Thanks to Talmida for the pointer to Speculative Grammarian, which I think is the best online linguistics magazine ever. My favourite article so far: “The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh“.
I couldn’t resist this challenge on a mailing list I subscribe to. As someone pointed out there, a haiku should be about nature or seasons, otherwise it’s a senryu.
אֲסַפֵּר לִבְנִי
עַל יְצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם
בְּחוֹדֶשׁ אָבִיב
פָּך שֶׁמֶן אֶחָד
נָתַן אוֹרוֹ בְּחוֹרֶף
לִשְׁמוֹנָה יָמִים
שֶׁבַע הֲקָפוֹת
עֲרָבוֹת בְּעוֹז חוֹבְטִים
גֶּשֶׁם לִבְרָכָה
If I was capable, I would translate this into English. I’ve tried many times to translate Agnon, but I just can’t capture it.
השמים היו טהורים והארץ היתה שקטה וכל הרחובות היו נקיים, ורוח חדשה היתה מפרפרת בחללו של
עולם. ואני תינוק כבן ארבע הייתי ומלובש הייתי בגדי מועד, ואיש אחד מקרובי הוליכני אצל אבי
ואצל זקני לבית התפילה, ובית התפילה היה מלא עטופי טליתות ועטרות כסף בראשיהם ובגדיהם בגדי
לבן ובידיהם ספרים, ונרות הרבה תקועים בתיבות ארוכות של חול, ואור מופלא עם ריח טוב יוצא
מן הנרות. ואיש זקן עומד מוטה לפני התיבה וטליתו יורדת עד למטה מלבו וקולות ערבים ומתוקים
יוצאים מטליתו. ואני עומד בחלון בית התפילה מרעיד ומשתומם על הקולות הערבים ועל עטרות הכסף
ועל האור המופלא ועל ריח הדבש היוצא מן הנרות נרות השעוה. ודומה היה לי שהארץ שהלכתי עליה
והרחובות שעברתי בהם וכל העולם כולו אינם אלא פרוזדור לבית זה. עדיין לא הייתי יודע להגות
במושגים עיוניים ואת המושג הדרת קודש לא הכרתי. אבל אין ספק בלבי שבאותה שעה הרגשתי בקדושת
המקום ובקדושת היום ובקדושת האנשים העומדים בבית ה’ בתפילה ובניגונים. ואף על פי שעד לאותה
השעה לא ראיתי דבר כזה לא עלה על דעתי שיש הפסק לדבר. וכך הייתי עומד ומביט על הבית ועל
האנשים שעמדו בבית, ולא הבחנתי בין אדם לאדם, שכולם כאחד עם כל הבית כולו דומים היו
עלי כחטיבה אחת. ושמחה גדולה היתה בלבי ולבי נדבק באהבה לבית זה ולאנשים אלו ולניגונים
אלו. על יד על יד פסקו הניגונים, ועדיין בת קול היתה מנהמת עד שפסקה אף היא. נתקמטה
נפשי פתאום וגעיתי בבכייה גדולה. אבי וזקני נתחלחלו ושאר כל העם עמדו עלי לפייסני. ואני
דמעותי מתגלגלות והולכות מתוך הבכייה. אלו לאלו שואלים, מי גרם לתינוק שיבכה? ואלו לאלו
משיבים, מי יודע.
עתה אספר מי גרם לי שאבכה. אותה שעה שנפסקה התפילה נפסקה פתאום אותה חטיבה נאה. מקצת מן
האנשים הורידו טליתותיהם מעל ראשיהם ומקצתם התחילו מסיחים זה עם זה. אותם שאהבתי נדבקה
בהם החליפו פניהם פתאום והשחיתו את דמותם הנאה ואת דמות הבית ודמות היום. ועל זה היה דוה לבי ועל זה געיתי בבכייה.
כמה שנים יצאו ועדיין אותה השתוממות מופקדת בלבי. וכשם שהיא מופקדת בלבי כך שמור בלבי
אותו הצער. וכל שנה ושנה ביום הכיפורים כשאני רואה אנשים מישראל “כולם צנים לובן מוצעפים,
לאדרך בשרפים עפים”, מחליפים פנים של חילוי בפנים של חולין נפשי מתקמטת כבאותו היום.
S. Y. Agnon, Introduction to “Days of Awe”
I realized during Rosh Hashana services last week that Aviad doesn’t know half as much as I had assumed that he did about the structure of the Mahzor. The middle of the silent Amida wasn’t a very helpful time to realize this, but I gave him a whispered overview of Malchuyot Zichronot and Shofarot before the repetition while resolving to do the job properly in the time remaining before his Bar Mitzvah.
So … I have been trying to think up a lesson plan, and had the idea of approaching it as a system of cycles, something like this:
I don’t know if this approach would work for everybody, but I’m sure it would have worked for me when I was a kid, and I suspect it will work for Aviad too.
For those using the RSS feed, I have been fiddling with the settings, and the most notable result seems to be that the URI has changed from http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/MountainSmog.xml to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/mountainsmog.xml. Apologies if this has inconvenienced anybody.
Hat-tip to Avraham Bronstein for the link to “How is this year different from all other years?” Sample quotation:
This year 5765 is the only year in all of history whose “keviut” (year-type determination) involves dechiyyat BeTU-TaKPaT at the end of the year, and whose Pesach falls on April 24.
The “exercise for the reader” in section M.7 has been bothering me: “There is one other situation [apart from Shushan Purim on Shabbat] where the same haftara can be read on two consecutive Shabbatot. Figure out what it is.” The only answer I can think of is rather contrived: an ethnically mixed congregation does Sephardi and Ashkenazi readings on alternate weeks, and so reads “ועמי תלואים למשובתי” for Parshat Vayyetze on a Sephardi week, and then reads it again for Parshat Vayyishlah on Ashkenazi week.
In the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashana, Hagar and Ishmael have been sent off into the desert and have run out of water. Hagar sits crying, out of sight of her son so as not to see him die. She has given up hope.
At this point, just as in the story of the Akeda in the reading for the next day (why does nobody ever seem to make anything of the parallels between the two stories? A topic for another drash), the deus ex machina appears and saves their lives.
וַיִּפְקַח אֱלֹהִים אֶת עֵינֶיהָ וַתֵּרֶא בְּאֵר מָיִם וַתֵּלֶךְ וַתְּמַלֵּא אֶת הַחֵמֶת מַיִם וַתַּשְׁקְ אֶת הַנָּעַר
And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.
What exactly happened with this well? The commentaries are mostly silent, but I see 3 possibilities.
I had a similar eyeopener this week. I discovered, after 15 years of thinking it was beyond my abilities, that by acting according to a few simple principles I can increase the happiness of the person whose happiness is most important to me out of all proportion to the effort required. What a New Year’s present for us both!
Every terrorist attack brings its own horrid variations on the same old tragedy.
On the news tonight we heard someone describe how he had been sitting next to the suicide bomber for part of the bus journey until he had given up his seat to a woman and moved to the back of the bus. With his voice shaking, he described how he had seen the same woman lying dead in the bus, and how hard it was to come to terms with the fact that if he hadn’t given her his seat she wouldn’t have been sitting right next to the explosion.
As far as I know (and I would love to be corrected) Ellul is the only Hebrew month which has Midrash on its name. The one that everybody remembers is the notarikon
אני לדודי ודודי לי
from Song of Songs 6, 3, but there are several more. That one itself is part of a set of three verses with an acrostic אלול, and the other two are Deuteronomy 30, 6:
ומל יהוה אלהיך את לבבך ואת לבב זרעך
and Esther 9,22:
משלח מנות איש לרעהו ומתנות לאבינים
so the three verses together point us to תפילה, תשובה וצדקהת: prayer, repentance and charity, and those lead us to redemption in Isaiah 59, 20:
ובא לציון גואל ולשבי פשע ביעקב.
Why do I mention all this? Not because I’ve decided to turn this into a preachy blog, nor even because I was looking for a context where I could use the word “hermeneutics” without seeming too contrived, but because I was musing about different kinds of exegesis. Of the four streams that make up the Pardes – Peshat, Remez, Drash and Sod – these are firmly in the category of Remez. That can sometimes appear as superficial wordplay (though always a lot of fun for a crossword addict like myself), and one could ask, if this is valid Midrash, why aren’t Bible Codes valid Midrash too?
I think the answer is that we judge Midrash not by how it’s done, but by how edifying the results are. Bible codes, depending on where you find them, seem to reduce the Torah either to the level of Nostradamus or to an immensely boring directory of scholars.
There are many places in the Midrash where an overenthusiastic darshan, often Rabbi Meir, gets rapped on the knuckles by his colleagues for letting himself reach a politically incorrect conclusion. For example, Shir Hashirim Rabba on Song of Songs 2, 4:
ר’ מאיר אומר אמרה כנסת ישראל הושלט בי יצר הרע כיין ואמרתי לעגל אלה אלהיך ישראל … אמר לו ר’ יהודה דייך מאיר אין דורשין שיר השירים לגנאי אלא לשבח שלא ניתן שיר השירים אלא לשבחן של ישראל.
Rabbi Meir interpreted the phrase “he led me to the house of wine” as if the community of Israel were saying “the evil inclination overpowered me like wine and I worshipped the Golden Calf as the God of Israel.” Rabbi Judah said to him “Hold it right there, Meir! We don’t interpret the Song of Songs as blame, only as praise, since the Song of Songs was only given in praise of Israel.”
Why do all translations of Midrash into English come out sounding so lame?
Reading some of the controversy surrounding recent feature-set decisions by the Firefox team, I can’t help wondering whether they are falling into the 80/20 fallacy.
Welcome Naomi Chana to my sidebar. Baraita is the first blog I’ve come across apart from this one with an Aramaic title, and it’s totally compulsive reading.
Update: some more details of the preparation added.
We aren’t an all-the-year-round Hamin eating family, but the period during the summer when we don’t eat Hamin (otherwise known as cholent) gets shorter every year, and this year it seems to be over already.
Like everybody else, I, and I alone, know the One True Way to prepare Hamin, and it’s like this:
Fry the meat briefly to seal it (there is probably a technical term for this which I don’t know). It should have enough fat that you don’t need any added oil. Take off the heat and add some combination of salt, pepper, cummin, cinnamon, hot chilli powder, cloves, cardamons, ginger, coriander, paprika, turmeric or whatever else you feel like. Mix well. Add everything else. Cover with water. Bring to the boil and put on a hotplate until tomorrow. Serve with arak or single malt Scotch.
Teen girl to teen boy: “I can’t stay later than 12: my parents told me to be home by 10.”
Aviad will be bar mitzvah next February and we have been working together on learning his Torah portion, Parshat Teruma (Exodus 25,1 – 27,19). One of the first questions to come up was, what exactly is the “blue” (תכלת) mentioned in chapter 25 verse 4, which is also used for making Tzitzit — except that it isn’t, and hasn’t been for over 1,000 years, because nobody knows the correct dye to use.
Or
so
I
thought.
With a little googling we discovered the website of P’til Tekhelet, and today we went on a tour of the factory. I understand from the articles on the website that the identification of the murex with tekhelet is still controversial, but I’m convinced. From now on, I will be wearing my blue thread with pride and joy. I’m not a huge Zionist, but it is a huge privilege to be living in a Jewish country at a time and place where something like this that was thought lost for ever has been rediscovered.
I’ve added some more of my favourite blogs to the sidebar. Since I’ve been commenting on other people’s blogs recently, it seems only fair to enable comments here as well. Please feel free to say hello!
The latest hot topic in Mozilla blog-land is God.
It started when Gerv went into hospital with appendicitis, and asked “Those Christians among you, please pray that he would trust continually in Christ as his strength and as his Creator!”.
I and others of Gerv’s friends and colleagues added our prayers to the comments on his blog, in spite of not being Christians, and, ברוך רופא חולים, Gerv was soon back minus his appendix, saying:
…thank you to all of you who commented wishing me the best. I must first stress that the sentiment is very much appreciated in all cases…However, I’m afraid I’d have to respectfully disagree with a couple of the theological statements. It may offend people to say it, but it’s true – anyone praying who wasn’t praying to the one true God of the Bible was wasting their time.
Now this really put the cat among the pigeons. Commenters had a field day, and jesus_x and aebrahim wrote blog entries of their own, which also inspired lively rounds of comments.
It’s hard for me to tell whether Gerv’s views are representative of Christianity in general. The suggestion that Muslims and Jews are “worshipping and relating to a false image of God – an idol” is not what I have heard from the Christians I have met and talked to at ecumenical conferences and elsewhere, and not what I read in Lumen Gentium.
In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues.
But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohamedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.
Then there is the passage from C. S. Lewis’ “The Last Battle” which I alluded to in one of my own comments:
“If any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it now, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash the deed is accepted.
That passage, like many others in the Narnia books which I read and reread in my formative years, was a big influence on my own religious thinking.
I recently discovered a very cool site, Seforim Online. Downloads are a little slow, but they have lots of excellent stuff. I’ve been reading and enjoying some of Abraham Ibn Ezra‘s poems. Look at this little gem:
אִלּוּ לְפִי אֵידִי דְּמָעַי יִזְלוּן
לֹא דָרְכָה רֶגֶל אֱנוֹשׁ יַבֶּשֶׁת,
אַךְ לֹא לְמֵי נֹח לְבַד כֹּרַת בְּרִית,
כִּי גַם לְדִמְעִי נִרְאֲתָה הַקֶּשֶׁת.
Or this question and answer, each one a perfect palindrome that reads more naturally than any palindrome I have seen in any language
אבי אל חי שמך למה מלך משיח לא יבא?
דעו מאביכם כי לא בוש אבוש, שוב אשוב אליכם כי בא מועד.
A few pictures here.
I am still in shock from this article, maybe because I have never accepted the concept of the “Academy of the Hebrew language” as dictators of what is or isn’t correct Hebrew. And my confidence is hardly increased when that last link doesn’t work for me and I have to root out the original article from Google cache.
However, my chief astonishment comes from the confident statement that Tsere and Segol are pronounced the same. It just goes to show that native speakers of a language are simply unaware of many of the distinctions that they themselves make when speaking it. Now I come to think of it, I was never aware that the two “l”s in “little” are prononounced differently in English, until someone pointed it out to me.