Volume 34: Number 20
Fri, 19 Feb 2016
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Micha Berger
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 17:36:09 -0500
Subject: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old Jerusalem
: On 2/18/2016 4:50 PM, Marty Bluke via Areivim wrote:
: >http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Archaeologists-discover-700
: >0-year-old-Jerusalem-settlement-from-Chalcolithic-period-445206
Or <j.mp/1QMwhlv>.
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 08:13:19PM +0200, Lisa Liel via Areivim wrote:
: Since the Chalcolithic was the time of Avraham Avinu, this could be
: associated with Malkitzedek.
To save someone else the effort of Googling. "Chalcolithic" comes from
the Greek words khalkos + lithos = copper + stone. It refers to the
period after people only made tools from stone but did yet know that by
adding tin to the copper, a much harder metal, bronze, could be made. It
is counted as early Bronze age, not Stone Age.
According to Bereishis 4:22, Tuval-Qayin "loteish kol choreish nechoshes
uvarzel". Either the person who launched the Chalcolithic era, thus the
father of all metal workers, or the one who ivented Bronze, the one who
launed working with nechoshes with another metal as a unit. (Tin is iron
colored, no?)
According to the Seder Olam, Avraham was born in 1948, just under 3,000
years ago. That's a 4,000 year difference, no? How would you explain a
75% error in their dating methodology?
We also recovered a few bones of sheep/goat and possibly cattle,
she said. These will be analyzed further in the IAA [Antiquities
Authority] laboratories, permitting us to recreate the dietary
habits of the people who lived here 7,000 years ago, and enhancing
our understanding of the settlements economy.
How did they date the finding anyway? Carbon dating these bones? Or is
there some way to assign a date to flint, basalt and pottery, other than
the circular reasoining of "we know tools and building of this style
date to X, so this must too..."
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Rescue me from the desire to win every
mi...@aishdas.org argument and to always be right.
http://www.aishdas.org - Rav Nassan of Breslav
Fax: (270) 514-1507 Likutei Tefilos 94:964
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Message: 2
From: Arie Folger
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 22:35:09 +0100
Subject: Re: [Avodah] What Do French Jews Do On Shabbath?
R' Jay Shachter asked how French Jews deal with the increasing number of
buildings with electronic codes for entering through two successive doors.
It depends. Many Shomer Shabbos Jews live in the heavily Jewish areas like
the 19eme arrondissement. There, many buildings still have keys.
In other buildings, technological solutions are used, which I decline to
mention here.
However, you are right that this is a massive problem.
Finally, RJS accused French Jews of taking their synagogues off the web and
the Consistoir of hiding its email address. Well, I just did a search for a
Paris synagogue I know, and it was definitely listed in many sites and also
had its own publicly accessible site. As to the email address, ever since
teh advent of spam, many sites have used web forms instead of email
addresses. This is not a Jewish matter. When I contact a company through
its web site, the same mechanism is used. And whoever tries to contact me
through my web site also has to pass that hoop.
I think you may want to apologize to French Jews. The majority disagrees
with the president of the Marseille Jewish community.
Kol tuv,
--
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://rabbifolger.net/
* Koscheres Geld (Podcast)
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/15/koscheres-geld-podcast/>
* Kennt die Existenz nur den Chaos? G?ttliches Vorsehen im J?dischen
Gedankengut (Podcast)
<http://rabbifolger.net/
2016/02/14/kennt-die-existenz-nur-den-chaos-gttliches-vorsehen-im-judischen
-gedankengut-podcast/>
* Halacha zum Wochenabschnitt: Baruch Hu uWaruch Schemo
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/11/halacha-zum-wochenabs
chnitt-baruch-hu-uwaruch-schemo/>
* Is there Order to the World? Providence in Jewish Thought
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/09/is-there-order-to
-the-world-providence-in-jewish-thought/>
* What is Modern Orthodoxy (from a radio segment)
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/08/what-is-modern-orthodoxy-fro
m-a-radio-segment/>
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Message: 3
From: via Avodah
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 16:42:08 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] What Do French Jews Do On Shabbath?
From: "Jay F. Shachter via Avodah" <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>
>> I've had this question for a year and a half, ever since I stopped
staying in hotel rooms and started staying in rented apartments when I
go to Paris, to save money.
...This street-facing door can be opened from the outside
only electronically, by typing a code on a keypad, or with a proximity
sensor in the newer residences. ...From the inside, the building
door can usually be opened mechanically, although in some of the newer
buildings there is no way to open the building door mechanically from
the inside, you have to press a button to open the door electronically
if you want to leave your building. ...The indoor lights, both in the
carmelith
and inside the residential building, cannot be left on; ... In some cases
there is a motion detector ... that turns on the lights.
So, what the devil do French Jews do on Shabbath? ...
...As for
my trying to locate the mara d'athra from where I am, I would if I
could.... <<
Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
_...@m5.chicago.il.us_ (mailto:j...@m5.chicago.il.us)
>>>>
Since there are opinions (even if only a small minority) that are lenient
about electricity on Shabbos, maybe you can be lenient about amira legoy
with regard to electricity, and arrange for a goy to open doors and press
buttons for you, if there is no other way to get in and out of the building.
Give him a tip after Shabbos. Alternatively you can stand around for however
long it takes and wait for someone else to go in (or out) and scoot in
after him.
As for motion detectors, I was told that if you couldn't avoid the motion
detector you could just go about your normal activities and ignore it. It
seems to me that even if you benefit by the light coming on, you are not
doing anything to make it happen and you are just walking around as you would
even if there were no light. But again if it worries you, you can wait
until someone else walks in and then scoot in with him. Be sure and rent an
apartment in a large building with a lot of residents and servants coming
and going -- and not too many Jews! :- )
To locate the mara d'asra, first locate a shul -- any shul -- and/or a
kosher grocery store or bakery. Or call Chabad -- in London or Belgium if
Chabad in Paris is unlisted. Sooner or later you'll find a rabbi, and I don't
believe he has to be "the" rabbi of the neighborhood where your apartment
is.
Hatzlacha rabba and have a good Shabbos or do they say "Bon Chabat" in
Paree?
--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
=============
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Message: 4
From: Arie Folger
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 22:45:03 +0100
Subject: Re: [Avodah] What Do French Jews Do On Shabbath?
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:42 PM, <T6...@aol.com> wrote:
> Since there are opinions (even if only a small minority) that are lenient
> about electricity on Shabbos, maybe you can be lenient about amira legoy
> with regard to electricity, and arrange for a goy to open doors and press
> buttons for you, if there is no other way to get in and out of the
> building. Give him a tip after Shabbos. Alternatively you can stand around
> for however long it takes and wait for someone else to go in (or out) and
> scoot in after him.
Amira le'akum is definitely a lesser problem than the rest, and is
justified in this case. It's also cheaper to pay a guy to be there for you
four times to open the door for you, than to rent a hotel room.
--
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://rabbifolger.net/
* Koscheres Geld (Podcast)
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/15/koscheres-geld-podcast/>
* Kennt die Existenz nur den Chaos? G?ttliches Vorsehen im J?dischen
Gedankengut (Podcast)
<http://rabbifolger.net/
2016/02/14/kennt-die-existenz-nur-den-chaos-gttliches-vorsehen-im-judischen
-gedankengut-podcast/>
* Halacha zum Wochenabschnitt: Baruch Hu uWaruch Schemo
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/11/halacha-zum-wochenabs
chnitt-baruch-hu-uwaruch-schemo/>
* Is there Order to the World? Providence in Jewish Thought
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/09/is-there-order-to
-the-world-providence-in-jewish-thought/>
* What is Modern Orthodoxy (from a radio segment)
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/02/08/what-is-modern-orthodoxy-fro
m-a-radio-segment/>
<http://rabbifolger.net/2016/01/28/wir-missionieren-nicht-aber-warum-
nicht/>
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Message: 5
From: Lisa Liel
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 01:00:06 +0200
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On 2/19/2016 12:36 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> : On 2/18/2016 4:50 PM, Marty Bluke via Areivim wrote:
> : >http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Archaeologis
> : >ts-discover-7000-year-old-Jerusalem-settlement-from-Chalcolithic
> : >-period-445206
>
> Or <j.mp/1QMwhlv>.
>
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 08:13:19PM +0200, Lisa Liel via Areivim wrote:
> : Since the Chalcolithic was the time of Avraham Avinu, this could be
> : associated with Malkitzedek.
>
> To save someone else the effort of Googling. "Chalcolithic" comes from
> the Greek words khalkos + lithos = copper + stone. It refers to the
> period after people only made tools from stone but did yet know that by
> adding tin to the copper, a much harder metal, bronze, could be made. It
> is counted as early Bronze age, not Stone Age.
>
> According to Bereishis 4:22, Tuval-Qayin "loteish kol choreish nechoshes
> uvarzel". Either the person who launched the Chalcolithic era, thus the
> father of all metal workers, or the one who ivented Bronze, the one who
> launed working with nechoshes with another metal as a unit. (Tin is iron
> colored, no?)
He was antediluvian. We don't know what metallurgical techniques were
lost because of the Flood. Or which ones at least took a while to be
implemented again. Personally, I'm inclined to understand iron as iron
and not as something iron colored. But you know me, I'm a fundy.
> According to the Seder Olam, Avraham was born in 1948, just under 3,000
> years ago.
4,000 years. -Ish.
> That's a 4,000 year difference, no? How would you explain a
> 75% error in their dating methodology?
A 3,000 year difference, actually. But you know, we have very little
historical anything from before the Middle Bronze Age. So why is the
Chalcolithic considered to have been so early?
1. The actual time of the beginning of the Chalcolithic according to
conventional chronology is the late 5th millenium BCE (check
Wikipedia). So someone saw that and concluded that it was 5000 years
(-ish) BCE, or about 7000 years ago. But just like the Maccabean revolt
happened in the late 1st millenium BCE, the late 5th millenium BCE is
closer to 4100 BCE, which brings us down another thousand years.
2. Why is the Chalcolithic considered to have lasted about 1000 years?
Because it's a nice round number. No, I'm not kidding you. There's no
actual reason for it.
3. Why is the Early Bronze Age considered to have begun around 3100
BCE? Because that's the conventional dating of the 1st Dynasty in
Egypt, and in the Middle East, Egyptian chronology is the yardstick
that's used. But as I've discussed before, that yardstick is stretched
out artificially. The end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, with the fall of
the 6th Dynasty, is dated conventionally to around 2100 BCE, but that is
certainly the time of the Exodus, which was in 1476 BCE by that
reckoning. And the Old Kingdom (including the Predynastic Period) was
all postdiluvian, and considerably shorter than conventionally viewed.
(It was actually 1311 BCE, but the issue of the Persian Period isn't
relevant here. The difference occurs mostly after the destruction of
Jerusalem, so all of history slides up and down as a single block
regardless of whether you use 587 BCE or 421 BCE for that destruction.
The conventional chronology uses 587, so in explaining where their
chronological differences come from, that's what I'm using here.
Without prejudice.)
Ignoring the overlapping of dynasties in the Old Kingdom stretches it
out artificially by about 400 years. The end of the Old Kingdom being
dated too early stretches it out another 600+ years. Basically, we're
down to the "1000 years" between the Chalcolithic and the beginning of
Egyptian history. And that's just a figure of convenience, because
there's no way to know if it was 3 months or 5000 years.
> We also recovered a few bones of sheep/goat and possibly cattle,
> she said. These will be analyzed further in the IAA [Antiquities
> Authority] laboratories, permitting us to recreate the dietary
> habits of the people who lived here 7,000 years ago, and enhancing
> our understanding of the settlements economy.
>
> How did they date the finding anyway? Carbon dating these bones? Or is
> there some way to assign a date to flint, basalt and pottery, other than
> the circular reasoining of "we know tools and building of this style
> date to X, so this must too..."
I'm fairly sure it's the latter. Radiocarbon dating is a scam, of
course. When you submit samples for C14 dating, you have to tell them
your target date or date range so that they can throw away results that
are too many standard deviations away from that as "contaminated".
Lisa
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Message: 6
From: Zev Sero
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:53:11 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On 02/18/2016 05:36 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> According to Bereishis 4:22, Tuval-Qayin "loteish kol choreish nechoshes
> uvarzel". Either the person who launched the Chalcolithic era, thus the
> father of all metal workers, or the one who ivented Bronze, the one who
> launed working with nechoshes with another metal as a unit. (Tin is iron
> colored, no?)
Tin is "bedil", not "barzel". The pasuk in Matos lists the six metals
known in antiquity, and iron and tin are two of them.
--
Zev Sero All around myself I will wave the green willow
z...@sero.name The myrtle and the palm and the citron for a week
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I'm doing that
I'll say "It's a Jewish thing; if you have a few minutes
I'll explain it to you".
Go to top.
Message: 7
From: Micha Berger
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 23:30:24 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 01:00:06AM +0200, Lisa Liel via Avodah wrote:
: Personally, I'm inclined to understand
: iron as iron and not as something iron colored. But you know me,
: I'm a fundy.
I am too. The question is whether barzel always means iron, or only
does so when in contrast to other metals.
Nechoshes, for example, means copper and copper alloys -- bronze and
brass. There is no assumption of one-to-one between leshon haqodesh
and
Tin is named ba'atz in Menachos 28b. Bedil refers to tin only when it's
used to make bronze. The very word refers to the fact that it's removed
by smelting, from havdalah. (See Yechezqeil 22:18-20, or Yeshaiah 1:25,
and Rashi ad loc.)
We had this conversation a little over a year ago, and in
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol33/v33n006.shtml#12> I suggested:
> HQBH bans barzel from the mizbeiach because it's used for killing. Even
> if iron was known, it certainly wasn't the primary metal used in
> weaponry. Why would Hashem identify iron with killing more than the
> metals that were more commonly used?
> So I would still think that ... that in our pasuq the meaning is metal
> in general.
> ... I limited my context to what barzel means in this context, regardless
> of usage in Bamidbar 21:22, where "barzel" appears in a list of types
> of metal.
...
> Still, this too is a linguistic oddity. Why would the default metal
> be iron before iron took center stage?
> Personally, I would point to other examples. E.g. the terms for soul --
> nefesh, ruach, neshamah -- which can mean soul as a whole or particular
> functions of the soul.
> Or "apple" in King James' English, which refers to both a particular
> fruit and fruit in general...
Or corn meaning grain until the British colonies in the Americas
encountered maize.
But that's unimportant here, really.
I was just saying that Tubal Kayin was either the first to work in
copper, and therefore being credited as the father of all who work in
copper or iron or presumably any other metal. Or he was the first to
work in nekhoshes with barzel, a translation that is unlikel if barzel
always exclusively means iron, as a copper iron alloy is hard to make,
they don't mix evenly, and it's softer than either copper or iron, more
like the flexibility of solder. So I revived my suggested that perhaps
barzel had a broader usage. Unimportant, if you want to credit him with
smithing altogether, ie working in copper, rather than as the inventor
of alloying.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger The thought of happiness that comes from outside
mi...@aishdas.org the person, brings him sadness. But realizing
http://www.aishdas.org the value of one's will and the freedom brought
Fax: (270) 514-1507 by uplifting its, brings great joy. - R' Kook
Go to top.
Message: 8
From: Micha Berger
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 23:30:24 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 01:00:06AM +0200, Lisa Liel via Avodah wrote:
: Personally, I'm inclined to understand
: iron as iron and not as something iron colored. But you know me,
: I'm a fundy.
I am too. The question is whether barzel always means iron, or only
does so when in contrast to other metals.
Nechoshes, for example, means copper and copper alloys -- bronze and
brass. There is no assumption of one-to-one between leshon haqodesh
and
Tin is named ba'atz in Menachos 28b. Bedil refers to tin only when it's
used to make bronze. The very word refers to the fact that it's removed
by smelting, from havdalah. (See Yechezqeil 22:18-20, or Yeshaiah 1:25,
and Rashi ad loc.)
We had this conversation a little over a year ago, and in
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol33/v33n006.shtml#12> I suggested:
> HQBH bans barzel from the mizbeiach because it's used for killing. Even
> if iron was known, it certainly wasn't the primary metal used in
> weaponry. Why would Hashem identify iron with killing more than the
> metals that were more commonly used?
> So I would still think that ... that in our pasuq the meaning is metal
> in general.
> ... I limited my context to what barzel means in this context, regardless
> of usage in Bamidbar 21:22, where "barzel" appears in a list of types
> of metal.
...
> Still, this too is a linguistic oddity. Why would the default metal
> be iron before iron took center stage?
> Personally, I would point to other examples. E.g. the terms for soul --
> nefesh, ruach, neshamah -- which can mean soul as a whole or particular
> functions of the soul.
> Or "apple" in King James' English, which refers to both a particular
> fruit and fruit in general...
Or corn meaning grain until the British colonies in the Americas
encountered maize.
But that's unimportant here, really.
I was just saying that Tubal Kayin was either the first to work in
copper, and therefore being credited as the father of all who work in
copper or iron or presumably any other metal. Or he was the first to
work in nekhoshes with barzel, a translation that is unlikel if barzel
always exclusively means iron, as a copper iron alloy is hard to make,
they don't mix evenly, and it's softer than either copper or iron, more
like the flexibility of solder. So I revived my suggested that perhaps
barzel had a broader usage. Unimportant, if you want to credit him with
smithing altogether, ie working in copper, rather than as the inventor
of alloying.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger The thought of happiness that comes from outside
mi...@aishdas.org the person, brings him sadness. But realizing
http://www.aishdas.org the value of one's will and the freedom brought
Fax: (270) 514-1507 by uplifting its, brings great joy. - R' Kook
Go to top.
Message: 9
From: Zev Sero
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 01:24:33 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On 02/18/2016 11:30 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> Bedil refers to tin only when it's used to make bronze.
On the contrary, in the pasuk in Matos it means davka kelim made just of tin.
--
Zev Sero All around myself I will wave the green willow
z...@sero.name The myrtle and the palm and the citron for a week
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I'm doing that
I'll say "It's a Jewish thing; if you have a few minutes
I'll explain it to you".
Go to top.
Message: 10
From: Micha Berger
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 06:29:53 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 01:24:33AM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
: On 02/18/2016 11:30 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
:> Bedil refers to tin only when it's used to make bronze.
: On the contrary, in the pasuk in Matos it means davka kelim made just of tin.
Tin is too ductile, it would have to be a tin alloy. Think of
the difference between a spool of solder and a spool of wire of
comparable thickness. This is why "tin cans" are really tin plated steal
cans. (Unless they're actually aluminum cans, the expression lost sight
of the tin somewhere along the way).
There are no known examples of such keilim surviving until today. Which,
given the above, does not surprise me.
And aside from the metallurgy and the archeology, the shoresh also
indicates similarly that tin was something smelting took out of bronze,
and not used by itself.
Similarly ofares. Lead keilim? Figurines, beads -- ie gelumim (see Sifra
ad loc), yes. But a keli with walls of lead? A lead plate? It would be
either thick and unusably heavy or too malleable to last very long. And
so I am not surprised no one mentions evidence of Bronze era use of
lead keilim.
So what about Matos? Perhaps it's to be clear that when the pasuq says
nechoshes and barzel requires tevilah, it is including those that contain
their usual alloying ingredients, not only copper but also bronze.
But otherwise Matos leaves us with a parallel problem to that of Yisro's
use of barzel as the metal associated with the military.
:-)BBii!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Live as if you were living already for the
mi...@aishdas.org second time and as if you had acted the first
http://www.aishdas.org time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Fax: (270) 514-1507 - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning
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Message: 11
From: Zev Sero
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:52:01 -0500
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old
On 02/19/2016 06:29 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> Tin is too ductile, it would have to be a tin alloy.
Tin is less ductile than gold, and yet they had gold keilim.
And pewter for tableware was 99% tin and 1% copper.
> Similarly ofares. Lead keilim? Figurines, beads -- ie gelumim (see
> Sifra ad loc), yes. But a keli with walls of lead? A lead plate?
The Romans cooked in lead pots.
--
Zev Sero All around myself I will wave the green willow
z...@sero.name The myrtle and the palm and the citron for a week
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I'm doing that
I'll say "It's a Jewish thing; if you have a few minutes
I'll explain it to you".
------------------------------
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