Post-Answerathon Discussion

Question

As we've just finished an awesome Answerathon, I thought a few days ago of initiating a post-contest discussion thread on it. First of all, a huge shkoyach to @Dr.Shmuel for organizing the contest! Second of all, another big shkoyach to everyone who took part and/or showed interest in it.

As for the discussion, I thought it would be nice if we went around and wrote particularly interesting Judaism-based things we learned during the contest period. Maybe a particular answer you liked best or a book you discovered during research, and so forth. And of course, room for suggesting new ideas for potential future contests.

Answer 1

My general intention behind this contest was to test the waters a little bit and see what the community is up to. It is as I had suspected, currently people seem to be less active, especially as regards a contest as compared to previous events. I include myself in that camp. I imagine things will pick up again.

Moving forward, here's an idea for a contest between Adar 1-15: Winner is one who gets the most upvotes, but can only be qualified if sum of PTIJ upvotes do not exceed that of regular answers.

Answer 2

One of the coolest things I discovered during the contest period was something I used for answers that ultimately didn't make the cut, in terms of points. It's the commentary of R' Moshe Askenazi, the student of Shadal, called Ho'il Moshe. I like Shadal's commentary and it's very clear that R' Ashkenazi completely takes after him: Short and to the point, with occasional usages of Persian to understand words... All the books are available on Hebrewbooks.

Another thing that fascinated me was the discovery of the midrash about the death of Yose ben Yoezer and his nephew Yakum Ish Tz'rorot.

As for contest ideas, I haven't got any, right now, but I hope we'll have more in the future. I hope to sponsor one myself, sometime. I hope more people will join in, though I have no idea to help with that...