Outdoors -- call me Euell

Euell Gibbons was famous for his book Stalking the Wild Asparagus, about eating wild foods.
Today I went out in the nice warm sun and fresh air and went hunting dandelions.
I don't use chemicals on my lawn, they're illegal in my town, so this was perfectly safe.
Don't use Roundup or other chemicals with 2,4 dimethyl, or you deprive yourself of an extremely nutritious food.
Dandelion is full of vitamin C and fiber, also calcium and iron.
If you have a chemical free yard, go out today. 
Find the pointy toothed leaves that gave the plant its American name.
Now look for flower buds and stalks.  The leaves of a plant that has budded are extremely bitter, like most greens getting ready to flower.  If you blanche them you might be able to get them down, but since these are free goodies, I wouldn't bother.
So you have your leaves, and the next thing you have to do is pick out the grass and other stuff you won't eat.  I got both English ivy and  ground ivy leaves in this batch.
Rinse them in cold water.
Now fry up some diced potatoes nice and brown, add the dandelion, and some India spices like garam masala, with a pinch of cayenne.  You can use eggplant instead of potatoes.
Or use your search engine for "wilted dandelion" for a hot dressing to use with them.
Cook them with mushrooms or chorizo or both.
Mangia!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Fact-Checking the Torah -- what laws do

All right, I think you’ve probably had just about enough of law for a while.  This is a summary and then I’ll start busting urban legends about archaeology and the Bible.>

When I was getting my degree in legal studies, I had to take classes like political science and sociology, which I had avoided 25 years earlier getting my degree in Russian translation.The sociology class made the point that all legal systems do four things for their societies:

1. Define membership in the society
2. Regulate activities within the society;
3. Socialize members and provide solidarity opportunities;
4. Support the economy underlying the society. 

It is easy to see that Jewish law governs a complete society or culture, not just a religion, because it addresses all four of these issues, not just the socialization and solidarity part.  About which I have said very little because, while there are plenty of urban legends about Jewish belief and ritual, you can find the truth on sites like myjewishlearning and judaism101.

The goal of the legal system in any society is to preserve that society according to its concept of its own nature or character.  Anthony Trollope’s Palliser political novels sometimes use the term “the British constitution” even though there is no fundamental written document about this constitution.  What he means seems more like what the British believe Britain should be like.  He often lauds “British liberty” which, from my reading, seems to be the idea that the crown cannot arbitrarily deprive British subjects of their property, which sometimes happened under the Tudor and Stuart kings.  What Americans mean by “liberty” adds freedom of speech and so on.

The goal of the Jewish legal system is to run a Jewish society or culture.  Individual whims do not count if they conflict with issues like rejecting gods who are not Gd.  This goes so far as to criminalize Jews who behave like non-Jews, which includes homosexual relations and witchcraft as well as idol-worship.  Jewish culture establishes liberty in the British sense, with the basic principle that if A wants to take something from B, A has the burden of proof that the transfer is correct.  This is the meaning of the story of the vineyard in Kings I chapter 21. 

The insistence on running a Jewish culture also means that modern concepts of “majority rule” don’t apply.  Jewish courts are not run by elected judges or juries, but by experts in the law who themselves operate by majority rule.  This doesn’t mean that non-experts are shut out of contributing to court cases.  Mishnah explicitly says that if somebody who is not already a judge and who also is not a witness in the case, speaks up in court on behalf of the defendant, the judges determine whether his statements are relevant, probative, and legally acceptable and then “they seat him among them.”

Next week I’ll discuss more differences between Jewish and American law.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:25

Genesis 2:25

 

כה וַיִּהְיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם עֲרוּמִּים הָאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וְלֹא יִתְבּשָׁשׁוּ:

 

Transliteration: va-yihyu shneihem arumim ha-adam v’-ishto v’-lo yitboshashu.

Translation:    The two of them were naked, the man and his wife, and they were not embarrassed.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

שְׁנֵיהֶם	The two of them
עֲרוּמִּים	naked
לֹא	No, not
יִתְבּשָׁשׁוּ	Were embarrassed

 

From now on, I’m going to assume you know how to pronounce what you’re reading so I’m going to drop the transliteration.  I will also give a link to an oral reading of material so that you can check yourself.

 

So next lesson, I will give just the text from chapters 1 and 2, which you have just finished, and links to the mp3s that read them out loud.  I’ll do that whenever I finish a chapter, and also at the end of an aliyah.  I’m emphasizing the difference because you have already seen one example of how it changes perceptions of what the Bible means, back with the aliyah that ended with creation of Shabbat.

 

Also, when there isn’t a lot of vocabulary and I’m not giving the conjugation for a whole verb, I’ll give you more than one verse.  If you’ve been doing one lesson a week, it is now a year and a half since you started using these lessons.  If I were you I would be getting pretty impatient by now.  But I kept up with this one lesson/one verse in most places because everybody has a different skill at learning languages.

 

So I’m picking up the weekly pace, but that doesn’t mean you have to do a whole lesson every week.  If you’re stuck in a time crunch, just go to the page where all the languages are listed so that you don’t miss any.  And then take all the time you need.

 

Here’s the audio for chapter 2 of Genesis:

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/mp3/t0102.mp3

 

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Outdoors -- that's it!

My robin is marking his turf, calling while it is still dark.
The boreal chickadees and titmice are doing their thing.
The Carolina chickadees called for the first time this morning.
My grape hyacinths have come up along with my jonquils and star-of-bethlehem.
The hedges are starting to bud.
The forsythia has bloomed.
But the real thing I have been waiting for is when you wake up in the morning and open the window or the door,
and you get that first moist green aroma because plants are waking up and making oxygen.
And that happened today.
It's spring for real.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Fact-Checking the Torah -- advance notice

Archaeology postings for this page will begin in seven weeks, Gd willing.
From this week until then it will be how legal systems work and the main reason for the urban legends about Jewish law.

I know that you have been a regular reader of this page on the blog.
I've watched the numbers tick upward, especially on Thursdays and Fridays, so I know you're out there.
I'm glad you stuck with this, but I don't know why because there haven't been any comments.
This posting is a place for you to say.
Been rolling on the floor with laughter the whole time?  Let me know.
Having attacks of cognitive dissonance?
That means most of what you were taught is different from what I posted.
What and how different?
First exposure to the Bible?  Given the number of countries that have shown up as "audience," that doesn't surprise me.
So use this posting as the stage for your comments, which you held back until now because you never knew what curve I was going to throw you next.
Don't think you're alone.  Nobody is alone.
You'll find that out.
If you comment.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Fact-Checking the Torah -- What tithes?

For this week you were supposed to read Deuteronomy 8:8, Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 24:19, Deuteronomy 14:23-29, and Numbers 18:21, 26.  These are the verses that discuss tithes other than animals.

The first urban legend to bust is that tithes were due to the priests from everything a person owned.  I apologize if that’s a strawman argument. Tithes were owed from whatever grew from the ground – fruit, grain, vegetables – and was food for people – unlike weeds, thistles, thorns – and was harvested all at once – unlike dark leafy greens which you pick as they ripen – and could be stored up – again, unlike greens which rot.  Mishnah clarified: the seven famous products of the Holy Land – wheat, barley, figs, dates, grapes (wine), olives, and pomegranates – plus spelt, oats, rye, carob, and nuts.

The second urban legend to bust is that the priests stalked the fields waiting for their tithes to be handed to them.  Mishnah gives the specification: the tithes for the priests were not due to them until “the pile was smoothed over,” that is, at the end of harvest.

I guess there’s really a third urban legend here, which is that the priests got their tithes first.  The first things to ripen are bikkurim and they don’t really count as tithes, they count as the firstlings of plants.

Jewish law counted as tithe things given to the poor: the corners of the fields that they reaped for themselves; the forgotten sheaves of grain or fruit on the trees; the gleanings from what the reapers dropped; the poor clusters of grapes.  Respectively these are called peah, shichkah, leqet, and olelot. These can account for up to 5% of grain and beans, fruit and vegetables, and 2.5% of grapes.

The priests and Levites get 10% of the remainder, and the poor get another 10% in years 3 and 6 of the seven-year shemittah cycle.  In years 1, 2, 4, and 5 the owner takes 10% to Jerusalem to eat.

Finally, and this goes with something I pointed out last week, if the priest claimed that somebody hadn’t given tithes, he had to prove it in court. 

The only sanctions for not taking tithes were a drop in sales.  If a person bought from somebody who wasn’t trustworthy about tithes, the buyer had to take out the tithes based on the quantity purchased.  Who is going to spend money and then have to give away part of what they buy? 

I guess that's enough of the specifics, now let's look at the philosophy behind laws.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved  

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Vocabulary Review VII

As always, the words above the line are higher frequency.

 

זֹאת	this
אִמּוֹ	His mother
אָבִיו	His father
יִּבֶן	He built
אִשָּׁה	woman
בָּשָׂר	Flesh, meat
לִרְאוֹת	To see
יִּקַּח	He took
יַּנִּחֵהוּ	Set him
שָׁמְרָהּ	Guard it
יְצַו	commanded
עֵזֶר	Help (n)
לְבַדּוֹ	Alone, by himself
פַּעַם	time
עֶצֶם	Bone
נֶגְדּוֹ	Opposite to him
דָבַק	Stick to
צֵּלָע	Rib
לָקַח	He took
מָצָא	He found
יַּפֵּל	He caused to fall
תַּרְדֵּמָה	Sleep, trance
יִּישָׁן	He slept
צַּלְעֹתָיו	His ribs
יִּסְגֹּר	He closed
תַּחְתֶּנָּה	Below them
יָּבֵא	Brought, causative of “come”

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved