Al Ha veDa על הא ודא

Jim Davila was wondering whether the following quotation from Anglican minister Martin Palmer was really Talmudic:

“The Talmud says that the angels went to God and said, ‘You just created this wonderful world and now you’ve created these human beings who will only go and mess it up. Are you start staring mad?’ And God says, ‘I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m doing.’ And then the earth spoke, and the earth was afraid. And the earth said, ‘These creatures, they will only rebel against me and harm me.’ And God answers, ‘I promise you that they will never be allowed to destroy you.’”

I think that Iyov is right that this is derived at some distance from Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 38b or its parallels:

אמר רב יהודה א”ר בשעה שבקש הקב”ה לבראות את האדם ברא כת אחת של מלאכי השרת אמר להם רצונכם נעשה אדם בצלמנו אמרו לפניו רבש”ע מה מעשיו אמר להן כך וכך מעשיו אמרו לפניו רבש”ע (תהילים ח) מה אנוש כי תזכרנו ובן אדם כי תפקדנו הושיט אצבעו קטנה ביניהן ושרפם וכן כת שניה כת שלישית אמרו לפניו רבש”ע ראשונים שאמרו לפניך מה הועילו כל העולם כולו שלך הוא כל מה שאתה רוצה לעשות בעולמך עשה כיון שהגיע לאנשי דור המבול ואנשי דור הפלגה שמעשיהן מקולקלין אמרו לפניו רבש”ע לא יפה אמרו ראשונים לפניך אמר להן (ישעיהו מו) ועד זקנה אני הוא ועד שיבה אני אסבול וגו’

Rab Judah said in Rab’s name: When the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to create man, He [first] created a company of ministering angels and said to them: "Is it your desire that we make a man in our image?"

They answered: "Sovereign of the Universe, what will be his deeds?"

"Such and such will be his deeds," He replied.

Thereupon they exclaimed: "Sovereign of the Universe, What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou thinkest of him?" [Psalm 8:5]

Thereupon He stretched out His little finger among them and consumed them with fire. The same thing happened with a second company.

The third company said to Him: "Sovereign of the Universe, what did it avail the former [angels] that they spoke to Thee [as they did]? The whole world is Thine, and whatsoever that Thou wishest to do therein, do it."

When He came to the men of the Age of the flood and of the division [of tongues] whose deeds were corrupt, they said to Him: "Lord of the Universe, did not the first [company of angels] speak aright?"

"Even to old age I am the same, and even to hoar hairs will I carry," [Isa. 46:4] He retorted.

However, the classic Rabbinic source for environmentalism is Ecclesiastes Rabbah on 7:13:

בשעה שברא הקב”ה את אדם הראשון נטלו והחזירו על כל אילני גן עדן ואמר לו ראה מעשי כמה נאים ומשובחין הן וכל מה שבראתי בשבילך בראתי, תן דעתך שלא תקלקל ותחריב את עולמי, שאם קלקלת אין מי שיתקן אחריך

When the Holy One, Blessed be He, made the first human, he led him past every tree in the Garden of Eden, saying, “Look at what I have made! See how beautiful and excellent they are! Everything that I created I created for you; take care not to damage or destroy my world, because if you damage it there is nobody else who can repair it after you.”

My youngest daughter has been a vegetarian for some months now, and her brother and sisters have not always been, let’s say, as supportive as they might be.

My son is sure that she will never make it through the annual Independence Day barbecue at my sister-in-law’s without cracking and eating meat, so they made a bet: if she eats any meat she will have to eat some of every kind of meat there (and if that sounds like not such a big deal, you don’t know my sister-in-law); and if she doesn’t eat any meat, he will be vegetarian for a week.

So I said, “That sounds like a good bet.”

Drum roll…

Wait for it…

“Do you want me to hold the steaks?”

Via Jim Davila, a fascinating account of two readings of the name on a seal discovered in the Temple Mount excavations in Jerusalem. There’s a large image of the seal here.

Eilat Mazar’s original reading תמח was based on reading the name from the seal itself:

𐤕𐤌𐤇

The revised reading שלמת takes into account that one should read the name from the seal impression. Let’s try to simulate that by flipping the image:

𐤔𐤋𐤌𐤕

See also here.

As before, to see the text below the images correctly, you will need a font that supports “Phoenician” and a browser that supports Unicode 5.0.

I really didn’t think that Yehuda Halevi was within my range as a translator, but this came out quite well:

יְפֵה נוֹף מְשׂוֹשׂ תֵּבֵל קִרְיָה לְמֶלֶךְ רָב.
לָךְ נִכְסְפָה נַפְשִׁי מִפַּאֲתֵי מַעְרָב!
הֲמוֹן רַחֲמַי נִכְמָר כִּי אֶזְכְּרָה קֶדֶם,
כְּבוֹדֵךְ אֲשֶׁר גָּלָה וְנָוֵךְ אֲשֶׁר חָרָב.
וּמִי יִתְּנֵנִי עַל כַּנְפֵי נְשָׁרִים, עַד
אֲרַוֶּה בְדִמְעָתִי עֲפָרֵך וְיִתְעָרָב!
דְּרַשְׁתִּיךְ, וְאִם מַלְכֵּךְ אֵין בָּךְ וְאִם בִּמְקוֹם
צֳרִי גִּלְעֲדֵך – נָחָשׁ שָׂרָף וְגַם עַקְרָב.
הֲלֹא אֶת-אֲבָנַיִךְ אֲחוֹנֵן וְאֶשָּׁקֵם
וְטַעַם רְגָבַיִךְ לְפִי מִדְּבַשׁ יֶעְרָב!

Fair hill-top, world’s rejoicing, city of the Mighty King,
I long for you with all my soul from distant Western lands!
It grieves me to remember how you were in days of old:
Your glory, now in exile, and your temple which is ruined.
Let me fly on wings of eagles till I come to you and water
Your dry dust, and mix it with my tears!
How I searched for you! Even though you have no king,
And scorpions and snakes instead of balm of Gilead,
I will stroke your stones and kiss them, and your earth
Will be sweeter than the taste of honey in my mouth!

From Talmida (and I’m sorry if it looks as if I cribbed a lot of the entries from her. There are reasons why we’re friends, you know):

8 interests in my life

• Indonesian music
• Biblical interpretation
• Languages and scripts
• Cryptic crosswords
• Spirituality
• Mountains
• Theatre
• Food and drink

8 things to do before I die

• Visit the Far East
• Get a part in a movie
• Give up smoking
• Take a skin-diving course
• Learn sofrut
• Read (at least some of) the Mahābhārata in the original
• See the Canadian Rockies
• Learn blues piano

8 books I read recently

This one is going to be a bit dull, because I have this habit of taking an author and working through him or her, especially when I’m unwell. Comfort reading.

• G K Chesterton The Innocence of Father Brown
• G K Chesterton The Wisdom of Father Brown
• G K Chesterton The Incredulity of Father Brown
• G K Chesterton The Secret of Father Brown
• G K Chesterton The Scandal of Father Brown
• G K Chesterton The Club of Queer Trades
• James Kugel How to Read the Bible (working my way gradually through this one)
• Joan Peters From Time Immemorial

8 films that mean something to me

• Princess Bride
• Chariots of Fire
• Pulp Fiction
• Brother Sun, Sister Moon
• The Parent Trap (1998 version)
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Wings of Desire
• Dead Poets Society

8 songs that mean something to me

…though frankly I think a more accurate rating would have been “Sad Geek”.

Ever since support for bidirectional languages was implemented in Mozilla by me and my colleagues at IBM. and through all the improvements and bug-fixes that have been made since, one thing that we never got quite right was text with diacritics, aka nikkud, aka harakat, especially in justified text. This was a real obstacle in the way of my recommending Mozilla or Firefox to my friends, many of whom heavily use sites like Mechon Mamre that feature vocalized Hebrew.

