meta user
network profile
|
Jun 15 |
comment |
Changing someone else's name Another example: Gideon was called "Yerubaal" (Judg. 6:32) - whether by his father or by the populace, I'm not sure - and he's thereafter referred to by that name by his contemporaries, children and successors. (The last mention of the name "Gideon" is right after his death - Judg. 8:35.) |
|
Jun 14 |
comment |
Why are the Meraglim in that order? @jake: I wonder how Sforno would explain the facts that I mentioned in my comment to the related question, which indicate that Calev (#3 on the list) was younger than Hoshea/Yehoshua (#5). |
|
Jun 13 |
comment |
Does casual sex establish a marriage? @YDK: Rambam (Hil. Gerushin 10:19) states that this applies only if they had been otherwise at least potentially married (his examples are if they were divorced, or if he had performed conditional kiddushin). |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Names of the books of Tanakh Fair enough. What I meant was that I would have expected that the book of Ezra would rather have been named for its contents too, something like "Shivas Tziyon" or something of that sort. |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Names of the books of Tanakh Come to think of it, though, regarding Ezra, he's an important character in that book, but hardly the main one: out of 23 chapters total in the original (undivided) book, his activities are included in only seven of them (Ez. 7-10 and Neh. 8-10, plus a couple of brief mentions in Neh. 12). |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Names of the books of Tanakh +1. Regarding Esther, could be that the book was named for her (even though, as you note, there are other main characters in it) because she's the one who requested that it be written and canonized (כתבוני לדורות, Megillah 7a); the fact that Hashem's actions in it are "hidden" probably was a factor too. |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Temple mount: wall around court of the gentiles? @NiclasNilsson: that the Temple Mount was surrounded by a colonnade is explicitly stated in a number of places in the Talmud (Pesachim 13b, et al). I guess the question would be whether this refers to the original area or Herod's expansion; looks like the two models take opposite views on that. (That said, the fact that it took the Romans three weeks from the conquest of the Antonia fortress - off to the right of the Temple in both models - until they were able to break into the Temple courtyard proper, suggests that there must have been something more substantial than the soreg in the way.) |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Qumran - Proof or Genizah for Errors? @ShmuelBrin: because there are places where the Gemara explicitly says that a word is spelled a certain way. (I'm not talking about places where a verse is simply quoted - you're right, there's no reason to assume that the copyists took any special care with those.) Sanhedrin 4a-b gives several examples, including בסכת בסכת בסכות הרי כאן ארבע - our Sifrei Torah have all three written בסכת; and קרנות קרנת קרנת הרי כאן ארבע, where again our Sifrei Torah have all of them chaser. |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Qumran - Proof or Genizah for Errors? Come to think of it, too, there are quite a few places where the Gemara's text of Tanach differs slightly from ours (similarly Rashi's, etc.). Those are surely much more reliable sources than Qumran, and yet we don't change our mesorah on that basis. |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Qumran - Proof or Genizah for Errors? Even if we could demonstrate that these were meant as accurate texts, that wouldn't mean, as you put it, "that our texts are mistaken." They might have been according to a minority view that was in the end rejected (as with the שלשה ספרים מצאו בעזרה, Yerushalmi Taanis 4:2). |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Published Ladino version of Meam Lo'ez? @minhag: R. Kaplan's introduction is here. He says that it was done by the Ibn Tibbon Institute at the University of Granada. (That said, the Wikipedia article on Meam Loez quotes a review that says that it is full of inaccuracies.) |
|
Jun 12 |
comment |
Kevias Ittim Vs. the General Mitzva of Talmud Torah @Menachem: actually, it does directly answer the question - RSZ there says, as he does in Hilchos Talmud Torah which I cited, that the mitzvah of והגית בו - which is simply another way of saying the mitzvah of talmud Torah - is fulfilled minimally with 'פרק אחד שחרית וכו, and that there is a separate mitzvah (not necessarily applicable to all) to "know the entire Torah." |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Shema in Musaf Kedushah - Source and reason @SethJ: AFAIK there's no documentation of this minhag at all - or indeed, of the text of Kedushah in general - prior to the era of the Geonim (except for a brief reference to the phrase נעריצך ונקדישך in Maseches Soferim). So I doubt we know. |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Answering amen to a post-nightfall mincha But there's no chiddush in each berachah (or even in one of them), which is needed to make it a tefillas nedavah (Orach Chaim 107:1). |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Why did Aharon request that Hashem declare Miriam pure? @DoubleAA: yeah, it looks like I misunderstood; Kesef Mishneh understands it as you do. |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
facing east in the bes hamikdash @DoubleAA: they may not have needed to. There was a paroches in front of the kodesh hakodashim, and another one on the door of the ulam, which is what they were standing in front of. |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Published Ladino version of Meam Lo'ez? Beis Eked Sefarim - a bibliography of sefarim printed until 1950 - lists various editions, though the last ones (in Hebrew characters, at least) seem to have been at the end of the 1800s. R. Aryeh Kaplan, in his introduction to Bereishis, mentions an edition of most of Bereishis in Latin characters, done by a Spanish university in the 1960s; whether it was continued, I don't know. |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Why did Aharon request that Hashem declare Miriam pure? @DoubleAA: right, but the point is that perhaps now there was no michyah and no white hair, but then by the time she is inspected years later, one or the other of those has developed. (If neither of those develops within two weeks, nor does the nega spread, then the person is tahor - Rambam, Hil. Tum'as Tzaraas 1:10-11; also, if it was declared tamei and then the hairs or michyah went away, then that particular spot can never again become tamei, even if they recur - ibid. 4:8 - whereas if she was never examined yet, the kohen would find those and declare her tamei.) |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Was it ever the norm for children to get married? @HodofHod: possibly. The Gemara (Sanhedrin 69b) offers that as one reconstruction of the events, with the other being that she was a year older. (In Yusteni's case, though, she actually bemoans the fact that she could have been married three years earlier!) |
|
Jun 11 |
comment |
Language of a ketubah for marriage Note that this is hardly a new issue nowadays; in Geonic times and later, few people spoke Aramaic either (which is why the later Geonim and early Rishonim wrote a lot of their works in Arabic). |
