Fact-Checking the Torah: clearing up a lot of ignorance Part 4

If the only thing you know about Jews is Fiddler on the Roof or some other form of entertainment, boy have you got a lot to learn.

The feature item for this post is the "go back to Poland" thing. 

As I posted some time ago, Jews have lived in the Holy Land for nearly 36 centuries.

Sephardic Jews from around the Mediterranean (especially Italy and the marranos of Spain and Portugal) live in a number of places, including Israel. The national radio station hosts programs in the Ladino language of Spain.

The Jews of Kaifeng China are natives and have been there for a thousand years. 

After 1492, Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition wound up in the Spanish Netherlands or Brazil, and the Brazilians moved to New Amsterdam, which is now New York City. The earliest synagogues in the US, such as the Touro synagogue, were Sephardic. 

Marranos came to the Americas with Cortes and other conquerors. Their blood flows in their descendants. 

All of the Arabic nations expelled their Jews after 1948. Where did they go? Three guesses and the first two don't count.

Soon after 1948 Operation Solomon airlifted Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

After 1948, the Bene Israel of India came to Israel.

In 1966 a tribe of Inca converted to Judaism. Some of the Bnei Moshe moved to Israel. One was serving in the IDF on October 7 2023 and was killed defending his nation. 

While the LDS Book of Mormon claims the Native Americans were descended from the Ten Tribes (which is false), some Native Americans have converted to Judaism. 

African-Americans with a Jewish mother are counted as Jews. There are also African-American converts to Judaism. I remember seeing a photo of a black couple at their wedding, the man wearing a Chassidic shtreiml, but I can't find it on Google. I think it was in a Jewish calendar.

And then, Ashkenazic Jews may inherit the m33c mtDNA gene from China, which moved west along the Silk Road. I have ancestors who came from Hungary and, depending on how many generations the Kleins lived there, I might have it.

Genetic Jewishness comes through the mother, except for kohanim who inherit a specific Y chromosome unit. But with both men and women converting to Judaism for 35 centuries, there is no telling which of your acquaintances is Jewish. King Ferdinand of Aragon, who promoted the Inquisition's autos da fe, had a Jewish grandmother. So once again, curb your ignorance. And if you really want to help, use this post to bust the chops of the Jew-haters who say "go back".

Knitting -- pullover version 3

So over the last 2 years I've learned some new techniques and YOU get the benefit of them without having to evaluate a hundred different Youtube videos.

This is for a long-sleeved worsted (DK/sport) [fingering] jumper, knitted bottom up, in a woolen yarn. 

You need size 7 (5) [3] circular needles in two tether sizes, 24 for the body and 16 for the neck and upper sleeves. 

You also want DP needles in size 7 (5) [3] for the cuffs and lower part of the sleeves. Some patterns call for 6 (4) but let's not fuss with that.

It takes me 1430 yards of yarn for a long-sleeved pullover that fits my 40 inch chest and 21 inch arms. This amount allows for steeking and for a mid-back elevation. You may need less but, remember, if you overbuy you can make matching socks.

Do some math to see what stitch counts are right for you. The paper sleeve of the yarn hank or ball should give a number of stitches on a specific needle size and tell you how many inches that is. Even if you need fewer stitches when you cast on for your hem rib, you might need more rounds in the body under the arms (my back is about an inch shorted than usual for my height). You can always knit a 30 x 30 swatch to make sure your particular yarn will work out the way you want.

You may need three weeks to a month to finish this, depending on how experienced you are as a knitter and how much else is going on in your life. But the sky is the limit for how many colors there are to choose from; there are also hand-painted yarns which are multi-colored, and tweeded and beaded yarns.

If you buy hanks of yarn, wind at least two of them into one ball apiece. You will have to stop from time to time and wind more hanks into balls; it takes far less time than trying to untangle the hank as you work. Don't avoid hank yarn; there are too many nice ones out there.

Tie the ends of the two balls together with a square knot, leave a couple of inches of raw ends; you will tuck this loose yarn in during the first round of the bottom rib.

Make a slip knot near this square knot and put it on the end of your 24 inch circular needle. Now use the long-tail (slingshot) cast-on for 200 (260) [280] stitches. If you want to get straight to the goodies, go to 2:20.

I know that this cast-on seems complicated but a) it gives you a nice edge b) I find it easier to keep track of how many stitches I cast on and c) if you have a pattern that calls for a provisional cast-on, this is how you do it. 

Now make sure the stitches aren't twisted. Make sure the last five or six stitches are tight on the needle (you'll loosen them later) with the loops around the TOP and the connectors between the loops on the BOTTOM. Holding the last stitches firmly, work around to the other end of the needle making sure all the loops are on the TOP. 

Now you can start knitting the rib. Cut one of the balls of yarn off two or three inches from the end of the needle with the last stitches. Slip the last stitch on the other needle to the needle with the yarn ends, pass last stitch on that needle over, move the stitch back to the left needle, and knit it. This makes a smooth line at the join and prevents gaps. You'll use this technique again later. Drape a yarn marker before this first knitted stitch. I often put a slip knot in this marker so I know when I'm starting a new round.

In worsted, unless you are working an Iceland pattern, you will K the next stitch, then P2/K2 around, putting markers at 50, 100, and 150 stitches. For the first 6 to 8 knit stitches in the rib, thread the loose yarn ends into it. 

For all others, P the next stitch then K1/P1 around putting markers at the front center, left side and back center.

Work ribbing for 6 (8) [10] rounds and switch to knitting, flipping the marker yarns over the top when you get to them. This shows where you started knitting. Knit around for 100 (110) [120] rounds. Every 10 rounds of knitting, flip the marker yarn to the inside or outside. It will save time in checking whether you are at the marker, and it will help you count rounds.

I highly recommend Irish cottage or pit knitting for the body. a) You are better off not looking at your fingers while you work it, so you can watch TV or a movie. b) It works fast. c) It is less likely to cause tendonitis than the English hold, but the Continental or Norwegian hold also helps with this.

When you come to the end of a ball of yarn, stop 2-3 inches before the end. Start the next knit stitch and when you have wrapped the yarn around the needle, wrap the end of a new ball of yarn on top of it and pull through for a doubled stitch. Keep this up until all the yarn of the old ball has been used, and continue on. This is a join. Once you finish and wash and block your jumper, you'll never notice it.

On the last round stop 5 (6) [7] stitches before the underarm marker. Put the next 10 (12) [14] stitches on a holder. Use a thumb cast on to add 10 (12) [14] stitches for the bottom of your steeking. Do the same thing at the other under-arm halfway around. Run a marker yarn up the center of the steeking. You will later cut along this marker.

Steeking ONLY works in woolen yarn because it hackles as you wash and wear, and this keeps the cut yarn in the middle of the steeking from unraveling. If you are using a blend or cotton or linen, you want to workfaux set in sleeves.

Continue knitting around for 43 (53) [57] rounds.

Work your midback elevation which will let the hem sit parallel to the floor as follows:

K around to the center back marker and 14 stitches beyond it. Bring the yarn to the front, slip the next stitch, put the yarn to the back, return that stitch to its needle (a wrap), turn.

P 28 stitches, bring the yarn to the back, slip the next stitch, bring the yarn to the front, return that stitch to its needle (a wrap), turn.

K 47, wrap, turn.

P 66, wrap, turn.

K 85, wrap, turn.

P 94, wrap, turn.

K one round.

Knit to the middle of the steeking. Knit together at the shoulders as follows; turn the top inside out. Using one of your DPs, pick up one stitch in front and one in back, and knit together. Do this again and pass the last stitch over leaving one on the needle. 

When you have done the pass-stitch-over 23 (27) [30] times, turn the top right-side out and put the last stitch on the right-hand needle. Pass the next stitch on that needle over it and put it back on the left needle. Knit that stitch. 

Switching to the 16 inch circular needle, knit around to the middle of the other steeking, turn it inside out and knit together 23 (27) [30] stitches. Do the same PSSO maneuver.

Knit around to the other shoulder. There will be a long stitch on top; put your needle under that stitch NOT through it, and knit. This will close up part of the gap. If you still don't like it, you can come back later and fill in with duplicate stitch.

Work ribbing to the other shoulder, the same as the hem (either K2/P2 or K1/P1), slip your needle under the long top stitch and knit, and continue in rib. 

Work neck ribbing for the same number of rows as the hem. Now start a new round of rib, but pull the previous stitch over each new stitch to bind off in rib. 

When you finish, pull a loop of yarn through the last stitch, tighten it, and cut leaving at least three inches of raw end. Using a darning needle, work this end into the top of the first stitch of ribbing to make a smooth join. Poke it through the next stitch down, weave into the inside of the ribbing, knot and cut, leaving about one inch.

Now pick up stitches for the sleeves as follows: 

Using your 16 inch circular needle, knit the 10 (12) [14] underarm stitches from the holder and let this working yarn fall to the inside. Run a marker yarn on each side of the steeking middle marker, 5 (6) [7] stitches to the front and back sides.

Cut the steeking up the middle, taking the marker out as you go. Now using your crochet hook, insert it from outside to inside in the first stitch after the underarm. Pull the working yarn through to the front and put it on your circular needle. Pick up every stitch along the marker, front and back, including one through the shoulder seam.

When you get back to the underarm, slip the first stitch to the right-hand needle, pass the last body stitch over, put it back, and knit it. Knit across the underarm, slip the first body stitch to the needle, pass the last underarm stitch over, put it back, and knit it. This will close up part of the gap that usually develops here. Later you can use duplicate stitch to close up any loose stitches.

Run a marker stitch from the middle of the underarm; usually I pull the "seam" marker below the underarm for this. Count how many stitches you have around. It should be 97 (121) [129] or something like that.

Subtract from that the number of stitches you need at the cuff, 68 (72) [76]. The answer is how many stitches you have to decrease from shoulder to cuff. 

Divide by 2; this is how many rows will have to have decreases. 

Divide that number into 132 (145) [163] which is the number of rounds I need in the sleeves. The answer is how many rounds to knit before you do another decrease. 

Knit that many rounds. When you start the next row, K1 at the underarm marker, K2TOG and at the other end of the round, Slip/K1/PSSO/K1 before the underarm marker. Then knit the rounds to the next decrease.

When you have knitted 100 rounds, count the number of stitches left and do your math again. You may need to leave more rounds between decreases. If you have at most 100 stitches left in a round, divide between your DPs as follows: 35 on N1, 30 on N2, and 35 on N3. Or whatever number adds up to how many stitches you have left.

Finish knitting the sleeve and stop decreasing when you get to 68 (72) [76] stitches. When you have done 132 (143) [163] rounds in the sleeve, work ribbing the same as in the neck, and bind off in rib as you did for the neck.

Check the underarms and the neck rib at the shoulders. Use duplicate stitch to close up any stretched-out stitches. Wash in cold water and allow to drip dry. 

You can work triple the rounds at the neck for a turtleneck.

You can work short instead of long sleeves, which will save you one or two balls or a hank of yarn. In fingering weight, this will be comfortable for mid-spring and autumn. 

You can put any interest design onto this basic jumper. If you want to work Fair Isle, houndstooth or Icelandic patterns, add stitches when you get to the body, to allow whole-number repeats of the horizontal pattern. Also add 8 (10) [12] stitches in the body because these colorwork designs create a fabric with less give than monocolor knitting and you will need the extra stitches to make the upper body comfortable. 

Use the photo album for links to all kinds of beautiful ways to make your jumper. The main thing about them is, you can't work them on autopilot like you can with mono-color untextured jumpers, so they will take longer. But you owe it to yourself to make something that you will never find in a store or that will cost you more than you can afford.

Fact-Checking -- Josephus and Aristeus

So a long time ago I pointed out that the Aristeus letter about the origin of the Septuagint is known to be a forgery and can't be anything but an urban legend in the first place.

I refer to Josephus there and since I'm at loose ends just now, I thought I owed you chapter and verse.

It's Book XII of Josephus' Antiquities, Chapter 4. You can read the English here.

But as you know, translations are useless. Translations of Classical Greek are just as bad as translations of Biblical Hebrew, as I told you on my Greek thread.

And the problem is that while Aristeios is a name that appears in Josephus' Antiquities, Book XII, the chapter 4 designation is an invention of the translator, William Whiston. Book XII of Josephus refers to Aristeios in section 17, 19, and 53, none of which have to do with the Septuagint. Whiston's reference is in a footnote in the English; it's not in the Greek.

The footnote is even worse because it refers to Philo. As we all know, Philo is almost entirely urban legend.

I have said this over and over. If you want to know what ancient sources say, you must learn the language. Even then, you have to suspect that they have been doped to say what later fans wanted them to say. So you have to know the history of the culture, and you have to know the provenance of whatever you are reading. This includes whether it is a record of an oral tradition, for which there will be indications in the text, or invented in writing. Unless you're willing to do all that work, you don't really know anything about what you are reading.

Fact-Checking: Olrik and Film part 2: Bookending

One of the things oral traditions never do is say "this is important". Instead, they tell multiple tales about an issue important to the culture.

Torah does this at least twice. One set has to do with stealing wives. There are three (!) narratives, each with a different emphasis and outcome. The textual location and sequence of the narratives have to do with genetic relationships between the characters.

The other set has to do with slander. The three (!) narratives happened at different times, and two of them happened at Sinai while the other happened on the borders of the Holy Land. These narratives show the associative principle at work; slander is such a killer transgression that the tradition put all three stories in the same place to really pound the lesson into people's heads. It also teaches that nobody is above the law, and it illustrates Olrik's Law of Ascents as each opponent to Mosheh is more important or numerous.

While studying Burt Lancaster's movies, I felt that his life of reading taught him how narratives work, and that he copied oral narratives features in his work, consciously or not. A number of his film pair up as studies of the same issue from different angles; I call these films bookends. There was also room for two movies he never made, that would have been bookends to films he did release.

• ·         Eternity and Run Silent both deal with genuine issues in the military, but Eternity is more about the destruction of people while Run Silent has more to do with the tension between human concerns and the norms of behavior in the service.
• ·         Scalphunters and Nuremberg which show that just because you don’t hate doesn’t mean you won’t engage in hateful behavior.
• ·         Lawman and OK Corral show how a sheriff may want young criminals to turn from their way and live.
• ·         Mister 880 and Young Savages about compassion for criminals.
• ·         The Train and Cassandra Gorge about how resistance is not futile.
• ·         Rainmaker and Elmer Gantry, about miracles.
• ·         Cattle Annie and Tough Guys about a younger generation venerating criminals of the past.

I think that All My Sons should have been followed in the 1970s with a film about the Apollo 1 disaster of 1967, with John Glenn's quote about "two million parts" shown above the credits. Lancaster had an excellent opportunity to hire Noriyuki "Pat" Morita as technical advisor, since Morita was an aerospace manager in the 1960s. Didn't happen. If a studio ever considered it, probably NASA refused to cooperate and the studio wasn't willing to film it with a disclaimer.

I also think that if Lancaster had played General Gordon in Khartoum, it would have been on condition of making it anti-imperialist in sentiment. The studio wouldn't do that, the schedule slipped, and Lancaster headed to Italy to film The Leopard. It would have been a bookend with Zulu Dawn, which hit on a number of themes that probably made Lancaster hot to do it as soon as he read the script:

• ·         Racism sits at the top of the bill, and Lancaster gets a great line about whether relegation to a place at the rear has something to do with the Basuto troops that his character, Dumford, raised, trained, and commanded.
• ·         You see classic British prejudice against the Irish, which Lancaster’s character is, and he even managed an Irish brogue. (He was tone-deaf about accents: this is the only time in 45 years when he tried one but it was a natural due to his being of Belfast stock.) This anti-Irish sentiment becomes explicit when Chelmsford sneers at Colonel Brown for being Irish, as much as for his concern over his troops’ lack of provision.
• ·         Assimilation. Simon Ward’s character enthusiastically shakes the hand of a black man who attends a garden party, but Ward’s character only has one function: killing blacks. The black guest has assimilated to the imperialists, but those who will not assimilate must be destroyed. Bishop Colenso’s “there should be room for all of us” is disingenuous; the empire may have geographic room for all, but not cultural room for all.
• ·         At minute 29 we get a chilling “let us hope that this will be the final solution to the Zulu problem.” I would not doubt that Lancaster took this role in part to get that statement in front of audiences who had learned in school about the Holocaust, especially after his role in Nuremberg.
• ·         Chelmsford comes across as a British Custer: “my only fear is that the Zulu will avoid engagement.” When the empire lost the battle, he blamed Dumford, who was dead, and whose advice the film pointedly shows the general dismissing. This was Lancaster’s chance to do a version of 1970’s Little Big Man.

Colenso was an avid missionary and that means he was an assimilationist, though he tried to get blacks treated equally under the law. He also rejected a common origin for all human races. He knew there was not cultural room for all when the Anglican church attacked his Hexateuchal commentary and filed suit to deprive him of his salary. If Lancaster came across this information while studying the script, it would have made him even hotter to do the film because it illustrates how religious institutions hang on to power by suppressing inconvenient unconventionalities. And in a sense that makes Zulu Dawn a bookend to Elmer Gantry for the hat trick.

If you have seen Lancaster's films, look again with this in mind and let me know if you find other sets. Also let me know if your favorite thespian does things like this. Lancaster was one of the few in Hollywood who gained control of his career early on, so he may be one of the few if not the only one to do this kind of thing. 

But it's not the same as doing one sequel after another, or doing films that follow on from a TV series, or making films about comic book characters. Those are just the studios trying to ensure an audience instead of daring to reach beyond the tried and true, the familiar and possibly tired. Reaching beyond is what Lancaster always tried to do, one reason his reputation has grown over the years.

Fact-Checking -- clearing up a lot of ignorance part 3

So apparently everything old is new again, and the blood libel is being trotted out for a new phase of the current anti-Semitism now that the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been exposed as a/ anti-Semitic and b/ paid for by various US companies, which may in fact be cutouts for the real instigators if they are not being used to launder money for those instigators. (b happened yesterday.)

And somebody tweeted that the blood libel was a thing of the 1200s CE.

Well, it wasn't. It was started by Christians in the 400s CE.

And the last manifestation that I know of was the 1913 trial in Kyiv, which at the time was part of the Russian empire, of Mendel Beilis. I have an entire blog thread about the trial. It has ten sections on the trial that will tell you what happened if you don't have time for the larger part of the work.

That larger part consists of 34 PDFs with the first and only English translation of the entire trial transcript, with footnotes, attached to a description of each days' material with other metadata. The transcript was 1430 double-column pages long in the pre-Soviet orthography. With the notes, the PDFs add up to over 3000 pages.

Since I finished posting the translation (2014), various new information or epiphanies have come up, and I added links for them to the original page.

The transcript and other information are here. I just checked and the website is still there. I downloaded things to my laptop since you never can tell when a link will rot. Let me know if anything has disappeared that I link to.

The trial was a fraud from beginning to end. The government knew that Vera Cheberyak and her gang of violent robbers committed the murder. When she was arrested in July 1911 by honest cops, a tsarist lackey had her released and began forging evidence against Beilis. He had depositions forged over the signatures of people who lived near the site of the murder; he had Vera's husband perjure himself -- Vera and their sole surviving child also committed perjury -- testifying to a story the government invented. He had items planted that supposedly related to the murder but had nothing to do with it. He had an incriminating letter forged over Beilis' signature. 

The government's medical examiners signed an autopsy report that the government wrote in St. Petersburg. The information in it did not prove the blood libel because there was no way to do that. The three government witnesses who spoke or signed depositions about the blood libel, each had a different description of how you knew if a murder was the ritual murder involved in the blood libel.

The government's witnesses were mostly illiterate and none of them knew anything incriminating. The defense consisted of five lawyers who worked themselves into exhaustion in sessions that lasted up to 14 hours a day, 34 days straight including closing arguments, without a day off.

In the end, despite what anti-Semites will tell you, the jury voted on two charges. One charge was about the fact that a murder had been committed, without assigning guilt to any party. The jury voted yes on this. 

The other charge was about whether Mendel Beilis was guilty of the murder out of "motives of religious fanaticism", the blood libel. Six of the twelve men on the jury voted no, which was enough to acquit.

The single most important thing about this trial was that it violated a century-old principle in law. There should be no crime charged if there is no existing law about it in the penal code. Russia repealed a law about murder due to "motives of religious fanaticism" in 1906, during the reforms forced on Nikolay II by the 1905 revolution. It was illegal to try Beilis or anybody else on this charge.

Fact-Checking -- Olrik and film

I have an experiment I'd like you to try. Feedback is at your discretion. I want you to take the Epic Laws and put them in front of you while you watch some of your most and least favorite films. See how many hits you get.

Film is substantially oral literature. Any written literature that transitions to film has to be rewritten, except for records of oral traditions like fairy tales. Find a filmed version of War and Peace online somewhere, watch it, and then read the book. You will see how Tolstoy's text had to be simplified so as not to overwhelm moviegoers. Even Sergei Bondarchuk's classic four-film version is much simpler than Tolstoy's book. Simplifications often reduce the work to the dimensions of oral literature.

I was watching Judgment at Nuremberg, which Youtube maintains free with ads to encourage viewership. It is based on an actual trial involving 16 defendants; this is cut down to four, which most of us in the west can handle because we are used to four suits in cards, etc. But while there are four principal characters, there are three contrasting viewpoints: Janning's, Rolfe's, and Haywood's. This is the epic Law of Three, the one that turns up the most in both oral literature and film.

Burt Lancaster's work as Janning blew me away and I went on a search for his other roles. He played 87 characters in his 87 films in 45 years. He started in noir films and made 14 westerns, but he also buckled his swash several times and made three films where he was dubbed in Italian. He never made a sequel, but his movies started trends like violent westerns, disaster movies, and apocalyptic body count films. 

And the epic laws turn up in almost every one of his films. 

In particular, Devil's Disciple with Kirk Douglas illustrates the laws. First, the George Bernard Shaw play was rewritten, adding about ten minutes of action to give Burt a bigger role. This happens in oral literature, and sometimes the addition spins off a new cycle of literature dedicated to the character in that role.

Second, in those ten minutes, Rev. Anthony Anderson reinvents his own personality. From a holy fool, he becomes a militant rebel. This is an internal cascading contrast, and it always contrasts with Kirk Douglas' character, a black sheep who backs into rebellion.

Third, there are Law of Three events. It takes three incidents to make Anderson rebel: the death of an innocent man; the arrest of Richard Dudgeon in a case of mistaken identity; and the fact that the British wanted to arrest Anderson for giving the innocent man a Christian burial.

As a rebel, Anderson makes three attempts to blow up British munitions. One British officer has to be put out of the way in the first attempt; two soldiers in the second attempt; and a squad in the third. This is also Olrik's Law of Ascents. 

In Run Silent Run Deep, Lieutenant Bledsoe the XO shuts down P.O. Kohler three times for questioning Captain Richardson's orders. Actually, the second time Kohler doesn't get a chance to say anything, he just shows himself in the doorway and Bledsoe says "shut up".

Oral literature also illustrates behavioral norms. In Run Silent, the norms of military behavior shape the action, especially Bledsoe refusing to criticize the captain to the men or explain orders -- or tolerate their objections to Richardson's orders.

In Scalphunters, which I discussed before, Lancaster acts out an anti-racism message instead of stating it in the script. This whole film is an example that oral literature uses action, not description or discussion, to get to its denouement. 

Actually, many of Lancaster's films have a message; it is stated in the script only once, in Control: "There is no shelter from The Bomb, even in a shelter;" His war films are all anti-war films, except possibly Run Silent, and even then Lancaster gets to point out that "captain's discretion" gets people killed. 

It was a thrill watching those films and I watched a lot of them twice. The first run was to get through the plot and find the pivotal points; the second was to watch the man work. He was GOOD. He was good from the very first film he put in the can, Desert Fury, which you can see on Internet Archive. It was the second role he ever played in his life and he held his own in scenes with Mary Astor, of Maltese Falcon fame. I wrote 20 pages (single-spaced) on how good an actor Burt Lancaster was. Let me know if you're interested.