Hatam Soferet

The bookstall outside my subway stop is selling eight or ten different Barack Obama calendars. I think it's adorable that people are so excited about Obama they want him on a calendar.

I was buying a map of the USA from the stall, so I asked the owner, just for kicks, whether he'd ever seen a George Bush calendar. He gave me this omg-you-are-kidding-right look, and explained carefully that perhaps Bush might appear on a calendar of past presidents, but he didn't think there would be much demand for a calendar with pictures of Bush himself. ::snorts::

I <3 the bookstall guy; if you are getting off the 1 train at 231st St, buy something from him, he's cool.

Talmud which made me chuckle:

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi queried the verse in Proverbs, All the days of the poor are evil* - but surely they have Shabbat and festivals?
Shmuel said pessimistically, Change of diet leads to indigestion...

(Sanhedrin 101a, Proverbs 15:15)

Talmud which made me sad:

(As a small point in a long discussion about something else entirely) The world cannot exist without both males and females; happy is he whose children are male, and woe to he whose children are female.

(Sanhedrin 100b)

Ouch. Way to feel really alienated.

More Talmud which made me chuckle:

Ulla was in Babylon, and he saw dates were on sale. He exclaimed, "A tub of honey for a quarter, and yet the Babylonians don't occupy themselves with Torah study!"

During the night he suffered hideously from overeating, and he exclaimed, "A tub of knives for a quarter, and even so the Babylonians occupy themselves with Torah study!"

(Taanit 9b, and okay he said zuz and not quarter, but I translated for meaning, okay.)

livredor and I spent Shabbat in the centre of Stockholm, borrowing a flat in the city centre for convenience's sake.

And it was really, really nice.

( decadence, gospel choirs, and tube stations )

( daylight and islands )

( immense and startling shul )

( mind-broadening )

( culture, protein, opera, and celestial commentary )

Train conductor: Times Square 42nd St. 2 and 3 trains across the platform. Change here for the 7, A, C, E and shuttle to Grand Central. Vote Obama.

What's a pirate's favourite...

...Bible name? ARRRRRD
...Bible place? GRARRR

There are more of these over at Psycho Toddler, but I knew you wouldn't click the link, so I'm pulling up the ones that made me weep laughing.





I used to know how to do this sort of thing for real, as well.

Lady in supermarket this a.m. says to cashier:

Only put one or two things in each bag. I don't want them to weigh very much, because I'm walking.

er ...

Bat mitzvah student: Wow. You write TORAHS? You're a SCRIBE?! I thought you were just a bat mitzvah teacher!

Gorgeous klaf + amazing quill + well-behaved ink = four columns in two days (as well as naps, admin, swimming and teaching). Really nice letters, too. Happy am I.

Another one of those funny coincidences, now I think about it. This particular piece of klaf is amusingly splotchy on the back (at UH I was using it to demonstrate how klaf retains a lot of the features of the original animal, this particular calf having been black and white in splotches), and in the writing it's got the bit where Jacob gets all the splotchy animals as wages.

Also, the writing on this piece has been fast, smooth and lovely, going at a splendid pace, did I mention four columns in two days? and much of the subject-matter was alarming fecundity, the bit where Leah and the maidservants are popping out babies every couple of minutes and the bit where the flocks are multiplying like nobody's business.

I do like it when the writing matches the real-life circumstances in some way. My other favourite was on some restoration, summer before last - a goat scroll. Goat scrolls are usually a bit whiffy, but one of the klaf sheets in particular was quite overwhelmingly goaty (and isn't it extraordinary how the tanning process and a couple of hundred years combined can't get the smell out? Talk about longevity). Really, seriously, reeling-backwards give-me-air goaty - and it was one of the sections which talks about "a pleasing odour to the Lord." Which I thought was spectacularly amusing.

Another good Torah writing day. Now we're 25.7% done; it creeps up and creeps up!

Today I wrote the bit where tribal wars rage around Avram's domain, and he musters up a force and goes out to do a bit of fighting. Specifically, he gets together a little army of three hundred and eighteen people.

Now hear what Nahum Sarna has to say about the number 318 in his commentary:

The fact that this figure is unparalleled in biblical literature and does not conform to any of the usual schematized or symbolic nunber pattersn has been taken as proof of its literal authenticity. However, attention has been drawn to two extrabiblical examples of the number 318, which may suggest its use as a literary device to indicate a large group: a scarab of Amenhotep III (14th cent. BCE) records the arrival of his bride, Princess Giluhepa of Mitanni, together with 317 harem women, making a company of 318 in all; the grand total of all persons who suffered violent death in the course of the four days' fighting reported in the Iliad comes to 318. It has been noted that 318 is the sum of the twelve prime numbers from 7 to 47, which may explain its use symbolically. It remains to be proved that these two examples are not meant to be precise and that the concept of the prime number was recognized in early times.

I think that's marvellous. It's something to do with the way traditionalists will perform the most extraordinary mental gymnastics to prove that the text is entirely literal, and how here we have examples of Modern Scholars performing equally extraordinary mental gymnastics to prove that the text is entirely symbolic.