriptures are not unique to Jewish tradition: Sikhs and some Muslims have similar rites, and popular Christian concern to bury worn-out Bibles points in the same direction. Kristina Myrvold of the University of Lund is editing a collection of essays on the ritual disposal of scriptures in various traditions. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Torah Scroll at Samaritan Passover

Video of this year's Passover celebration by the Samaritans shows the carrying and display of the Torah scroll, similar to Jewish customs. One difference is that the person holding the scroll is the high priest, an office that fell into disuse in Judaism after 70 CE.



A major difference between Samaritan and Jewish practices that is not displayed here is that the Samaritans read Torah aloud from a codex-bound Pentateuch, rather than from the scroll itself (see Benyamim Tsedaka, “Who are the Samaritans?”).

Song of a Torah Scroll

This video presents the song, "Place Where I Belong," written and performed by Abie Rotenberg, and illustrated with still images. The song's lyrics are notable because they voice the experiences and feelings of a Torah scroll in the first person, from its creation by a scribe in Kiev and regular use there in a "shull" to its eventual resting place in an American museum. The song expresses the sentiment that a museum is not the proper place for a Sefer Torah. It should rather be in regular use in a synagogue.



By its personification of the scroll as the voice of the song, the song expresses poignantly a very common feeling that not only the Torah but all books "live," but only by being read and used. This feeling contributes to their problematic nature as museum displays, which we've commented on before.