I am happy to say that this is now fixed in trunk builds and the beta of Firefox 3 that will appear RSN. Here are some screenshots of a chapter from Mechon Mamre. Since they are in Hebrew, the “before” shots are on the right, and the “after” shots on the left. Click on the images to see full-size versions.

Linux

OSX

Windows

I’m very excited to read on PaleoJudaica that the Siloam Inscription is likely to be returned to Israel for at least a limited period. There is a translation and images of the text at the English Wikipedia article, a transcription in both Ancient and Modern Hebrew characters from the Jewish Encyclopedia and a transcription and translation into Modern Hebrew at the Hebrew Wikipedia article, but as far as I know the original text is not available anywhere online in text format. Here it is:

𐤄𐤍𐤒𐤁𐤄𐤟𐤅𐤆𐤄𐤟𐤄𐤉𐤄𐤟𐤃𐤁𐤓𐤟𐤄𐤍𐤒𐤁𐤄𐤟𐤁𐤏𐤅𐤃
𐤄𐤂𐤓𐤆𐤍𐤟𐤀𐤔𐤟𐤀𐤋𐤟𐤓𐤏𐤅𐤟𐤅𐤁𐤏𐤅𐤃𐤟𐤔𐤋𐤔𐤟𐤀𐤌𐤕𐤟𐤋𐤄𐤍	𐤏𐤟𐤒𐤋𐤟𐤀𐤔𐤟𐤒
𐤀𐤟𐤀𐤋𐤟𐤓𐤏𐤅𐤟𐤊𐤉𐤟𐤄𐤉𐤕𐤟𐤆𐤃𐤄𐤟𐤁𐤑𐤓𐤟𐤌𐤉𐤌𐤍	𐤅𐤋𐤟𐤅𐤁𐤉𐤌𐤟𐤄
𐤍𐤒𐤁𐤄𐤟𐤄𐤊𐤅𐤟𐤄𐤇𐤑𐤁𐤌𐤟𐤀𐤔𐤟𐤋𐤒𐤓𐤕𐤟𐤓𐤏𐤅𐤟𐤂𐤓𐤆𐤍𐤟𐤏𐤋	𐤓𐤂𐤍𐤟𐤅𐤉𐤋𐤊𐤅
𐤄𐤌𐤉𐤌𐤟𐤌𐤍𐤟𐤄𐤌𐤅𐤑𐤀𐤟𐤀𐤋𐤟𐤄𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤄𐤟𐤁𐤌𐤀𐤕𐤉	𐤋𐤐𐤟𐤀𐤌𐤄𐤟𐤅𐤌
𐤕𐤟𐤀𐤌𐤄𐤟𐤄𐤉𐤄𐤟𐤂𐤁𐤄𐤟𐤄𐤑𐤓𐤟𐤏𐤋𐤟𐤓𐤀𐤔𐤟𐤄𐤇𐤑𐤁

You will need a font that supports “Phoenician” and a browser that supports Unicode 5.0 to see the text correctly

This one is probably also pretty easy, but it should require a little more leg work at least.

What tractate of the Mishna is this:

U+24CA

I’ve been enjoying the Kri and Ketiv games at Balashon, and also the pun quizzes at ADDeRabbi, so here’s one of my own.

Which biblical book is this:

((ק))

In my email inbox this morning:

Dear Al Ha veDa

A gift Crossword subscription has been purchased for you.

Please visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/crossword to activate your subscription

Regards

Guardian Unlimited

This clearly has some connection to the fact that next Monday is my birthday, and this is absolutely and totally the best birthday present I could have wished for (though strong self-discipline will be called for if I’m going to get any work done if I have hundreds of Guardian crosswords available every time I sit down at the computer). The frustrating part is that it doesn’t name the generous person who gave me this present!!@#$!

I can narrow it down quite a lot: it has to be someone who knows that the Guardian Crossword, especially Araucaria, is one of the things I most miss about not living in the UK; it has to be someone who knows my email address; and it has to be someone who loves me enough to splash out on a birthday present for me.

I know who I think it was, and that person reads my blog, so if it was you, thank you so much!

I was walking home the other day when a car passed me with a bumper sticker like this: . He pulled in and parked ahead of me so I waited for him to get out and said politely צַפְרָא טָבָא, and told him that I liked the sticker, and where could I get one? He immediately pulled two more out of the car and presented them to me.

We spoke for a few minutes, and it turns out that he is a native Aramaic speaker, and that the stickers are put out by an organization that has just opened an office in the centre of Jerusalem (in Ben Yehuda Street, appropriately enough), and they are planning to start holding classes in spoken Aramaic.

My only question is, why doesn’t it say אנא מליל ארמיא?

From the International Herald Tribune (hat-tip: Lisa Goldman):

Britain’s biggest journalists’ union, The National Union of Journalists, has criticized Israel’s “military adventures” and voted narrowly in favor of a boycott of Israeli goods…The timing of the ballot was particularly delicate since a BBC journalist, Alan Johnston, has been held for more than a month in Gaza, making the boycott call seem one-sided.

No shit.

… in a drama mini-series on Israel’s commercial TV channel:

What browser are you using? Why don’t you use Firefox? I can download it for you in a second.

I can’t imagine hearing a reference like that on prime-time television even a year ago. I’m not sure exactly when Firefox became part of the mainstream, but I noticed it first in the reviews of Firefox 2 last autumn. The point of view of most of the articles was a comparison between IE7 and FF2 on a level playing field, and I felt that this was our real achievement. It doesn’t really matter which one got the higher rating in any particular review, or what percentage of users Firefox has reached, but some time in the last twelve months we achieved a shift in perception and stopped being a niche browser.

Things I thought about during the Megilla reading this year, in no particular order. I’m not saying I thought of all this actually during the reading, some of it is expansions of the original ideas that are coming to me as I write it down

I’m not sure if this counts as a meme. RenReb did a post with this subject last year, and Dov Bear picked it up and repeated his post this year. ADDeRabbi had a good one too which I just saw because bloglines resyndicated it.

• Ancient Persians had really silly names. Sha`ashgaz. Karshena. Hharvona. Apart from Mordechai and Esther, which are Babylonian, the only sensible name in the whole book is Haman. Actually, Sha`ashgaz would be a rather cool name for a cat. Especially a Persian cat.
• How did Haman come to fall on Esther’s couch? Was he prostrating himself to her (which would be a nice dramatic irony considering that the driving motive behind most of the plot is that Mordechai refused to prostrate himself to Haman) or is it a slapstick thing, that he got up to beg for mercy after one too many cups of wine and just fell over?
  Either way, the word “fall” is certainly dramatic irony (look at verse 6:13).
• OK, so the chiastic structure of the whole book is really obvious. But what about the little chiasmi (if that is the right word)? For example, in 5:10 Haman summons his friends and his wife, and in 5:14 his wife and his friends answer him. In 6:13 he tells his wife and his friends what happened, and his wise men and his wife answer him.
• I love the way Algerians pronounce a gimmel without dagesh, e.g. in אֲגָגִי.
• What were the סְפָרִים in which they sent out the proclamations? Clay tablets?
• I wonder if the Persian words in the Megilla are attested in old Persian texts. If they are, I could blog about it and put them in in Unicode Persian cuneiform and nobody without the right geeky fonts could read them. Like this: 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 (that’s Ahasuerus’ name, assuming that Ahasuerus is Xerxes).

We are often warned against over-generalization, and on mailing lists and web fora you can almost guarantee that any statement about “all” p or “the only” p, whether p is members of some ethnic group, documents in some language, or whatever, will provoke angry responses and obscure counter examples. I’ve been on both sides of this process myself, most recently here.

I just saw a sentence on the www-style mailing list which made me blink:

many authors wouldn’t bother writing web pages if they weren’t finite.

I’d love to meet the authors who would bother writing infinite web pages, though I suspect they might have trouble fitting me into their busy schedule.

The only explanation I can think of is that the author had taken the lesson “don’t overgeneralize” a little bit too much to heart.

Ari Kinsberg saw a poster in Jerusalem with a picture of a bottle of Johnny Walker and the caption יְהוֹשֻׁ֙עַ֙, i.e. “Joshua” in Hebrew with cantillation.

He says:

I’m willing to bet that this is the only instance of [Hebrew with cantillation] in Israeli advertising.

I wonder just how much he is willing to bet, and would he up the stakes for an instance of Hebrew with cantillation in a phrase which isn’t even a Biblical quotation?

Update: a commenter on Ari’s blog notes that the human rights pressure group B’Tselem also use cantillation in their logo. From a marketing point of view I think I understand why they do this: they are trying to make the point, on a subliminal level, that the values that they advocate are Jewish values rooted in the Torah. The bakery I linked to originally is probably aiming for something slightly different: using a Biblical style to suggest old-time, pre-industrial, healthy values. Ari’s original poster had me puzzled for a while, but I think I’ve got it: since apparently it’s advertising a bar in Ben Sira Street, maybe they chose the name of the bar as a reference to Joshua Ben Sira, and using cantillation is a way of saying “Look! We are a bar named after an extracanonical biblical book”. (Naming your place of business as an oblique reference to your street address is not unusual in Israel: another example is Ginzberg in Ahad Ha`am Street, Tel Aviv).

Ah, memes. The staple of the blogger with nothing to say, or not enough time to say it. This is from Something Something via Slightly Mad.

Things I’ve done are bold. Comments in italics.

1. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
2. Swam with wild dolphins
3. Climbed a mountain
4. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
5. Been inside the Great Pyramid
6. Held a tarantula
7. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
8. Said “I love you” and meant it
9. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse of the moon.
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas if driving through it
    and not stopping counts
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
99. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
100. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
101. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
102. Had plastic surgery
103. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
104. Wrote articles for a large publication
105. Lost over 100 pounds
106. Held someone while they were having a flashback
107. Piloted an airplane
108. Touched a stingray
109. Broken someone’s heart
110. Helped an animal give birth
111. Won money on a T.V. game show
112. Broken a bone
113. Gone on an African photo safari
114. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
115. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
116. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
117. Ridden a horse
118. Had major surgery
119. Had a snake as a pet
120. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
121. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
122. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
123. Visited all 7 continents
124. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
125. Eaten kangaroo meat
126. Eaten sushi
127. Had your picture in the newspaper
128. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
129. Gone back to school
130. Parasailed
131. Touched a cockroach
132. Eaten fried green tomatoes
133. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
134. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
135. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
136. Skipped all your school reunions
137. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
138. Been elected to public office
139. Written your own computer language
140. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
141. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
142. Built your own PC from parts
143. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
144. Had a booth at a street fair
145. Dyed your hair
146. Been a DJ
147. Shaved your head
148. Caused a car accident
149. Saved someone’s life

Danya posted about baking challa. In the interests of Jewish pluralism, here’s my recipe. These quantities make 5 medium-sized or 4 largish challot.

• 1 kg white flour
• 1 tbsp salt
• 3 or 4 threads of saffron
• 25 g yeast
• 1 tsp honey
• About 500 cc. lukewarm water
• 3 eggs, beaten
• sesame seeds and/or poppy seeds.

Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour a little boiling water over the saffron, stir well and leave for a few minutes.
Stir the yeast and honey together until the yeast dissolves.
Add the lukewarm water, the saffron, and the eggs to the yeast (keeping back about 1/4 of an egg for glazing) and pour into the flour. (This is best done in two stages, otherwise you leave behind a residue of yeast). The total amount of liquid should be about 625 cc for 1kg of flour.
Fold the flour over the liquid and leave it for about 20 minutes until it starts bubbling up.
Stir the liquid into the flour and knead well for at least 5 minutes, adding more liquid or flour if necessary. The dough should be slightly sticky.
Cover with a towel and leave to rise for an hour or two.
Knock in the air, and knead it a bit more.
Divide into 4 or 5 balls, divide each one into 3, and braid them together.
Paint with the rest of the beaten egg and scatter sesame or poppy seeds over the top.
Prove for 45-60 minutes.
Bake at 220° C for 30-35 minutes.