I took this photo last July at the Jaffa Gate outside the Old City of Jerusalem. I’ve wanted to post it, but I needed to rework the face in Photoshop so her face is no longer recognizable.
Why is she looking up, but holding the prayer book in her hand? Is it a book of Tehillim (Psalms)? What is distracting her?
In this week’s parsha of Vaera we learn about hospitality, known in Hebrew as Hachnasat Orchim, welcoming guests. We have two examples of hospitality, one as Abraham welcomes three men (it does not say angels in Genesis 18:2) and another of Lot, who invites two angels to visit him.
How is Abraham’s hospitality different from that of Lot? For one, Abraham welcomed three men whom he saw as wanderers, not as angels, whereas Lot invited in angels. Rabbi Frand (from Rabbi Frand on the Parashah 2) differentiates the two greetings; Abraham welcomed men wandering through the wilderness, Lot was only welcoming because he saw angels. But at the same time, Lot had learned something from Uncle Abraham’s example.
Rabbi Frand writes:
Lot…saw angels. Lot was hospitable, but he wasn’t going to have just anyone at his house… Lot had learned enough from his uncle Avraham to invite the angels in, but he had not learned a most important lesson: you don’t handpick your guests. True hachnassas orchim is to make everyone feel welcome at your home, angel or human. And human, we might add, applies to all humans, even those that come from the less genteel segments of society.
Rashi brings another difference in their hospitality. Abraham requested that the travelers remove the dust from their feet first and then enter. Lot invited them to enter with dusty feet. Abraham saw his guests as worshipers of dust and did not want to bring their idol worship into his home. Lot, on the other hand, knew that the people of Sodom objected to Hachnasat Orchim so to protect the visitors suggested the guests remain with dust on their feet so it would appear as though they had just arrived.
I do like having guests over, though I can’t say I always feel up to it; some weeks I feel more inclined to entertain than others. But I do welcome my daughter’s complaint when we don’t have guests (“no guests this week?” she has been known to say). I like that she appreciates Hachnasat Orchim, welcoming guests into our home.
Finally, I struggle with Rabbi Frand’s idea of welcoming anyone into one’s home. Anyone else have their doubts or thoughts about this?
I have been making lentils in various forms this fall. The lentils in the bowl above were made overnight in my crockpot.
Ingredients:
Put all the ingredients except the spices in the crockpot. Cook on low overnight. In the morning, add the salt, turmeric and cumin.
Ingredients:
The key to making lentil salad as opposed to lentil soup is use less water. Cook the lentils with the water for about two hours (this is how long it takes in my crockpot). When the lentils are tender, add the lemon juice and salt. Garnish with parsley. Can be served hot or room temperature.
Ingredients:
Cook the lentils, ginger, garlic and carrots in water until the lentils are tender (two hours in my crockpot). Add zucchini and salt (add jalapeno pepper, if using one). When zucchini are almost tender, add the canned tomatoes.
American flags were flying high today in honor of Veterans Day on Raritan Avenue, the main street (also known as Route 27) that runs through the center of Highland Park.
First, thank you to Babysitter for including the above image of stars in her post on Lech-Lecha.
ck at Jewlicious did a marvelous job of Haveil Havalim #190: Post Election Panic.
Hadassah Sabo premiered the Yiddishe Mama Blog Carnival.
Juggling Frogs posted the overdue Carnival of Overdue Thanks.
I would like to get back to a link Ilana-Davita posted last week on health. I’m taking one quote off the article from the doctor who beat cancer:
Along with fried foods and sugar, one of the book’s other targets is margarine, which he describes unequivocally as “a lot more dangerous than butter” for its role in cardio-vascular disease and obesity. He refers to the “Israeli paradox”, in which Israelis have among the lowest cholesterol levels in Western countries, “combined with one of the highest rates of cardiac infarction and obesity”. The cause, he explains, is the kashrut imperative to separate milk and meat, which has led to the use of margarines as a substitute for butter.
And thank you to those who reminded me that it is Armistice Day. We Americans call it Veterans Day. In any case, thank a veteran today.
I did this with ink pens, and then for the color I applied watercolor paints. It is a study for a painting that I’ve started. It may take me months to finish. I’m in no rush.
My neighbor down the block had these pretty flowers growing in front of her house about a month ago. Neither she nor I know the names of the pink flowers. I suspect that the orange ones are probably a zinnia (thanks to readers who confirmed this). Anyone know about the little pink ones?
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely meme.
It’s been a beautiful autumn here in Central New Jersey. The color is everywhere; I think the weather has been cooler and damper than previous autumns, and the trees are loving it.
These top two photos were both taken on my block. The one with the window is directly across the street, and the other, with the reds to each side and yellow in center, is looking down the block.
These last two photos were taken outside my kids’ school, which is in Edison, New Jersey, just over the border from Highland Park.
How does it look where you live?
More links to beautiful autumn photos on Carmi’s Thematic Photographic: Autumn post
A number of readers asked if I could explain how I arranged the images for the JPIX carnival.
Step one: Gather the images
When there was an image that I wanted to use for JPIX (many of the posts, even if submitted, had multiple photos), I right-clicked on the image and saved it to my hard drive. I tried to name the jpg (the common file format for a photo) by both something in the photo and something in blog’s name.
For example, I named the photo at right lastrose_id.jpg, with the lastrose part being a reminder that post was named “Last Rose” and the id part as a reminder that it is Ilana-Davita’s photo.
After saving a bunch of photos in this way to my hard drive, I had quite a collection, but in some cases I still had to hunt when I got up to the part where I linked the photo online, because some blogs had lots and lots of photos in one post. So in those cases one also might want a reminder of the placement of the photo in the post (middle, 6th, or bottom might be examples to add to the name of the file).
Step Two: Sizing Those Images
So how big to make each of those images? At first I thought to make each one 150px high. After uploading about twenty at 150px high (this was a mistake, I should have just done three and tested those), I decided I preferred 115px high. You will see on the carnival that most are this height (to see the height of a photo, right-click and select Properties), but some were other heights.
In order to resize a photo, you open a photo editing software package and change the height size to 115px. The software should proportionally scale down the width for you.
Step Three, easy: Arranging the Photos
First, I’m going to tell you an easy way. Just upload each photo to your post, line up three on a line, and link each photo to the original post. It might look nice to put a space between each photo. I often do this in code by typing: Here’s an example:
Step Three, complicated: Arranging the Photos with Blog Links
Since I wanted the blog to have the blog links directly under each photo, I used table tags. I will discuss table tags in another post, next week.
Terebinth. Now that’s an interesting word. Seems to be a Greek word, and it refers to a tree that is also known as a “turpentine tree”. It occurs in some translations of this week’s parsha of Lech Lecha.
Here’s the Mechon-mamre translation of Genesis 12:6 —
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the terebinth of Moreh.
And to give another example, Genesis 13:18 —
And Abram moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the terebinths of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.
So the key word we are trying to translate here is ‘elon’. What is an ‘elon’?
My Artscroll Saperstein edition of Breishit translates ‘elonai mamre’ as ‘the plains of Mamre’.
My JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh claims ‘terebinth’ is the translation.
The first translation of the Bible, the second-century BCE Greek Septuagint, interpreted the word as ‘oak’.
OK, so which is it, oak, terebinth or plains? Depends who you ask. (Do you hate answers like that? Or can you just accept that as life?)
Incredibly enough, I was introduced to this whole topic by two articles on the Forward, of all places (I did not know they had words of Torah on the Forward, a newspaper founded by atheist socialists):
In the second article, Seth Cohen suggests an explanation to the ‘plains’ translation, the translation that is least likely to be the literal one but is suggested by Onkelos:
The translation of elonei as “oaks,” he writes, “might have suggested to some readers in antiquity that Abraham settled in the midst of tree worshipers, since the worship of trees was quite prevalent in his lifetime and for many centuries afterwards.” Therefore, Mr. Cohen continues, although Onkelos’s translation is generally highly literal, he deviated from the text in this case for apologetic purposes — that is, to prevent any possible misinterpreting of the biblical story contrary to the way that he, and the rabbinic sages whose authority he accepted, understood it.
Onkelos did not want any misinterpretation that Abraham might be a tree worshiper.
So what about oaks vs. terebinths?
The Philologos of the Forward argues for oaks, because it is the oldest translation, and because of its small appearance:
Terebinths, whose small leaves indeed smell a bit like turpentine when crushed, may have an impressive-sounding name, but they are not very impressive in appearance. The terebinth is an evergreen shrub that rarely grows to more than 7 or 8 feet and is found all over Israel, where it is one of the most frequent plants in the hillside maquis; terebinths grow wild in my garden and can spread like weeds if you do not keep them in check. The common Palestinian oak, on the other hand, develops into a tall, stately tree. A whole forest or grove of such trees, now seen in only a few places but less rare in Abraham’s time, is an impressive sight indeed.
Why do other translators, such as Robert Alter who wrote the Five Books of Moses, choose terebinth? Perhaps because of its abundance? I couldn’t find an answer.
Here’s a terebinth, courtesy of Wikipedia:
If any of you have the opportunity to visit Neot Kedumim in Israel, you can find a terebinth there. We were there in June (hot!), but I hadn’t yet read about terebinths, so I didn’t think to find one and photograph it.