Blog/December 2009/Dec 11th
From RonWareWiki
< Blog | December 2009
Dec 11th (See this week's devar torah)
Send Ron feedback on this blog
Hi again!
This shabbat is also chanukkah, the celebration of the victory a small group of Jews who remained true to Torah, over the much larger number of Hellenized Jews and the Greeks themselves. It also happens to be Sarah's birthday; but since it falls on shabbat, her real celebration will be Saturday night. Last week I told you how old my sister is -- Sarah is turning… one fifteenth her aunt's age is the difference between her and her sister's age. In thirty-four years, her sister will be as old as her aunt is now.
Esther is mostly recovered from her bout with whatever it was; I've been fighting it on and off. Daniela is definitely coming home for pesach, which makes us very (!) happy.
I came across a very interesting book (in PDF format -- the original was published in the 1930s) this week, which shows a number of relationships between Hebrew and ancient Egyptian. It makes a strong case for Joseph's story (yes, from this week's Torah portion) being true based on the strong correlation between the descriptions of Egyptian court life in the Torah and those from various archaeological sources. Essentially, his thesis is that only someone who knew the royal Egyptian court intimately could have written the stories in the Torah and gotten the details correct.
That is interesting to me, because our tradition holds that there are layers of meaning embedded in the Torah, and that not all that meaning is apparent to readers in each generation. This is a case in point: the generation which left Egypt may have been familiar with the details of court life in Egypt, but surely the generations after would have no idea of the literal accuracy of the text! So we see later commentators coming up with interesting, often forced reconciliations of various statements... and only now, thousands of years later, can we view the text and understand that the odd phraseology and descriptions are meant as a subtle hint that the Author knew what was going on in Egypt! As I was thinking all that, I read some other article about coincidences in Torah. Interesting stuff.
Important news:
- In case you were worried that sufganiyot are too healthy, now you can get vodka-filled sufganiyot
- Israel was rated most expensive on the IKEA Billy Index. But not to worry, we're cheapest on the Melech Hafalafel Index
- A man was arrested for smuggling lizards in his pants. He could have come here, I'd have given him some for free.
Not nice news:
- Those arbiters of peace, the fun-loving Swedes are at it again! What will they think of next? Perhaps we should partition Stockholm -- but who would want it?
- Our Quisling leaders arrest a bride for moving her lips
- Anti-semitic British legal decision. I'd suggest we retaliate and boycott British products, but… who buys any to begin with?
Until next week,
Shabbat shalom!
| Top: Blog | Prev: Dec 4th |