Bit at a Time Biblical Hebrew -- Genesis 2:9

Genesis 2:9

 

ט וַיַּצְמַח יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים מִן־הָאֲדָמָה כָּל־עֵץ נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה וְטוֹב לְמַאֲכָל וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן וְעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע:

 

Transliteration: Va-yitsmach **** elohim min-ha-adamah kal-ets nechmad l’mareh v-tov l’maakhal v-ets ha-chaim b’tokh ha-gan v-ets ha-daat tov vara.

Translation:    **** Gd made sprout from the earth every pleasant tree to look at and good for food and the tree of live in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

נֶחְמָד	pleasant
לְמַרְאֶה	To view, for looking at
לְמַאֲכָל	For food
חַיִּים	life
בְּתוֹךְ	In the middle of
דַּעַת	knowledge
רָע	Evil, bad

 

Notice the difference between “to view” and “for food.”  This emphasizes that the prefix l can mean either “to” or “for.”  I could have said “for eating” and because the Bible uses lots of parallel phrases, that might be preferable.  But it sounds strange in English because you might think it meant eating the twigs and branches and all, when we would normally only eat the fruit.  OK cinnamon is different because then we use the bark but you get my point.

 

The only way you won’t know how to pronounce “life” right off the bat is if you’ve never seen Fiddler on the Roof.  L’chaim is a toast meaning “to life”. 

 

Notice that va-ra has a kamats under the vav and not a shva.  You can’t use a shva because of the resh and you can’t use a patach.  That’s just one of those pesky spelling rules in Hebrew.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Knitting -- meanwhile

Before starting on that argyle sweater, I tried an experiment with some new yarn.
5/2 yarn is like a heavy crochet thread.
The product I tried is Perly Perle, which is 100% mercerized cotton.
I thought it would make some nice sleeveless tees to wear out shopping and so on.
That means I wouldn't worry about my old sleeveless tees which have all kinds of dirt on them that won't wash out.
I can just wear them out gardening and what not.
And I didn't need to learn any new skills, YMMV if you haven't tried a Fair Isle pattern.
The pattern is:
Cast on 336 stitches for a 40 inch chest to a size zero circular with a 24 inch tether.  For other sizes, calculate about 7 stitches per inch.
Do k2/p2 rib for at least 4 rows.
Switch to a number 1 circular on same length tether, and do 160 rounds.

For armholes, put 7 stitches on a holder from the start of the next round.
Knit half way around and starting 7 stitches before the next armhole,
put 14 stitches on a holder. 
Knit around and put the last 7 stitches of the round on the first holder.
By the way, the holder can be a thicker piece of yarn pulled through the stitches with a crochet hook.
To keep the stitches on, double this yarn over and then run the free ends through the loop.

Keep knitting in the round, and when you finish knitting the steeking, knit the first two stitches of the body together.
When you get to the next armhole, stop two stitches before the steeking.
Slip the next to last stitch onto the needle, knit the last stitch, then pass the slipped stitch over, before you knit the steeking.

Do this for 7 rounds, then stop decreasing.
Knit a total of 90 rows from the bottom of the armhole.
Knit to the middle of the steeking on one side.
Turn inside out and use a third needle to knit off 35 stitches for one shoulder.
Turn right side out, knit to the middle of the opposite steeking, and then turn inside out and knit off those 35 stitches for the other shoulder.
Turn right side out and do k2/p2 rib for as deep a neck as you want, and bind off.
Now change to a #1 circular with a 16 inch tether.
Cut up the middle of the steeking.
Knit up the underarms off the holder, and pick up 181 stitches around the armhole.
The steeking will fold back as a facing.
Do k2/p2 rib around the armhole for as many rows as you want, probably 5-6 and bind off.
OR knit 45 rows in the round, decreasing at the underarm every other round for a short sleeve and finish it in rib so the bottom of the sleeve doesn't curl up.
I know that's a quick and dirty pattern, if you need any of it explained better, email me.


© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- not long now

I love this point in the year.  I can look at the Jewish calendar on the Chabad website
and I see that Shabbat starts the same time this week as it did last week.
Next week, it starts later.
The sun is about to turn around in the sky and start showing up earlier and leaving later.
There's a good time coming....

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Garden -- good for something

Most things are good for gardening.
We have had a lot of rain over the last week, and that's good for one thing.
Getting rid of ivy.
Whether it's poison ivy or English ivy, wet soil is good.
You buy those heavy black plastic trash bags.
You wrap your arms in them and be careful to keep your head back.
And you pull on the vines until the roots come out of the soil.
With the poison ivy, you then carefully wrap the bag around the vines.
And you throw it in normal trash. 
DON'T recycle it with your leaves.
The people who try to compost those leaves or use them for compost are going to get poison ivy if you do.
What's more, English ivy doesn't break down for compost.  It just dries up.

This is going to work off some of the desserts you've been eating.
And that's the other thing this rain is good for.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

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