Outdoors -- early spring?

I made a crack in my last garden post about bird behavior and an early spring.
People are always trying to be smarter than everybody else this way.
All I'm saying is
the black-crested titmouse are whistling
the tufted titmouse are calling
my robin is prepping to defend his turf against the robin mobs soon to gather
the sparrows are chatting up a storm in the euonymus
the cardinals are chowing down, storing calories for nesting and brooding
I think I heard a Carolina chickadee
the Carolina wrens are showing up verbally.

Waiting to hear the song sparrows and white-throated sparrows.

It's still two weeks to Tu B'Shevat when the sap starts to rise.

But the birds are obviously ready.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Garden -- wake up!

Sharpen your hedge shears!  NOW is the time to prune.
And for the next 10 weeks.
Especially if the birds are telling the truth and we're going to have an early spring.
Prune now and you don't have to worry about insect stings.
Prune now and you probably won't need to prune again for a year.
If your lawn service won't prune now, they are charging you money to ruin your landscaping.
Do it yourself and tell them that for lawn mowing, you'll only pay $30 a shot.
And that you get to call the shots.
When there's a drought on, you're not going to pay $30 for them to spew mower exhaust.
Because it's probably the kind of weather when mowers should be left in storage anyway.
Any lawn service who won't do this, the world doesn't need.
And oh, by the way, make them change to corn meal gluten feedings twice a year,
nothing else.
If they make you put up warning signs, they are charging you to poison your kids, your pets, and the wildlife.
Think globally, act locally.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Leviticus 15

We’re talking about tumah and your assignment was to read Leviticus 15 which finishes off the urban legend that Jewish law treats Jewish women worse than men in this area.

We found that a Jewish woman is called niddah when she has her period.  The same rules apply to both niddah and the period after childbirth. 

We found that a man who has sex with her while she is niddah might be subject to the penalty called kares, but the woman is not.  He might also be subject to flogging, it depends on the circumstances.  The woman is not.  Adultery has to be proven to affect the woman, and if proven, both of them die.

We found that priests who enter the tabernacle or temple while tameh are subject to the death penalty.  Women cannot be priests.

We found that men and women lepers are treated identically.

Now we’re going to look at two other conditions.  One is called zav or, for women, zavah.  It means a flux for three consecutive days.  Men and women with this condition are treated identically.

The other situation is emission of sperm.  For men, this is a nocturnal or excited emission.  For women, it is when the sperm escapes her body after sex.  Men and women are treated identically.

If one gender risks more than the other in situations that lead to tumah, it is men, and that is the end to that urban legend.  Jewish women are not second class citizens as a result of their normal biological function just because it is something that doesn’t happen to men.

And tameh does not mean “unclean.”  It means “excluded from normal activities or use due to specific circumstances.”

Now the linguistic evidence.  In Exodus 25:11, there is a description of “pure gold” for part of the tabernacle.  The phrase is zahav tahor.  It is not possible to interpret this phrase as meaning “grime-free gold” or “germ-free gold.”  The Jews of ancient times had absolutely no concept of what a germ was.  The rules for dealing with tumah existed no later than 25 centuries ago.  The Germ Theory of Disease originated less than 2 centuries ago.  There are over two millennia between the phrase in Exodus and the scientific concept.

It’s also true that when traveling around, it would have been impossible to keep the gold forever grime free.  What the phrase zahav tahor means is gold that is ready for the purpose intended, that is, smelted out of its ore. 

Now that I have explained that concept, I’m ready to finish off tumah with how to deliberately end the period and what happens after that.  Your reading for next week is Leviticus 11 and Leviticus 17:15, and Numbers 19.  You should also look at Deuteronomy 14.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:14

Genesis 2:14

 

יד וְשֵׁם הַנָּהָר הַשְּׁלִישִׁי חִדֶּקֶל הוּא הַהֹלֵךְ קִדְמַת אַשּׁוּר וְהַנָּהָר הָרְבִיעִי הוּא פְרָת:

 

Transliteration: v’-shem ha-nahar ha-sh’lishi chideqel hu ha-holekh qidmat ashur v’-ha-nahar ha-r’vii hu frat.

Translation:     The name of the third river is Chideqel, it is the one that goes east of Ashur and the fourth river is Prat.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

הֹלֵךְ

Goes, walks

 

“Go, walk” is another high-frequency verb and has one of those weak letters so here is the conjugation.

 

Present

Singular	Plural	Gender
הוֹלֵךְ	הוֹלְכִים	Masculine
הוֹלֶכֶת	הוֹלְכוֹת	Feminine

 

Past

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
הָלַכְתִּי	הָלַכְנוּ	First
הָלַכתָּ	הָלַכְתֶּם	Second/masculine
הָלַכְתָּ	הָלַכְתֶּן	Second/feminine
הָלַךְ	הָלְכוּ	Third/masculine
הָלְכָה	הָלְכוּ	Third/feminine

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֵלֵךְ	נֵלֵךְ	First
תֵּלֵךְ	תֵּלְכוּ	Second/masculine
תֵּלְכִי	תֵּלַכְנָה	Second/feminine
יֵלֵךְ	יֵלְכוּ	Third/masculine
תֵּלֵךְ	תֵּלַכְנָה	Third/feminine

 

You’ll also see halokh va-plus a verb, which means “kept doing X”. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

DIY -- had to happen

You've been working hard DIYing everything that makes sense for you.
Now all your storage is full. 
STOP!
There's no sense spending all that money you saved on a storage unit somewhere.
Especially since a lot of the DIY I've been talking about is food.
There's a novel, either Regency or Thackeray -- you email me if you know what it is --
where there's a comic character who preserves food much longer than anybody else.
And it's inedible when she finally serves it up.
You don't want to go there.
Fill your freezer,
fill your fridge,
fill your shelves if you buy a canner.
Then STOP.
Don't start up again until you only have enough left to get you until a batch is ready to eat.
Like a month for some pickles, 3 weeks for corned beef, a week for lox, 24 hours for yogurt.
And by the way, with pickles and canned veggies, you're best off waiting until you can get them fresh at the farmer's market or a pick your own farm.
Enjoy!


© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

The Anvil -- Rereading the Mendel Beilis transcript

What police official might have been able to solve the case March 21, 1911 -- but never testified?
Who really poisoned Zhenya Cheberyak?
Who was going to supply the 40,000 rubles to bribe Vera Cheberyak?
Which witness did the government allow to testify after giving orders not to release him from a prison camp?
What feature, common to more than half the witnesses, undermined the government case against Mendel Beilis?


If you have read the posts on my Mendel Beilis page, you still might not know the answers to all these questions and more.
Read The Anvil, which rereads the transcript and rewrites the information -- with additions from contemporary material -- to show why the government lost this case.
It took more than five brave defense lawyers and the help of dozens of conscientious people.


Email me about buying The Anvil.  $7 a digital copy.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- the Fourth Principle

We’re talking about leprosy from Leviticus 13 and the fourth great principle that is part of its laws.

The first principle was that leprosy is limited in how it conveys tumah, the condition of being tameh, because all situations that cause tumah have only a limited number of hops beyond which tumah is not conveyed.

The second is that tumah can be changed.  One way preserves the utility of whatever is tameh: a waiting period followed by a positive act.  The other requires damaging the tameh object until it is no longer useful for its normal purpose.  If the damage is ever repaired, it returns to its condition of tumah.

The third great principle is that paskening for yourself does more harm than good.  It can force you to sacrifice everything in your house if you decide that there’s leprosy in it, instead of getting an expert to tell you so.  You do not bear the burden of proof and paskening for yourself that you do flies in the face of Jewish law generally, not just specifically in the case of the leprous house.

The fourth great principle goes under the name safeq tahor tahor.  Literally, it means that if there’s a doubt whether something is tahor or tameh, it is tahor. 

More generally, this principle means there’s a presumption in Jewish law that if something was in a known status and there’s no evidence that the status has changed, then the status has not changed.

This goes hand in hand with the requirement that the burden of proof lies with whoever wants to change the ownership of property.

It also applies to capital crimes.  Until the burden of proof has been met, there is a doubt of guilt, so the accused must be considered not guilty.

As long as the priest has not ruled on the house, it is considered tahor and all the things in it are also tahor.

Another example is the statement that every woman is considered not to be in niddah until one of two things happen.  If she is always absolutely precise in when her period starts, then she is not niddah until that time arrives.  The other is that she can test whether she is niddah and until that test comes out positive, she is not niddah. 

And now I have busted the urban legend that Jewish law is punitive, not merciful; that it seeks to condemn people rather than to acquit them; and that priests could arbitrarily deprive Jews of their property or their lives.  Such things were common in later legal codes originating among Indo-Europeans, which had for their purpose keeping the king in power and not necessarily operating the society for the benefit of its members.  It’s a case of Freudian projection to pretend that this situation, against which most of the revolutions in history have protested, applies to Jews.

Next week I’ll finish off the concept that Jewish women were second class citizens to whom the laws of tumah applied, while they didn’t apply to men.  For that, read Leviticus 15.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved