Bit at a time Hebrew -- Genesis 1:1 b

More about Genesis 1:1.

א בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ:

Transliteration: B’reshit bara elohim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-arets.

Translation:    At the beginning Gd created the heaven and the earth

Letters in this lesson: בּ, ר, א, שׁ, י, ת, ל, וֹ, ה, ם, שּׁ, מ, ץ

Vocabulary in this lesson:

בְּ	on, in, at, by (swear by), with (by means of), against
בְּרֵאשִׁית	at the beginning
בָּרָא	created
אֱלֹהִים	Gd
אֵת	direct object particle
הַ, הָ	the
שָּׁמַיִם	heaven
וְ	and, or, continuation particle
אָרֶץ	earth, land, world

If you really want to hear this verse pronounced, use the link.  It takes about the first 17 seconds of the recording.  Play it over and over.

If you know French, you will hear this speaker pronouncing the letter resh somewhat like the French letter – which letter?  What sound does resh have? 

Now for the most important words in this lesson.

One is ha, and it means “the”.  One of these days you will hear it pronounced heh, and that will be because of the sound that follows it.  I’ll point it out when we get to one.

Notice that ha is spelled two different ways in this lesson.  The vowels in each version have the same sound.  But the marker used for the vowel depends on the rest of the word.  When it has the little “t” shaped thing, that’s because there’s an alef after it.  When it has the little dash, that’s because there’s a shin after it.  Also, the shin has to have dagesh in it because of the ha. 

The other is ve and it means “and”.  Today it is pronounced with a schwa e.  One of these days, it will be pronounce oo (usually transliterated u), and instead of a shva under it, it will have a dagesh next to it.  When there’s a dagesh next to the letter vav, sometimes it will be pronounced u and sometimes it will be pronounced ve or v’. 

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

 

Garden -- Veggies

Veggies were the real reason I started my garden.

When I was a teen we lived on a farm.  Dad leased out most of the land but we opened up a quarter acre near the house and raised veggies.

I never liked asparagus or beets until I got to taste them fresh from the ground with all the sugar still there.  As veggies age they dry and the sugar converts to starch.

I buy only self-pollinated vegetables.  Organic is a whole other thing and I don't got there but you can.  This avoids GMOs.  You have to re-buy those every year.

You also have to re-buy if you buy garden store hybrids.  They don't breed or else they don't breed true.

Meanwhile, I have a mustard green patch that has been going for 5 years because I let the mustard go to seed the first year.  I have celery root that went to seed and I expect to have new celery root in that spot.  I've had tomatoes drop fruit which puts up a new plant the next year, although I don't promote that because of the disease thing.

There is more than one reliable seedsman out there selling open-pollinated seeds.  My favorite is www.heirloomseeds.com.  Another is J.L.Hudson.   Another is Renee's Garden.

You can plant leafy greens, carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, green peas and snow peas early.  In a normal year I can do it 1 March.

You have to wait to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, beans, corn, cucumbers and melon.  In a normal year I can do it 1 May.

You can also have an autumn garden by planting more early vegetables before 15 August.

Make sure to put down your two inches deep compost every time you plant and you won't have any fertility problems.  If you want to use manure, use it as a deep dressing and make sure it's fully composted when you buy it, but DON'T use it for tomatoes.

I'm totally spoiled now.  It's just not spring until I can go out and pull some greens for lunch, or a pan of pod peas.  Summer means pulling a cherry tomato at dawn while I fill the birdbath, or getting the latest zucchini.   And I won't make pesto unless I can pick the basil out of the yard and get it mixed up within 10 minutes.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- Hard Cider DONE

I now have two jugs of cider that are mature enough to drink and another brewing.

It's a pleasant buzzy drink at room temperature or chilled. 

Using bread yeast or lager yeast doesn't make much difference.

Apple juice from concentrate seems to come out about the same as not from concentrate.

Rack it carefully; most of the yeast will remain on the bottom of the jug each time you do it.  At about the one month point, the amount remaining in the brew will be negligible. 

Soak the jug in very hot to boiling water and agitate before you pour the water out, and the yeast on the bottom will come out when you pour the water out.  Then rinse once more with nearly boiling water.

So like bread, hard cider is fairly forgiving.  Just make sure and wait until it's mature (one month) before drinking.

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- Four and-twenty? Hah!

So I was going out to spray water on some squirrels to keep them away from the bird food and WOW!

The oak trees on the block north of my house, which tower over everything, were packed with blackbirds all chatting at the top of their lungs.  Dozens.  Scores.  Maybe hundreds.

I no sooner got outside than they launched in a mass, flying south, and perched in the oaks of my neighbor across the street to the south, still talking.  I came in to get my laptop, thinking I might catch an image and some audio on my webcam.  By the time I went back out, they were gone.

I know they weren't crows because crows just croak, and they were smaller, and besides most of the crows have migrated about 20 miles west to a city with lights that keep the owls off.  Not that we don't have streetlights here, but the thick trees house plenty of owls, also hawks.

But the blackbirds will be back in spring to eat bugs and raise their chicks -- and chase the crows which are three times larger but are ten times more cowardly.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Mendel Beilis -- Not One Charge, Two!

This is the summary of the 31^th day of the Mendel Beilis trial, which occurred on 25 October, 1913 on the Julian calendar, 7 November, 1913 on the Gregorian calendar.

This day occupies pages 111 through 177 of Volume III of the transcript.

See the translation of the transcript for day 31. 

 

Shmakov refers to the closed door conference on day 28 as something that the jury attended.  I believed when I translated that material, that the conference was a consequence of Pranaitis’ attempts to discuss his false claim that Talmud refers to Jesus, since the judge threatened to go behind closed doors if Pranaitis persisted.  Shmakov confirms this conjecture today when he refers to “blasphemy.”  This was the charge made by the 1554 bull which censored Talmud and resulted in using the term “Shas” to refer to it.

Shmakov claims that Kokovtsov and Troitsky could not deny the blasphemy charges, but the quality of his logic throughout this speech is not such as to support that claim.  They could not deny that this was charged in the 1554 papal bull, but they could argue correctly that since the citations don’t refer to Jesus, no blasphemy could have occurred. 

Shmakov proves today that he is incapable of understanding the arguments on scripture through a nonsense statement he makes.  Shortly thereafter Shmakov admits that Pranaitis performed badly in the conference.

So the events of day 28 probably included the government side of the case admitting in private, during the recess after the conference, that the scriptural part of the testimony was in a shambles.  To try to counter this,  Shmakov brought Pranaitis back and that is when he was laughed out of court. 

Within a day Vipper made his admission that Russian law does not criminalize religious fanaticism. 

Within a day of that, Shmakov made his telling remark that you don’t change the charges from one day to the next, still less within a period of half an hour. 

Today, near the end of the speech, Shmakov reveals that the jurors will receive two questions to answer. 

The whole thing has been cooked up in the last 60 hours, and the text of the new charges either telegraphed or sent in hardcopy by express train; the trip from St. Petersburg to Kiev takes 24 hours nowadays.  Unless it was in the files the whole time.

Maklakov makes an excellent speech about the government abuse of Andrey’s family and the witnesses, and the illogic in the prosecution claims.

Gruzenberg opens up like the shaliach tsibur, the emissary of the congregation, at the start of the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur, approaching the Heavenly Court worrying that it will not listen to him when he tries to get it to avert the severe decree, and goes on to a litany of why Beilis is suffering that reads like the Al Chet She Chatanu litany of sins also used on Yom Kippur.  Remember, the day that the trial started WAS right before Yom Kippur in 1913.  The day Gruzenberg is speaking is two weeks after the end of Sukkot, when the Heavenly Gates close and people have to live with the decree handed down.  Then he rips the Cheberyaks to shreds and points out that Zamyslovsky could not give a complete summation because if he had, he would have contradicted both Kosorotov and Vipper.

To "Vipper loses his mind"

 

Judge:  Fyodor Boldyrev                                                                                    

Prosecution:

            Criminal Prosecutor, Oscar Vipper

            Civil Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky

            Private Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov 

Defense:

            Oscar Gruzenberg

Nikolay Karabchevsky

Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky

Alexandr Zarudny

Vasily Maklakov

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

 

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew: Genesis 1:1

All right, here we go.  Genesis 1:1.

א בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ:

Transliteration: B’reshit bara elohim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-arets.

Translation:    At the beginning Gd created the heaven and the earth

Letters in this lesson: בּ, ר, א, שׁ, י, ת, ל, וֹ, ה, ם, שּׁ, מ, ץ

Vocabulary in this lesson:

בְּ	on, in, at, by (swear by), with (by means of), against
בְּרֵאשִׁית	at the beginning
בָּרָא	created
אֱלֹהִים	Gd
אֵת	direct object particle
הַ, הָ	the
שָּׁמַיִם	heaven
וְ	and, or, continuation particle
אָרֶץ	earth, land, world

Remember I said the letters are used as numbers?  That’s what that alef is doing at the start of the first verse.  It shows this is the first verse of the chapter, which also is numbered alef. 

Oh yeah, you did know that you read Hebrew from right to left, not left to right?  Sorry.  I’m new at this.  So the alef is at the start of the verse and it’s just the verse number.  The next letter is the first letter of the actual verse, and it’s what?  Pronounced how?

First rule.  When I put a single quote, that’s a shva that you say.  I would put in the upside down “e” that usually represents a schwa e but the single quote is more convenient.  So when you see a single quote that means say a schwa e.

Notice that in this lesson you only have one letter with dagesh.  If you have been practicing, maybe you can remember whether this is a letter that changes sound when it has dagesh.  If you don’t remember, use the Transliteration as a clue.

You also have two sofit letters.  See if you can match one of them to its other version, which is also in this lesson.

The vocabulary is in the same order as each word appears in the verse.  Go over them several times and copy the pronunciation in the Transliteration.

I’m going to stop here but I will use this verse again in the next lesson. 

Fact-Checking: Exodus 21:18-19, 22

I'm starting this thread again while finishing the Mendel Beilis trial transcript translation, which I will post when ready.   You were supposed to read Exodus 21:18-19 and 22 to go with this lesson.  Here’s what they say.

When men struggle and one strikes the other with a stone or his fist and he doesn’t die and falls on his bed

If he gets up and can walk around in public with his staff the striker is innocent but he shall give his lying down and absolutely cure him.

When two men fight and strike a pregnant woman and she has a miscarriage that there be no disaster he must be fined however much the husband of the woman demands and it shall be given in judgment.
I want you to look at verse 22 first because this is the first clue that “an eye for an eye” doesn’t mean A doing to B what B did to A.  That’s called lex talionis, by the way, meaning the law of equal retaliation.

So two men are fighting and one hits a pregnant woman and she has a miscarriage.  Stop right there.

Now if Jewish law had LT, the rest of the verse should read that the woman hits the man who hit her so he has a miscarriage.  What’s that you say?  It’s a daft idea?  Men can’t have miscarriages?  Well, then, there’s something wrong with the idea that the Bible requires LT.

That’s the first urban legend I’m going to destroy.

Now look at the rest of the verse.  “He must be fined.”  There’s no other option.  He has to pay money.  How much?  “However much the husband demands.”

Now let’s look at verses 18 and 19.  They say something different.  “If he falls on his bed.”  That means A hit B and B was disabled.  “If he gets up and walks around publicly with his staff,” means the disability is temporary.  “He shall give his lying down.”  A has to pay lost wages.  “And absolutely cure him.”  A has to pay the doctor bills.

So even if B could do back what A did to him, B is NOT ALLOWED TO RETALIATE identically to what A did to him.  A must spend money so that B can live through the disability and also for treatment to shorten the period of disability.

In American law this money is called “damages.”  There is a complete book of Jewish law with the name “Damages” which includes the rules about this sort of thing.  It’s in the Mishnah. 

Now, how do I know that “his lying down” means lost wages?  Jews for decades or centuries asked that question because Torah is the book of Jewish law.  In particular, these verses come from a part of Exodus that Jews refer to as Mishpatim, “Judgments.”  When Jews tried to run their culture by these judgments, they had the same question you just asked.  And the answer, which was documented in Mishnah “Damages” was, “his lying down” means lost wages.

Actually, they had probably been running their culture this way for a long time.  There’s an old saying from paleontology that applies to cultures just as much as it does to fossils: natura non facit saltus.  Nature makes no leaps.  We don’t have to have every fossil to know that a given fossil had a long line of ancestors behind it, all the way back to half a billion years after Earth coalesced, when life forms didn’t leave fossils.

When something is written down, it has a long history behind it, all the way back before writing existed in that culture, to the first point when that culture began to coalesce with its own customs.  It’s entirely possible that the ancestors of the Jews had a system of “damages” long before the Exodus – it’s even possible that humanity had the same thing before writing existed.  Because if you can’t make a man pregnant so a woman can make him miscarry, there has to be some way to appease the husband of the woman who miscarried. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved