Here’s the original, yucky, red-eyed shot. I took out the door at left by using the clone stamp.
Just came back from a child-friendly New Year’s party… we toasted 2009 at Greenwich Time, which I now know is 7 pm our time, EST. Do you think my daughter (she’s 6) will go to bed at a reasonable hour?
For more sepia photos, visit Sepia Scenes.
When the weather gets warm after getting cold, pretty puddles result. I took this photo in Donaldson Park on December 23.
For more watery posts, visit Watery Wednesday.
A photo I took this summer while on our trip in Israel. But the photo needs some explanation.
Unlike in the U.S. where we have friendly Canada to the north and Mexico in the south, Israel is surrounded by unfriendly neighbors. The Jordanian border on the east is the quietest, and some Israelis have even been traveling there. But what you see here is a Hizbullah flag (circled in purple), very close to an Israeli guard station (circled in orange). Just two years ago the North was the scene of an ugly war. My friend who lives in Ma’alot lived in a bomb shelter for a while, but then she and the younger members of her family went down to Beit Shemesh in the center of the country for the remainder of the war.
Now the war is in the South… Hamas, which was elected by the people of Gaza, has chosen to spend the millions it receives in aid to stock weapons and attack southern Israel. While Hizbullah was created by Iran, Hamas now receives much of its weaponry and funding from Iran.
This isn’t supposed to be a political blog, so I won’t be telling who to vote for in the next election. But as I can’t seem to concentrate on what I was thinking of writing about (I thought about writing about how to get my daughter to pick her jacket up from the floor, see what a contrast?).
So I leave you with some links:
And then one more pic, so you can enjoy the lush greenery outside the winery:
This is how Donaldson Park, a large county park on the edge of Highland Park, looked on December 23.
Here’s a similar view taken on December 17.
This is what I saw back on December 12.
Here we are on December 23 again. The park is empty now, except for those birds and an occasionally jogger or walker. But during the warmer months it is alive with ball players, kids in the playground, tennis players, picnickers, people admiring ducks and dogs (there is a little caged dog park). In the past year much construction has been going on in the park so only parts of it are usable. I previously photographed the edge of the park that borders on the river; in that photo, the foliage is at its peak.
Dianthus or “pink” in the (now melted and gone) snow in front of my house
A fading dianthus a week before the snow
A dianthus in early fall
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely and fun meme.
Ah, to look back at the early fall garden.
Sky Watch Sneakers
I suspect people throw them up there to annoy others. I’ve never seen anyone actually do this. They’ve been there for ages, kind of a part of our block.
Thursday Challenge: Sidewalk (a photo of a pink carnation I threw on the icy sidewalk because I crave color in winter)
Kosher Cooking Carnival: Greasy Story Edition
Parsha posts about Joseph and Hanukkah
Caption This Story (drawing by my daughter)
Ways to Stay Healthy post (I’ll try to write another one soon!)
Enjoy the snowy foliage on this post, even if the topic is that crook Madoff.
A tale of an Iranian-Jewish newcomer on a Hanukkah night (Roya Hakakian gets published in Forbes: she is the sister of a Highland Park resident).
Mimi teaches us how to make origami dreidels.
Lion of Zion writes about RPRY in Highland Park/Edison (he lives in Brooklyn).
Who sold Joseph? Here’s the pasuk in Vayeshev (Genesis 37:28)-
The straightforward answer, as Rashi sees it, is that the brothers took Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites and the Ishmaelites to the Midianites and the Midianites to the Egyptians.
I learned from my son, however, (it’s so wonderful when you can learn from your kids) that Rashbam (who is the grandson of Rashi; can you imagine challenging your own scholarly grandfather?) sees this differently. He suggests that the “they” who do the selling are the Midianites: “The brothers sat down to a meal at some distance from the pit, out of qualms of conscience and waited for the Ishmaelites they had seen. But before the latter arrived, others, Midianite traders passed, saw Joseph in the pit and drew him out and sold him to the Ishmaelites, presumably without the knowledge of the brothers.”
This helps explains Genesis 39:1, where Potiphar buys Joseph from the Ishmaelites. Other commentators complain that Rashi does not adequately explain this pasuk (how do the Midianites fit in? Who sold him to Egypt, Midianites or Ishmaelites?). But if the Midianites take Joseph without the brothers knowing and sells him to the Ishmaelites, then this pasuk makes sense.
Much more on this topic in Nehama Leibowitz’s New Studies in Breishit.
A much simpler question is why does the text in beginning of Miketz say “brothers of Joseph”? Rashi’s explanation is that they went down to Egypt to look for him, that he was very much on their minds (daughter of Mrs. S. said it was out of love for their brother). But if one follows Rashbam’s explanation, that the Midianites sold him and the brothers thought him dead, why does it say “brothers of Joseph”? (I don’t know).
• • •
While we are discussing Joseph, I just want to remark on what Rabbi Levi Meier, z”l, calls “Joseph’s astonishing ability to forgive his brothers.” In his book Ancient Secrets: Using the Stories of the Bible to Improve Our Everyday Lives,
Joseph’s forgiving is hard to achieve, especially when you have been terribly wronged by another person. In the case of Joseph, his life could have been ruined by the actions of his brothers. However, it was not, because he did not allow that to happen… Nursing your hurt feelings, your anger, and your bitterness will not bring you to happiness. It will only make you a slave to your fate, and you may never come to know that you could have freed yourself—that you could have been the master of your destiny.
• • •
More interesting posts on this parsha:
Ilana-Davita: Forget All My Father’s House
Aron Grinshtein: Why Couldn’t the Wise Men of Egypt Figure Out the Dreams?
And on last week’s parsha on Tamar:
Shorty: she writes about Tamar and wonders why Rivka and Tamar had to be sneaky. Any ideas for her?
I’ve been photographing the sneakers hanging from lampposts on my block, because I like looking at the same subject in different light.
It snowed last Friday, and the sky looked whitish gray.
These are actually two different lampposts, but both have sneakers hanging from them. I previously photographed the sneakers when the foliage was at its peak.
For more Skywatch participants, please visit:
On Sunday I asked: Why do we read the story of Joseph around the same time as Hanukkah?
One may give a variety of answers, but a common answer is how Joseph dealt with Egyptian culture. In order to understand this better, we need to look at both the Hanukkah story and the Joseph in Egypt story.
What was the battle of Hanukkah about? There was a lot of pressure in Israel in the days of the Maccabees to conform and become like the Hellenists, to adopt Greek culture and shed Jewish traditions. Those that resisted, like Hannah and her martyred seven sons, became the precursors to today’s Jews.
Joseph, too, needed to live in a foreign culture. His was the world of ancient Egypt. He resisted the morals of that society; for example, he managed to get away from Potiphar’s wife. He never forgot his roots and was eager to reconnect with his family. At the same time, he worked on behalf of Egypt and was able to provide food at a time of famine.
Joseph can be viewed as a model of how one can integrate into a society, even in a leadership role, but not lose one’s heritage and traditions. In contrast, the Hellenized Jews of the days of the Maccabbees discarded far too much of their culture and are lost to history.
Berel Wein connects Miketz with Chanukah.
Mrs. S. gave the following: One answer is based on Ovadiah 1:18 (which is part of the haftarah for Parshat Vayishlach):
“And the house of Yaakov will be fire and the house of Yosef a flame, and the house of Esav for straw, and they shall ignite them and consume them; and there will be no remnant to the house of Esav, for Hashem has spoken.” She then clarified that comparing Yosef to a flame reminds us of Chanukah. And “giborim b’yad chalashim v’rabim b’yad me’atim” (“the strong in the hands of the weak, and the many in the hands of the few”) — Rashi is suggesting in the first pasuk of Vayeshev – based on the pasuk in Ovadiah – that one Yosef is more than sufficient to overcome all of Esav’s “chiefs”.
• • •
I had two more questions on Sunday:
1) Who sold Joseph? Was it the brothers or was it…? Here’s the pasuk in Vayeshev (Genesis 37:28)-
וַיַּעַבְרוּ אֲנָשִׁים מִדְיָנִים סֹחֲרִים, וַיִּמְשְׁכוּ וַיַּעֲלוּ אֶת-יוֹסֵף מִן-הַבּוֹר, וַיִּמְכְּרוּ אֶת-יוֹסֵף לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים, בְּעֶשְׂרִים כָּסֶף; וַיָּבִיאוּ אֶת-יוֹסֵף, מִצְרָיְמָה.
And there passed by Midianites, merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they brought Joseph into Egypt.
The text is not clear. To whom does “they” refer?
2) Why does it say the “brothers of Joseph” instead of “sons of Jacob”?
Genesis 42:3 – וַיֵּרְדוּ אֲחֵי-יוֹסֵף
Any ideas? I’ll answer in a separate post. Stay tuned.