Fact-Checking the Torah -- Deuteronomy 23:23

So I’ve been saying that normally, people only bring sin offerings for non-willful transgression of the 365 negative commandments, and the nazir only brings a sin offering because the Torah says so.  But the rabbis weren’t happy with that and tried to find a rationale for it, and that feeds into Jewish culture.

The rabbis said that the nazir causes himself pain.  One of the pains he causes himself is a certain amount of social ostracism.  Say you’re planning a party and you know one of your friends is an alcoholic.  Do you invite him, knowing he’s probably going to get shit-faced and do something stupid?  Or do you force everybody else to drink sparkling cider?

In olden times, people didn’t have money to spend on making sure that everybody’s whims were satisfied.  People had a right to expect wine to be served at a party.  If the hosts made sure they had wine, they didn’t have money left to buy apple juice.  That sort of thing. 

So they wouldn’t invite the nazir.  That includes Passover, brises, weddings, congratulations for business successes, welcome home trips from journeys, birthday parties, and all the other happy events of life.  Neither can the nazir attend a funeral to comfort his friends. 

One way of putting it is that the nazir is trying to be “righter than Gd.”  He is trying to pretend that he knows better than Gd what he should and should not do.  He might move on to try to prohibit himself from doing other things Gd allows, and then to prohibit himself from things Gd commands him to do.  An example would be sex.  Gd set up sex and marriage to renew the population.  A man who does not obey the first commandment, “be fruitful and multiply,” (Genesis 1:28) violates Jewish law.  What will he do next?

In fact Judaism rejects all kinds of asceticism.  Giving up leavening for Passover is a commandment; giving it up in the 12/13 months between Passovers has no support in Jewish law.  Taking the nazir vow is limited to 30 days, one Jewish month, yadda yadda yadda.  Mishnah and Gemara discuss people who take on lifetime nazir vows; but who is going to do that knowing that he will have to bring a sacrifice – a substantial expense in those days – every 31^st day?

So why allow the nazir vow?  Because people sometimes want to be hard on themselves.  The nazir vow is temporary; that is foreseen in the commandment to end the vow, bathe and shave and bring the offerings.  Hopefully the person who does this will realize how much social interaction he misses out on and avoid the vow in future, and reason from that to other possible prohibitions he might impose on himself, and avoid other such vows in future.

And that is all good.  Deuteronomy 23:23 says “If you avoid making vows there is no sin.” 

Next week I’m going to start on the subject of tameh/tahor, or taharot.  Start by reading Leviticus 12.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:8

I apologize if you have not been able to find this page for a while.  I don't know what Blogger was thinking by removing the link to it.  If this is the first of these posts you have seen and you want to start at the beginning, use the menu of pages on the right to find them.
Genesis 2:8

 

ח וַיִּטַּע יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים גַּן־בְּעֵדֶן מִקֶּדֶם וַיָּשֶׂם שָׁם אֶת־הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר יָצָר:

 

Transliteration: Va-yita **** elohim gan-b’-eden mi-qedem va-yasem sham et-ha-adam asher yatsar.

Translation:    **** Gd planted a garden in Eden toward the east and placed there the man whom He had made.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

יִּטַּע	plant
גַּן	garden
מִקֶּדֶם	To the east
קֶּדֶם	east
יָּשֶׂם	Placed, positioned
שָׁם	there
יָצָר	Had formed

 

Mi has two meanings: toward; and from.  In some places it is debatable which it means but in most it is clear.

 

You see the past tense of ytsr from the pal binyan in this verse.  Remember I said that the past tense not only indicates completed action, it has the sense of a pluperfect.  That’s what it does here.

 

Yasem is from the root sim.  Since there’s a long vocabulary list in this lesson, I’ll show you sim in a later one.

 

For now, I want to point out a connection to past times in this verse.  About 3000 BCE, edin was a word for land that once lay along the Euphrates and was easy to irrigate.  When the river shifted west (miqedem, “from the east”) the lands to the east (miqedem) were abandoned.  They were too dry and it took too much work to irrigate them.

 

The Akkadian epic Atra-Hasis begins with a tablet set in these times, in which the major gods have the minor gods doing the irrigation.   The minor gods complain and humans are created to take over the work.

 

The general desiccation in Mesopotamia at this time promoted control over the population so that levies of work crews were established to do the irrigation to prevent starvation.

 

But that’s not the situation in this episode of the Bible, as you will see.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- I'm going in

This weekend I used the last of a bottle of Joy dish detergent.
From here on, it's Castile soap.
This will save you chemicals and money but not time.
After you wash dishes with castile soap, you have to wipe them.
Castile soap doesn't have the sheeting action of chemical detergents.
So you need to put vinegar in the rinse dispenser of your dishwasher.
I don't have one, I wash by hand; then I have to dry.
A couple of years ago I bought kitchen towels for various uses.
Now they will dry my dishes too.
Except for some laundry detergent, I'm using castile soap in most of my cleaning.

If your area has greywater programs, castile soap is perfect for them.
Buy a plastic tub and catch the water while you wash and rinse.
Then use it on your garden.
This will keep you from using clean drinkable water on a rosebush, for example.

DIY: it all fits together.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- survival

So the storm last week turned out better than expected.
For one thing, November hasn't been as rainy as usual and the DC area got lots of rain.
I know -- I drove through it in the pitch dark night starting just after 5.
About 7, as it was getting light, I stopped for a shot of caffeine.
The first snow I saw was at the 100 mile point.
Up in the mountains, wet snow fell the whole hundred miles of the last lap.
A snow plow passed me on the left at one point.
There was lots of salt on the roads.
The big rigs and other traffic did a good job of grinding it into the pavement.
They also plowed the slush aside.
I just plugged along for hours and got to the hotel before noon.
And the trip back was dry and sunny.
Don't be afraid of weather, just realize that conditions are going to be different.
Keep your speed down.
Don't zoom in and out of lanes -- it's not going to get you anywhere but in the ditch.
Leave plenty of stopping room -- tailgating will also get you in the ditch.
I realize this advice is falling on deaf ears in my area.
Which is why the emergency sirens have been sounding three and four times a day
for a week
as police and fire dealt with the idiots in the DC area who have wrecks
when the weather announcers on the radio even say the word "snow."
No lie.  It's been like that for the nearly 40 years I've lived here.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Knitting -- argyle

I am about to finish one of Anne Feitelson's Fair Isle designs.
The next British classic is argyle (I'll get around to Aran after that).
The key to argyle is a lock stitch which is something like the weave in on Fair Isle.
But you don't weave floats in with argyle.
You put your yarn on bobbins.
You knit from one bobbin up to where you change colors.
You knit from the bobbin with the new color, locking the first stitch.
Then you knit from the bobbin with the original color.
You add the thin lines, if there are any, with a different technique.
Vogue has a ladies' argyle twin sweater set pattern for $6.
Argyle is also the classic sweater pattern for men.
Just remember, if you're going to knit an argyle sweater for your man,
there's an urban legend that this will end the relationship.

Use your search engine:
argyle knitting free pattern
You'll find images, some of which are actual charts for knitting argyle.
There are plenty of Youtube videos, too.

Also search on
knitting kills relationship
You'll probably find advice on how to avoid killing the relationship with a handknit.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- cookware

This is about non-stick cookware, not making your own.
I want to recommend good quality steel pans, like my Revereware.
My mother's set has lasted almost 60 years and mine almost 30.
Here is a link to several pages of an article about non-stick.
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/nervous-about-nonstick?


This is the Good-Housekeeping article referred to.
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-reviews/cooking-tools/cookware-reviews/nonstick-cookware-safety-facts


Why this goes with DIY is, remember I told you recently that to fry right,
you have to fry very hot?
Well, if you heat non-stick to very high temperature, it starts to break down.
This has nothing to do with the setting on the burner.
The pan heats up much faster and higher than a metal pan at the same setting.
It doesn't matter whether it's dry or has oil in it, you shouldn't pre-heat it.
But getting the oil to the right temperature to fry foods absolutely requires pre-heating.
And it takes longer than the 2 1/2 minute maximum the article talks about.
So non-stick pans are not better for frying than metal ones.
Scratching grooves into the non-stick coating with the wrong utensils will
cause buildup of food in them that you can't get out with a steel wool pad like you can
when you use metal.
You also have to throw out your non-stick pans every 3-5 years.
That doesn't save you anything and makes them dangerous for all kinds of reasons.
So: go back to cast-iron frying pans or Revereware or something like that
and forget non-stick.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Who buys this stuff?

You know, those pouches of tuna that you see people eating from in the ads?
I was thinking of my emergency stash and the pricing info on the shelf shocked me.
I stood there for three minutes doing mental arithmetic.
Then I checked the price for canned tuna.
Then I just shook my head.
You pay $14 a pound for the pouches.
You pay $5 a pound for the cans.
Lookit, if you buy $14 of the pouches that's all you get.  That's 4 servings of just tuna.
You buy $5 of the cans, you spend $3.59 on a loaf of bread, you spend $3 on a box of eggs, you spend $3 on a jar of mayo, and that's four meals of tuna salad sandwiches, plus 11 eggs for sandwiches.
A radio station reported last week that you can feed 4 people a chicken dinner with veggies made from scratch.
For $15.
I can do that even shopping kosher, which people think is so expensive.
Who buys this stuff?  People spending their way into poverty.

I'm just saying...

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved