Fact-Checking the Torah -- Leviticus 1-4

For this week I said to read Leviticus 1-4.  These are laws of sacrifices and I’m covering them now because of a previous verse about the two offerings brought at the end of the nazir vow.

The nazir had to bring a whole offering and a sin offering.  Why?

Jewish law says that there are four kinds of sins.

One is failing to obey a positive commandment.  For that, you bring a whole offering.  Positive commandments are obeyed out of love and devotion for Gd.  Whole offerings are made out of love and devotion for Gd.  The verse that shows the connection between whole offerings and failing to obey a positive commandment is Leviticus 1:4.

There was a long discussion on the Google Jewish group about this.  We had to traverse a lot of Jewish law to find and confirm the connection.  The citations include: Babylonian Talmud Yoma 36a, Zevachim 6a; Tosefta (a commentary from the time when Talmud was being put into writing) on Sedra Qodashim Tractate Menachot 10:3; and Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah Sefer Avodah Ma’aseh haKorbanot 3:13.  The last citation is a halakhah, a final ruling.

The point is that Leviticus 1:4 is about an individual laying on hands for a personal offering, so this verse does not refer to the tamid, the eternal daily whole offering made out of love and devotion for Gd.

Furthermore, there’s no reason for an individual to bring a whole offering, an olah, except one.  There are peace offerings and thank offerings and celebration offerings and the Pesach sacrifice, and those all come for happy occasions.  The whole offering is different.

And the difference is that it atones for an individual who did NOT obey a positive commandment.  The reason the nazir brings it is that he refused to drink wine, which is required for some observances like starting Shabbat or the Four Cups of wine drunk at the Passover Seder.

The order in which offerings are discussed is: whole offering, which starts back with Exodus 29:15-18 and 38-42 and continues in Leviticus 1; peace offerings, starting in Leviticus 3; and then the sin and asham offerings.  For next week, read Leviticus 4 carefully.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Vocabulary Review V

Vocabulary review

 

אֵלֶּה	These
הִנֵּה	Behold
שְּׁבִיעִי	seventh
נָתַתִּי	I have given, set, placed
הִנֵּה	Behold!
כִבְשֻׁהָ	Dominate it
אָכְלָה	Food
יֶרֶק	Green (n)
שִּׁשִּׁי	sixth
יְכֻלּוּ	They were completed
צְבָאָם	Their host
מְלַאכָה	melakhah
יִּשְׁבֹּת	He rested
שָׁבַת	He rested
יְקַדֵּשׁ	He sanctified
תוֹלְדוֹת	Generations, births
הִבָּרְאָם	Their being created
עֲשׂוֹת	creation

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

More power to you

So I get a special mailing from my power company.
It evaluates three kinds of houses:
My houses;
Houses like mine:
Efficient houses like mine.
I don't know what they mean by efficient.
It must be the people living in those houses who aren't efficient.
Because my house used less energy in a recent month than they did.
If you get this kind of mailing or can look at it on your account,
Think what you can do about it.
From what I hear on the news, most of the time you are leaving rechargers plugged in when you're not even home.
For me, the average peak hour of energy use is the run-up to making breakfast.
Yeah, I'm really going to skip breakfast.
Eating breakfast is a cornerstone of losing that weight.
YMMV

Anyway, I have to wonder.
The water company raised prices because people are doing such a good job of conserving.
What is the power company going to use for an excuse?

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- more clothing

You're saying, they don't make patterns in my size.
Two answers.
Vogue's Custom Fit patterns go up to size 22.
Vogue's Today's Fit patterns go up to hip size 57.
They are more than just mumus, there are some kicky dresses and tops, too.
That was just the first answer.

The second answer is you're going to die.
OK we're all going to die, but being too heavy for your height is an early death sentence.
I have struggled with my weight all my life and I'm finally having some success losing weight,
and it might help me live to see some Very Important People graduate college.
In the meantime I like the feeling that my pants aren't going to pop if I sit down a little fast.
When I hit my next target, which I think will happen by January,
I'll let you know.
For now, if you scream "fat discrimination," that's just an excuse not to do yourself some good.
Why don't you want to do something for yourself that is good?
That's what you have to figure out between now and January.
Rant over.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- yard waste bags

Did the last garden post give you any ideas?
Yep,  you're right.
You can save a ton of money on yard waste bags if you don't throw out your dead leaves.
Rake carefully if you have oak trees, and separate the leaves from the acorns.
Same if you have walnut or hazelnut or chestnut trees.
Rake up the edible nuts and store them for eating.
Now run your mower over the leaves and shred them up.
Rake them back over the tree roots.
Make sure there's at least 6 inches between the tree trunk and the inner ring of shredded leaves.
Make sure the leaves are no more than 2 inches deep.
This will be good for your tree; all the nutrients it put into the leaves
will now go back to the tree.
If you push the leaves up against the trunk, two things will happen.
Moisture will get trapped around the trunk and eat into the wood.
Roots will grow vertically out of the ground to make the most of the nutrients in the leaves.
If you heap the leaves deeper than 2 inches, and also mound them around the tree,
the roots will grow tight in to the tree. 
Then if the winds are heavy, the tree doesn't have anything to stabilize it, and it goes over.
Or if there's a drought, the roots dry out, because they haven't sunk deep in the ground.
Tree mounds kill more trees than insect infestations.
Do it right.
Save yourself money.
Here's Mike McGrath's YBYG article on the subject.


© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- The Gathering

Sparrows are sociable, cheeky little things.
They're gathering for the winter in a bush at my neighbor's house.
It's a nice thick bush.
And it's only feet from where I normally hang my bird feeder.
These must be long-time residents and a kid or two.
They have easy access both to food and to my bird bath.
And if the hawk shows up for a quick meal,
it's a quick flip of the wings to get back to the bush.
I don't know if they used to do this before I started hanging the feeder,
but I've been doing that for about 5 years now
and supposedly sparrows can live about 6 years (the maximum was 13).
Anyway this is a reminder that when I buy groceries this week,
I need to buy for the birds too.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Free speech

If this is your first time here, you can read earlier posts here.

We’re discussing Exodus 22:27 and 23:1-3, Exodus 23:6-10 and Leviticus 19:15-16.  I said that Torah prohibits backbiting by criticizing (negatively) court decisions.

You’re saying, but that’s a restriction on free speech.  Doesn’t Jewish law protect free speech?

In fact somebody on a discussion group once put it more strongly; how could he be a halakhic Jew and still preserve his rights of free speech and thought under the Constitution?

Well, the thought thing was a strawman fallacy.  Jewish law never penalizes feelings and the only problem with thoughts deals with violating rules on sacrifices.  It sometimes punishes actions.  So let’s just talk about free speech. 

The poster still set up a strawman fallacy because there are forms of speech that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect.  Falsehood is not protected when it leads to damages.  That’s the subject of defamation suits, false advertising suits, fraudulent misrepresentation suits.  Threats are not protected; that’s the doctrine of “clear and present danger”, leading to criminal trials against verbal bullies and people who make threats against the government. 

Torah does not protect power-mongering based on negative representations of court proceedings.  If the witnesses have not been impeached and the court has observed due process, then a personal loss is just that, a personal loss.  The person who can’t take a personal loss, but has to pretend that society has been damaged by it, has a character flaw.

Harsh?  I’ll give you a for instance.  When the Mendel Beilis trial of 1913 ended in acquittal of Beilis, one of the prosecuting attorneys said in Beilis’ hearing “Russia is destroyed.”

This attorney had been trying since 1906 to have reinstated a law that allowed trying people for “religious fanaticism” because he believed that ritual murder existed and was currently in practice by Jews.  The verdict in the Beilis case rejected ritual murder.  I’ve translated the transcript, I know how the charge was worded, and that’s how I know what it meant.  See my essay “Endgame.”  This attorney was a bigot who thought that if the government wouldn’t support his bigotry, it was incompetent.

Well, the government was incompetent, and events from 1905 through 1915 proved that, but not in the sense the attorney meant.  In fact the Beilis trial was not an example of due process. All the testimony and evidence against Beilis was either faked or “empty rumors”.  The witnesses who spoke against Beilis were impeached on the witness stand and some of them co-operated in proving that their depositions had been forged by the government.  The behavior of the entire “legal system” in the Beilis case demonstrated to Russian citizens that they could not count on fair play in court, no matter who they were.  That along with everything else going on in Russia from 1905 to 1915 made it impossible for the Romanovs to hold onto their throne, even with foreign troops to help.

That is a constant theme in history.  Governments that set out to oppress the Jews wind up oppressing everybody.

For next week read as much of Leviticus 1-4 as you can get under your belt.  I will slice and dice it for you, and this is not the entire context, but I’ll get to the rest of the context after next week.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved