Outdoors -- do we have chicks?

I think I hear baby birds calling for food.
Somebody got off the mark pretty fast!
I mean besides the mockingbirds.
They might be starlings.  Starling chicks are pretty noisy.
I know from sad experience, there was a pair of starlings who used to always build a nest under my old through-the-wall AC machine.
Their chicks would wake me up every morning.
Every year when AC season came, all the chicks would die because it was just a bad environment for them.
The starlings never learned.
I replaced that old thing with an Energy Star machine and the builders made it impossible for starlings to next under it.
Now all I gotta do is make sure my trash closet door stays shut. 
I've seen male starlings scope the place out.
They've even had prospective mates come for a look, sitting on the phone or power wires.
The females were too smart to accept.
Anyway, it's good to know that the horrible winter won't put that much of a crimp in the bird population.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- bean salad plus

I had an interesting conversation with a stocker at my grocery store once.
He wanted me to buy four cans of mixed beans at $1.69 a pound.
I wanted to buy four cans of single beans at $1.39 a pound.
I saved over a dollar in that conversation.
What's more, I got 60 ounces of bean salad (once I added diced bell pepper and onion) for $4.
You will get 16 ounces for $8 on Amazon.
What's more, this week's DIY is a three-fer.
This is my mother's bean salad dressing.
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
pinch basil
1/4 tsp oregano
Bring to a boil very briefly and pour over the drained canned beans and other vegetables.  Eat the next day.
You can add garlic powder if you want, and also a pinch of sugar.

How this is a three-fer is that this dressing also works with artichokes.  Buy a box of frozen artichoke hearts.  Thaw them.  Add diced red bell pepper and sliced black olives.  Pour the dressing over and put in a jar or plastic keeper.  This is half the unit price of those tiny jars you see in the grocery story and makes a great ante-pasto for a dinner with guests and everything.

The same dressing works on pasta salad with olives, bell pepper, onion, cooked macaroni or shells, and grated cheese.  Again at half price or less.
Mangia!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- after the storm

I believe my town got 6 inches of rain in 2 days last week.
That may not sound like much to some of you, but here, 2 inches of rain in 2 days is a lot.
Thursday morning there were peeks of blue sky from time to time.
I took my morning tea out onto the back porch to enjoy the warm air, now just moist instead of soggy wet.
A rabbit came to sample supplies in my neighbor's yard.
He's big and fat, probably from eating crocuses in somebody else's yard.
He ate, I sipped, and after a while he went away.
I closed the gate of the yard.  I think he's too fat to squeeze under it, and I think he's also too fat to use the slide the squirrels created.
And he looks too fat to jump onto the porch beside the hydrangeas, even if he figured out he could get onto the porch that way.
So I think my sprouting veggies are safe this week. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Disincentives

We were talking about Exodus 21:7-11 and I tried to convince you that while verse 10 is the “law of daughters” referred to in verse 9, it does NOT mean that the bondholder can have sex with the naarah who has been bonded and designated as a wife for himself or his son.

The rest of the discussion is in Mishnah and Gemara so you had no reading assignment.

Let’s look at what the rabbis instituted for a naarah who was bonded out and designated as a wife.

First, they defined sex without the prospect of having children as prostitution, and the Bible prohibits men from betrothing their daughters into prostitution.  This is Deuteronomy 23:18, which says there shall be no qedeshah or qedesh among Israel.  Not only does this mean not having sex with underage girls, by the way, it also means a Jewish bondsman who is not married, being assigned a non-Jewish bondswoman to cohabitate with, because he cannot validly betrothe her.

So the Bible allows a father to bond out a naarah but for the bondholder or his son-designate to have sex with the naarah equals prostitution because since she has not reached puberty, there is no possibility of her having children.

Second, the rabbis established that a naarah is allowed to use contraception so that she cannot get pregnant, because getting pregnant too early can injure her health and the woman’s health is paramount, even when she IS pregnant.

The bondholder of a naarah has one more problem.  She may be immature in character.  If somebody tries to seduce her, she may not have the steadiness to refuse him, and if she gives in, the bondholder has to divorce her anyway.  It’s a lot of trouble to bond a naarah.

Why would the father bond the daughter?  Because he couldn’t afford a dowry and no husband would take her without it.  The bond money was in lieu of a dowry. 

Talmud discusses one other possible issue with bonding a naarah.  If her mother or brother does the bonding, she is allowed to repudiate the bond when she reaches puberty and the necessary age.  Why would the mother and brothers do that?  

When a father dies, his unmarried daughters get alimony from his property and if that leaves nothing over, the sons have to go on public assistance. They can’t divide up the property covered by the will of the deceased until the daughters marry, and this provides the mother’s rationale as well because, until the settlement, she can’t get back her own dowry.  What’s more, the man’s sons might have to pay damages on the dowry, which I will discuss later. 

Until the daughters are married, the property of the deceased remains in trust for them and the sons and widow can’t touch any property that might be due to them.

Since the girl can repudiate the betrothal (and Rashi says that the court intervenes to make sure she does this), bonding a naarah at the hands of the mother and brothers is a loser situation for the bondholder.

Both economics and moral considerations argue that bonding out a naarah was an infrequent situation.  There’s a philosophical wrinkle that goes with my interpretation of the Bible verses which I will discuss next week, and you have no reading assignment.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- FLICKER JEE IS BACK!

Flicker jee is my local catbird.

OOps I forgot one -- will do it next week

I just realized I didn't give you Genesis 1:16 and I'll do that next week.  Tell you what.  Here's the Hebrew.  If you can get the transliteration, email it to me.

טז וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים אֶת־שְׁנֵי הַמְּאֹרֹת הַגְּדֹלִים אֶת־הַמָּאוֹר הַגָּדֹל לְמֶמְשֶׁלֶת הַיּוֹם וְאֶת־הַמָּאוֹר הַקָּטֹן לְמֶמְשֶׁלֶת הַלַּיְלָה וְאֵת הַכּוֹכָבִים:

If you can do the translation YOURSELF email that to me.


© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:17

Genesis 1:17

 

יז וַיִּתֵּן אֹתָם אֱלֹהִים בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמָיִם לְהָאִיר עַל־הָאָרֶץ:

 

Transliteration: Va-yiten otam elohim bi-rqia ha-shamaim l’hair al-ha-arets.

Translation:    Gd put them in the raqia of the heaven to shed light on the earth.

Letters in this lesson:

Vocabulary in this lesson:

וַיִּתֵּן	He put
אֹתָם	them (direct object)

 

The verb in this sentence is an important one and since it is in the aorist, and the aorist looks like the future tense, I’ll give you the conjugation.

 

Here is the aorist tense of liten (root letters nun tav nun), to give, put, set.

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֶתֵּן	נִתֵּן	First
תִּתֵּן	תִּתְּנוּ	Second/masculine
תִּתְּנִי	תִּתֵּנָּה	Second/feminine
יִתֵּן	יִתְּנוּ	Third/masculine
תִּתֵּן	תִּתֵּנָּה	Third/feminine

 

 

Notice that the nun at the start of the root disappears in every form.  The nun at the start of the first person plural is a marker of the first person plural, not a letter of the root. 

 

There’s a second very important form in this verse and I’ll cover it in a separate lesson because right now I want you to concentrate on learning what the aorist looks like.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved