Fact-Checking the Torah -- Leviticus 14

We’re talking about leprosy and the third great principle developed in its laws.  The Torah for this is Leviticus 14, especially verses 33 through 49.

The first principle was that leprosy is limited in how it conveys tumah, the condition of being tameh, because all situations that cause tumah have only a limited number of hops beyond which tumah is not conveyed.

The second is that tumah can be changed.  One way preserves the utility of whatever is tameh: a waiting period followed by a positive act.  The other requires damaging the tameh object until it is no longer useful for its normal purpose.  If the damage is ever repaired, so that you can use the item for its normal purpose, it returns to its condition of tumah.

The third great principle is illustrated by the laws of leprosy in a house.

If you think your house has leprosy, Torah tells you to go to the priest and have him come check it out.

This is the ultimate example that paskening for yourself is a bad idea.

Torah specifies that you tell the priest “it seems to me that there might be something like leprosy in my house.”  You DON’T tell the priest “my house has leprosy.”  If you do, you immediately sacrifice access to everything in the house at that time because a leprous house conveys uncleanness to whatever is in it.

If you don’t unconditionally tell the priest that there is leprosy in the house, then nobody has paskened yet. 

What you do next is run home, get everything and everybody out of the house, then wait outside for the priest to show up and make his ruling.

The same thing applies to a sin offering, with a twist.

If you pasken for yourself that you have sinned, then you might owe a sin offering or you might be subject to kares, watching all your descendants die before you die.

BUT if you seek advice about whether you sinned, an interesting thing falls out.  First, whoever you consult will ask if you have witnesses.  Your normal answer will be “no”, because if you had witnesses they should have stopped you and told you what you were doing was wrong.  If they didn’t, they can’t testify against you.

Second, the person you’re talking to should be somebody experienced in the law.  That person will immediately call in two other people.  Why?  Because telling somebody they owe a sin offering is a case of property, requiring a court of three to judge.  Nobody should have to bring a sin offering without a court of three.

Third, this court has to prove you owe a sin offering.  A few weeks ago I said that whoever wants to take something from somebody else has the burden of proof that the property should change hands.  Same thing with a sin offering.  At this point Leviticus 5:1 comes into effect; a summons goes out for witnesses.  If they refuse to show up, the property remains with its current owner.  No sin offering.  I don’t have a basis in Talmud for this, but it seems logical to me based on the sum total of the general principles of Jewish law.

This also speaks to why confessions are inadmissible evidence in a death penalty case.  The accused who confesses paskens for himself that he is guilty.  But he bears no burden of proof.  The court and the witnesses do.  They cannot deprive the accused of his life unless they meet the burden of proof.

And now the fourth great principle on the subject of tumah. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:11

Genesis 2:11

 

יא שֵׁם הָאֶחָד פִּישׁוֹן הוּא הַסֹּבֵב אֵת כָּל־אֶרֶץ הַחֲוִילָה אֲשֶׁר־שָׁם הַזָּהָב:

 

Transliteration: V’-nahar yotse me-eden l’hashqot et ha-gan umi-sham yipared v’-hayah l-arbaah rashim.

Translation:     A river went out from Eden to water the garden and from there it separated and became for four heads.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

שֵׁם	name
הוּא	He, it
הַסֹּבֵב	That surrounds
זָּהָב	gold

 

You have probably noticed that hu is the first pronoun you’ve seen so far that is a subject, AKA nominative.  That’s because the conjugations of verbs include indications of the person.  Here are all the subject pronouns.

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֲנִי	אֲנָחְנוּ	First
אַתָּה	אַתֶּם	Second/masculine
אַתְּ	אַתֶּן	Second/feminine
הוּא	הֶם	Third/masculine
הִיא	הֶן	Third/feminine

 

You already saw the direct object pronouns or accusative case in Lesson 28.  The indirect object or dative uses l from lesson 13.  The “instrumental” uses b from lessons 3-5, although it’s not usual to say “by means of me.”  I’ll cover the versions of “with” when we get to that word.  The genitive/possessive also uses l from lesson 13 and I’ll go over that when we get to an example.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- one more day

Mother Nature is throwing a temper tantrum.
It's not what you think.
It's pouring down rain and temperatures will get close to 60.
We might even get some lightning and thunder.
Then it starts clearing and the sun will come back out at last.
Usually that comes with a whipping wind out of the northwest,
an Alberta Clipper or "the Hawk" as they call it in DC.
This time it's supposed to stay mild for a few days.
Time to start prepping the garden so the compost will lie flat
when I lay it down in the spring.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

DIY -- no non-stick?

Now that you're over the shock of me saying don't buy non-stick cookware, I'll repeat some info.
I said before that if you do it right, you can deal with food stuck to your stainless steel pots and pans.
Now I'll tell you how to prevent it.
FIRST, the stuff most likely to stick is starch from rice, potatoes, pasta.
When the food is almost done cooking, put the lid back on the pan and turn off the burner.
There will be a little moisture left in the pan.  Putting the lid on captures it.
Turning off the burner lets the food finish cooking, stay hot, and absorb the moisture.
But it will stop the process of burning the food onto the material.
You can also put your plate or plates on top instead of the lid and get hot plates to serve on.
SECOND most likely is probably tomato.  The same thing applies.
THIRD most likely is fried food, but as I said, frying is bad for you.
Stir-fry might stick, especially if you finish off the rice and the rest of the dish in the same pan.

Once you've used this technique, you also use a good metal spatula to scrape the pan.

And if all else fails, like I said, fill the pan with water, put it on a burner on high.
This will re-cook what's stuck to the pan.
When the water comes to the boil, turn the burner off.
When it's cool, scrape and wash.
Use steel-wool soap pads if necessary.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Leviticus 13

Your assignment for this week was to read as much of Leviticus 13 as you could.

This is the law of leprosy, it affects men and women alike, and a person with leprosy is tameh.

What are people unsuitable for when they are tameh from leprosy?

From living with other people who do not have leprosy. 

There are four really important issues that come up due to this chapter.  One is that there are degrees of being tameh which define whether something you touch becomes tameh from that touch.

The chain is not infinite, it ends at four hops.  The more severe the source is considered, the more hops its tamut can take.  The person who is tameh with leprosy is called an av ha-tumah, a first degree of tameh; the same for a house that is declared leprous.  A person coming into that house possibly may be declared leprous under certain conditions; a leper coming into a house can make the house tameh under certain conditions.

Also, tumah is not eternal.  One way to end it is by prescribed procedures including a positive action and a waiting period.  The other is to change the object so that the specifications in Mishnah no longer consider it capable of being tameh.

This goes along with my definition of tameh as being unsuitable for a given purpose.  The specifications for changing an object render it unsuitable for its ordinary purpose.  If the object is ever returned to a specification suitable for that purpose, it once again returns to being tameh.

The best example is a story.  Queen Shalomtsiyon Alexandra (died 67 BCE) was getting ready for a party for one of her sons.  She had cleaned all her glassware, and it was rendered tameh.  She had it all broken into pieces so small it couldn’t be used for its usual purpose.  That was fine.  But she didn’t have the ability to buy all new glassware.  So she had it melted down and re-cast into new glassware.  That was not fine.  Immediately the glassware returned to its status as tameh.  Her own brother Shimon ben Shetach was a rabbi at the time.  Why she didn’t consult him first is not stated, but at one point he went into hiding due to persecution from her husband.

Situations in which something is no longer useful for its ordinary purpose include not just breakage; fabric ripped to a size of three palms long per side is not useful for clothing any more, and it’s only useful as a patch if you don’t care that the color doesn’t match the rest of the fabric (it would be from a different dyelot, or it might be old and faded).  You can take the positive action (immersion) to make it tahor and join it to other tahor pieces to make a quilt, according to the experts who have so patiently answered questions for me over the years.

Understand: defining tumah as not currently useable for its ordinary purpose leads directly to this result.  Once a utensil or piece of cloth is changed to something that is unuseable for its ordinary purpose, you no longer have to worry whether it’s tahor or tameh.  You’re not saying that it’s grime free or that it’s germ free.  You’re saying that you don’t care any more because its ordinary purpose has been voided out. 

You don’t get that result by considering tahor/tameh to be about hygiene.  In fact if the queen had boiled her glassware or treated it with chlorine to get rid of the germs, that still wouldn’t have made it tahor because the prescription for making it tahor was scouring and immersion in a mikveh.   She excused herself from doing that saying she didn’t have time – but she did have time to call in a glass maker and have a fire gotten hot enough to melt the glass down and so on.  She paskened for herself.

Now we’ll go to the third great principle on the subject of tumah and that’s for next week.  To prepare, read Leviticus 14, especially verses 33 through 49.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Biblical Hebrew -- Genesis 2:10

Genesis 2:10

 

י וְנָהָר יֹצֵא מֵעֵדֶן לְהַשְׁקוֹת אֶת־הַגָּן וּמִשָּׁם יִפָּרֵד וְהָיָה לְאַרְבָּעָה רָאשִׁים:

 

Transliteration: V’-nahar yotse me-eden l’hashqot et ha-gan umi-sham yipared v’-hayah l-arbaah rashim.

Translation:    A river went out from Eden to water the garden and from there it separated and became for four heads.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

נָהָר	river
יֹצֵא	Goes out
לְהַשְׁקוֹת	To water
שָּׁם	There (location, not “there is”)
יִפָּרֵד	separated
אַרְבָּעָה	Four (masculine)
רָאשִׁים	heads

 

“Go out”, yts’, is a very frequent verb and has two “weak” letters so here is the conjugation.

 

Present

Singular	Plural	Gender
יוֹצֵא	יוֹצְאִים	Masculine
יוֹצֵאת	יוֹצְאוֹת	Feminine

 

Past

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
יָצָאתִי	יָצָאנוּ	First
יָצָאתָ	יְצָאתֶם	Second/masculine
יָצָאת	יְצאתֶן	Second/feminine
יָצָא	יָצְאוּ	Third/masculine
יָצְאָה	יָצְאוּ	Third/feminine

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֵצאֵ	נֵצֵא	First
תֵּצֵא	תֵּצְאוּ	Second/masculine
תֵּצָאִי	תֵּצֶאנָה	Second/feminine
יֵצֵא	יֵצְאוּ	Third/masculine
תֵּצֵא	תֵּצֶאנָה	Third/feminine

 

There’s a variant form of the feminine 2/3^rd person plural, tsenah, which is part of a song from the early days of the State of Israel:

Tzena, tzena, tzena, tzena ha-banot u-r’ena ħayalim ba-mosheva

Al na, Al na, Al na, Al na, al na titħabena Mi ben ħayil, ish tzava

 

Go out, go out, go out girls and see soldiers in the moshava (farming community).

Do not, do not, do not hide yourself away from a virtuous man [a pun on the word for "soldier"], an army man.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

DIY -- Chanukah

Most people light candles for Chanukah, but the original way which some people still do, is burning oil.
You need eight little dishes to hold the oil.
You need wicks, which either lie in a spout of the dish or have a pre-fab holder that you drop into the dish before you add the oil.
You need olive oil.

You fill up the dish; it has to burn for at least half an hour which means about half an ounce.
You light the wick.
You say -- or rather you chant -- the blessings.
You do this after dark all days of the week except Friday.
On Friday you light the Chanukah lights and then the Shabbat lights.
Shabbat lights have to be lit before sunset, and the rule is they are lit 18 minutes before sunset.

There's  a video here and the comments are very useful.
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1701725/jewish/Do-It-Yourself-Chanukah.htm

Chanukah was the first time in history that a people stood up on its hind legs and demanded religious freedom from the ruling power. They got it, too.  It should have been a lesson to later tyrants. But tyrants wouldn't be tyrants if they were capable of learning the lessons of history.


© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved