Monday, August 30, 2004
I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine
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?
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Aramaic Watch
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.
Firefox 1.0
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.
Monday, August 16, 2004
Some like it hot
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:
- 500g shoulder meat cut into chunks.
- About a cup full of wheat grains.
- 4-8 potatoes, depending on size, peeled and cut into largish pieces.
- 2-3 sweet potatoes, ditto.
- 1 or 2 swedes, ditto (I think that's the English for לפת).Update: it seems it's a turnip, see comments
- 1 head of garlic, whole but with the outer skin removed.
- 1 hot green pepper, either whole or sliced.
- 1 egg per person (raw, in the shell), and a few more in case of unexpected guests.
- 1 kishke.
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.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Overheard in the street
Teen girl to teen boy: "I can't stay later than 12: my parents told me to be home by 10."
Are you bluish? You don't look bluish!
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.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Updates
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!
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