Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:25

Genesis 1:25

 

כה וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים אֶת־חַיַּת הָאָרֶץ לְמִינָהּ וְאֶת־הַבְּהֵמָה לְמִינָהּ וְאֵת כָּל־רֶמֶשׂ הָאֲדָמָה לְמִינֵהוּ וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי־טוֹב:

 

Transliteration: Va-yomer elohim totse ha-arets nefesh chayah l’minah b’hemah varemes v’chaito-erets l’minah va-y’hi khen.

Translation:    Gd said let the earth bring out living soul of its kind, domestic animal and creeper and wild animals of the earth of its kind and it was so.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

בְּהֵמָה	Domestic animal
אֲדָמָה	Earth, dirt, land

 

I mentioned something before that I will use today’s vocabulary word for.  The gender – yes, you guessed it – is feminine.  When a feminine noun takes the construct, the heh at the end is replaced by tav.  You’ve seen that in the previous lesson – chayah  became chayat before the personal endings were added.

 

What I can point out with both these words is that when chayah became chayto, “wild animal” in the construct state, the second qamats which was under the yod turned into a shva.

 

The same is true for adamah.  The construct is not adamat, it’s admat. 

 

Similarly with ruach, there was a patach under the chet.  But the plural is ruchot, not ruachot.

 

You’re not ready to use these things in your own writing, not by a long stretch, but you have to recognize these features of feminine construct and plural nouns, and that they appear for possessives.

 

Hebrew makes a distinction between domestic and wild animals.  There’s an important legal reason for that.  Actually two.  The first one is that wild animals are always considered dangerous and anybody who doesn’t keep their wild animal locked up has to pay damages if it gets out and hurts somebody.  A behemah on the other hand is not considered dangerous unless it hurts somebody three days in a row, a different person each time, especially if one day it hurts an adult and another day it hurts a child.  Such an animal has to be put to death because it can’t live peaceably among people.  Its owner can also be executed because the second injury gave him notice to keep the animal locked up and he didn’t, so obviously he doesn’t care about the lives of others.

 

The second distinction is how one deals with the animal at death.  There are wild animals that can be eaten, like deer and gazelle.  When they are slaughtered kosher style, the blood has to be poured out of their bodies as much as possible, and covered with earth.  When you slaughter a cow or goat, however, the kashering process removes as much blood as possible, but it doesn’t have to be covered.  Then there’s the koi – but I digress.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- weird July

Normally I would be outside right now watering my veggies.
Normally, I would not be calculating what time today the grass will be dry enough to mow.
It would be dormant; temps today would be in the 90s and our last rain would be a week ago.
But we have had two or three thorough rainstorms this week and a couple last week.
Temps today will only reach the 80s.
The clouds are going to part and the humidity drop to the teens or something.

So later I will try to get some fence painting done; it's due in a week and a half.

The only normal thing is making sure to dump my bird bath at night to fight mosquitoes.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

OB -- no, that's not it

A quote from an article online (use it to google to find the article) says
"The law states that: in a good, progressive relationship, tasks must be shared 50/50. This means that you both have to earn money (because this is, aside from a practical necessity, the sole route to freedom and fulfilment) and both of you have to take care of the housework and kids (because that’s a chore that it would be deeply unfair if one person had the sole or dominant share of)."
This mistaken notion of equality, according to the author, is the source of arguments in families where one person stays home and one leaves the home and brings back money.

That's not it.

What's it is that some tasks are seen as more important because money is paid down for them.  This started a long time ago in male dominated society, not in egalitarian society.  That's an error of fact which ruins this thesis.

If you read my DIY page, you will see that work done in the house can generate money.  Selling what you DIY can generate money.  You know that you can do those things for a restaurant and bring money home.  But if it is only used to save money, the male-dominated mindset says it doesn't count.
Betty Friedan had a male-dominated mindset, poor thing.
She was taught to de-value anything that didn't actually result in money being handed over.
That's the same attitude that devalues artistic endeavor -- until it starts bringing in money -- or crucial jobs like teaching -- that only pay what the state feels like paying.

Looking at it as if equality is a mistake is false.  The truth is that if a family had to pay somebody for everything done by whoever stays home, they would need $60,000 over and above mortgage, utilities, clothing, food, and the price of using transportation.  And that's just labor.  Because as I have shown you in DIY, there's also a price for materials.
And a person who uses those materials wastefully or buys overpriced items doubles the expense on materials.  Besides bringing chemicals into the house that are useless or harmful.
So those quarrels come from a mental attitude, but not because it's an issue of equality.  It's an issue from a male-dominated society that devalues household work.

Now, don't take this as anti-feminist and show it to your SO and say, why can't you feel like this?  If you get snarled at by somebody who has been home all day, you look at your own attitude first. 
Then imagine the conversation with your boss: "Hi, I need a raise of $60,000 a year so that my SO can sit around the house all day long and think of ways to baby me."  Yeah, that's going to go well.

The law mentioned in the quote is not meant in the sense of a statute written by government.  What the author really means is a societal expectation.  But he would have to do an awful lot more work to convince me that he has really delved into the society he's criticizing and has statistics to back up his claim.  I think he's just generating polemic, not reporting on a study.  The website may like what he said, but that doesn't mean he's right.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- jelly and jam

It's time.  The berries are ripe.  You can find a pick-it-yourself place or buy at a farmer's market.
Jam works best with strawberries and blueberries which are ripe RIGHT NOW.
Jelly works best with blackberries, which are ripe RIGHT NOW, and red raspberries which will be ripe in August.
This is going to sound way too easy, but it's just as easy as it sounds.  The only thing you have to be fussy about is your timing, and there are ways of dealing with bad timing at the end of the post.

First, buy some 4 ounce jars with lids.  There are websites which will sell you cases of 24.  That may seem like a lot, but you can also use them for herbal infusions -- more on that in some other post.
You probably need 3 jars per pound of raw fruit.
Second, decide on your storage method.  For now I'm going to recommend that you make sure you have room in the freezer for your jelly and jam.  I'll explain that in another post too.
Third, buy a couple of bags of sugar or BIG jars of honey.

You need a strainer for jelly.  Use a juice strainer.  Most colanders have holes either too big or too small to get the seeds out without losing a lot of jelly.
You don't need to strain your jam.  The seeds of strawberries and blueberries are small enough that they won't grit your teeth.
You need a saucepan and a timer, which can be your phone or tablet or laptop.

Take the green tops off the strawberries.  The others might have stems; remove those.
Mash the berries.
Measure the mash and dump it in the saucepan.
Measure out the exact same amount of sugar and dump it in the saucepan.  If you use honey, use 2/3 as much honey as fruit.
Stir together thoroughly.
Turn the stove on to about 5 or 6.
When the fruit starts boiling, set your timer for 5 minutes and let it go, just keeping an eye on it because it can foam up and boil over.
At 5 minutes, turn the heat down to 2 1/2 or 3 and cook 15 minutes.
At 15 minutes, take the saucepan off the heat and set it aside. 
Let the jelly or jam cool at least halfway. 

Strain the seeds out of blackberry or raspberry jelly.  Put the strainer on a saucepan, put jelly in the strainer, and use a spoon or fork to push the jelly through the strainer, leaving the seeds behind.

Divide up among jars.  The fruit probably cooked down by 25% and that's why you probably need 3 jars per pound.
Screw the lids on.

One day later, uncap each jar and see if the contents are semi-solid.  If they're very solid, reheat slightly with 6 TBSP water, then boil again, stirring constantly, and put back in the jar.
If they're pretty much liquid, reheat to a boil and cook another 15 minutes, then put back in the jar.
If it still doesn't work, the solid stuff can be used as a meat glaze and the soft stuff can be used as syrup for pancakes, waffles or French toast.

I admit it.  You won't save any money on this, unless you grow your own, and I won't talk about that until I try it, but lots of people do.  But you do avoid tons of chemicals.
I asked a young relative whether the homemade or the store-bought was better.  "Homemade."

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- the poor parents

Usually birds lay a bunch of eggs, but they only raise one chick of each brood to maturity.
Still, they usually have at least two broods in a season.
And they breed for 5-10 seasons.
Many years ago I did happen to see a pair of mockingbirds with two chicks out of the nest at the same time, but that was an exception.
Except maybe for mockingbirds.
Because my mockingbirds have hatched their second brood of the season.
And they are raising two chicks this time around!
I thought I heard two chicks calling, sometimes one from each side of the house.
I thought it was two mated pairs, each with one chick.
Friday I saw both chicks sitting on my back fence at the same time.
The same parent was feeding both of them.
For us, the plus is that it takes so many bugs to feed one chick, and twice as many for two.
So our yards are going to be almost bug free.
And nobody can complain about that!
Except the poor exhausted parents who have to feed those eating machines!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah: Exodus 22:6-11, 13-14

Your assignment for this week was to read Exodus 22:6-11, 13-14. 

A crucial issue in any legal system is, who owns property and who has custody of it?  Often the two are the same, but for thousands of years an owner could grant temporary custody to another person.  Then if the property is damaged, lost, stolen, or destroyed, the owner ought to get restitution, right?

Torah describes four classes of custodians who don’t own the property, and each has different responsibilities toward the owner.  Here’s a table summarizing who owes what.

	Responsible for *	Adjudication
Party**	Breakage / Destruction / Theft / Loss	Oath    / Compensation
Borrower	B=Y          D=N          T=N       L=Y	N                  Y
Renter	B=Y          D=N          T=Y     L=Y	Breakage      Theft/Loss
Paid bailee	B=Y          D=N          T=Y     L=Y	Breakage      Theft/Loss
Unpaid bailee	B=N          D=N          T=Y     L=Y	Y                  N

 

* Exodus 22:9 / Exodus 22:9 / Exodus 22:6, 10-11 / Exodus 22:8

** Exodus 22:13-14; Exodus 22:14; Exodus 22:9-11; Exodus 22:6-8 

 

One thing Torah doesn’t state, and Mishnah does, is a hidden assumption.  Every kind of property has customary usages; you wouldn’t plow with a goat and you wouldn’t shave an ox for fleece.  Every kind of customary usage has certain auxiliary equipment and might take place under varying circumstances.  Somebody who borrows an ox might not have his own plow and harness, or the ox he borrows might be smaller than his own ox which might be laid up lame.  If he borrows the equipment from the owner of the ox, he’s responsible for what happens to the equipment as well as to the ox.  

The classic statement in Mishnah is that the borrower, B, said he was going to plow his lowlands.  But he plowed his highlands and the plow broke against the rocks; he’s liable for that breakage and has to pay for repairs or a new plow.  Or he says he’s going to plow in the highlands, but he plowed in the lowlands and the ox got heat stroke and died.  He’s responsible for that and has to compensate the owner A who now needs a new ox.

A bailee is somebody who agrees to take custody of property.  He might be paid for it, like if you hire space for your horse in a stable.  You should be smart enough to choose a stable that is well-cared for so you don’t risk your horse getting hurt; that includes making sure the person running the stable has adequate feed and bedding.  But the owner of the stable is responsible for protecting your horse so it doesn’t get stolen or just wander off.  He has to pay damages in this case, but if the horse gets sick or hurt he only has to take an oath that it wasn’t his fault.

For next week, read Exodus 23:4 and Deuteronomy22:1-4.  We’ll talk about a special kind of unpaid bailee and then get to the important issue I mentioned above. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:24

Genesis 1:24

 

כד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים תּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה לְמִינָהּ בְּהֵמָה וָרֶמֶשׂ וְחַיְתוֹ־אֶרֶץ לְמִינָהּ וַיְהִי־כֵן:

 

Transliteration: Va-yomer elohim totse ha-arets nefesh chayah l’minah b’hemah varemes v’chaito-erets l’minah va-y’hi khen.

Translation:    Gd said let the earth bring out living soul of its kind, domestic animal and creeper and wild animals of the earth of its kind and it was so.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

רֶמֶשׂ

creeper

 

I might as well do possessives here.  There are two ways to do possessives.

 

One is with the preposition l, and personal endings. 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
לִי	לָנוּ	First
לָךָ	לָכֶם	Second/masculine
לָךְ	לָכֶן	Second/feminine
לוֹ	לָהֶם	Third/masculine
לָהּ	לָהֶן	Third/feminine

 

Look at the second person singular feminine form.  There is a shva for the last consonant and instead of being underneath, it’s on the left.  The same thing happens with a qamats after a nun in a second or third person plural feminine form.  The kaph and nun have sofit forms that go below the line of the writing, so their vowels go to the left.

 

Now for the other version of the possessive.

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
חָיְתִי	חָיְתֵנוּ	First
חָיתְךָ	חָיתְכֶם	Second/masculine
חָיתֵךְ	חָיתְכֶן	Second/feminine
חָיְתוֹ	חָיתְהֶם	Third/masculine
חָיְתהּ	חָיתְהֶן	Third/feminine

 

Here I want you to notice that there is a shva under the yod EXCEPT where there is an ending which forces a shva under the tav.  

 

What happened here is that chayah, a feminine noun, is converted to its construct state and then the personal endings go on. 

Finally, notice that the heh at the end of the third person singular feminine takes dagesh, and this is always the marker of this form.

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved