avakesh

Dubrov - Surrealism

 

Boris Dubrov, copyright held, http://www.dubrov.net/

The task of translation

Bible translations and Targumim.

The importance of Bible translations and the extent to which translations are also interpretations is often underappreciated[1]. To a major extent this is because the uninitiated often assume that competent translation is simply the natural result of a good working knowledge of  the original and destination language coupled with understanding of the subject matter . Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is one thing to understand a word; it is another one to find its equivalent in another tongue. It is one matter to know the idiom or a turn of a phrase, it is quite another to bring all its nuances out in another language. Add to this the complexity or Biblical writing, its terseness and multiple meanings and the weight of thousands years of commentary and you begin to gain a glimmer of the great complexities involved. Given these challenges, it is remarkable that accurate and authoritative translations exist in the first place; for some of them one cannot but invoke Ruach Hakodesh as the main ingredient in their success.

The following are some of the difficulties that a translator faces[2].

1.Untranslatable words.

Some words simply do not have an equivalent in the tongue of translation. Puns and lay on words are nearly impossible to convey in another language.

Proper names and names  of palces that often possess certain meaning in the original, loose in in translation, or lead to confusion. What is the English speaker to make of King James' two thousand “baths” of Solomon’s molten sea (Kings I 7,26)?

2. Words and concepts peculiar to a certain civilizations.

Some concepts that no longer exists in modern intelelcutal universe are impossible to properly translate. Even if , spirit or weltshaung have traveled unchanged among contemporary languages, many concepts remain bound to the original langauge because  what they express is peculiar to the originating cultures. Every Jew know what is meant by eishet chail; a pure and charitable woma of ability, faithfully attending to her household and family, rising early and toiling whole day through so that her husband and children may have their necessities. But when in Proverbs 31,10 it is translated as virtuous woman, none of this shading is expressed. The same is true of such Hebrew concepts as cherem (hallowing a city to destruction), or for that matter faith (emuna) which certainly means something quite different in the original context than what it means in English.

3.Literal versus expositional

The translator must choose whether to follow the original as closely as the destination language allows, even at the expense of sounding stilted or unnatural, or go for readability at the expense of accuracy. The ideal translation must not turn into commentary but neither should it be so approximate as to disrespect the holiness of its source.

4.The uncertainty of the sense

Very simple – there remain many places where meaning is not entirely clear or agreed upon.As an example consider the Song of Deborah or the 68^th Psalm or innumerable passages in Job; a reader of a translation often has not the slightest suspicion of the complexity of possible and competing meanings. The poet Immanuel of Rome  (c.1261–c.1328) in his Hebrew imitation of Dante's Divine Comedy has all the commentators, headed by Radak, summoned to expound the eights and the sixtieth Psalm. Not surprisingly, they experience major difficulties and disagreements. Of the two concluding verses of the thirty-sixths chapter of Job, the commentators enumerate some thirty different explanations. How does a translator deal with this? Does he choose to consistently follow a particular commentary in every instance or does he choose and pick? Based on what criteria?

5.No translation can encompass multiple meanings.

In the case of Scripture, no translation can give expression or refer to the multiple possible and coexistent meanings, shadings or nuances. The expressivity and self-referencing of the Biblical Hebrew cannot even begin to be encompassed in other languages, perhaps the most serious impediment to satisfactory translation of Tanach. 

---

[1] “This may be divided into linguistic and contextual exegesis…Linguistic exegesis involves grammatical identification of all words (especially forms of the verbs and nouns) in source languages as well as their semantic interpretation. …In a way all forms of exegesis might be called “contextual exegesis” because the translators’ concept of context was wider than ours. They referred to the relationship between the words not only in their immediate but also in remote context. Furthermore, the translation may contain any idea the source called to mind.. Tov E. Tov, “The Septuagint”; in M.J. Mulder, ed., Mikra (Assen, 1988. 

[2] FollowingM. L. Margolis, The story of Bible translations, JPS, Philadelphia, 1943

Ascent

Estair Kaufman, http://www.estair-kaufman.com/jerusalem/index.htm

A revolution in measures

The shiurim that we use are integral to proper fulfillment of the commandments. The required size of the matzah, or the amount of wine to use for kiddush, and other measurements in many ways define our Yiddishkeit. It is self understood that changing these hallowed measurements should not be done lightly for showroom are in many ways a symbol and representation of tradition. What does one do, however, when archaeological evidence not only practically forces such a change but also resolves multiple contradictions that many achronim were unable to satisfactorily resolve? What's more, what if the resolution comes from a physics professor, is elegant as well as scientific and us supported by such wealth of evidence that it can hardly be refuted? The halachic and hashkafic challenges are enormous and cannot be ignored?

First a statement of the problem and brief background. For those who wish to explore farther, links are provided at the end of this post.

The measurements in the Talmud are presented based on the size of rochav agodal or in volumes of eggs. These two methods of calculating shiurim are supposed to be equivalent. However, when Noda B'Yehuda compared the two methods, he found them to be widely disparate. In fact, the "egg" method, gave shiurim that were about twice  the "agodal" method. To resolve this discrepancy, Noda B'yehuda suggested that eggs have shrunk and the eggs of his time were half the size of the eggs of the Talmudic period. This solution manifests itself in the actual measurements of the shiurim of our times.

Yet, this solution leads us, in ways explained in the links, to also assume that the average man in Talmudic times was 25% wider, had a thumb that was a third longer but of the same width as today, and had arms that reached below his knees, and that the barley of those times was shorter and less dense but of the same length as today. Needless to say, ancient skeletons, painting and sculpture and examples of clothing show nothing of the kind.

Four lines of archeologic evidence contradict the Nodah B'Yehuda's assumption.

1.Eruvin 83a relates that a special vessel called 'modia' was made for Rebbi and that its volume was 207 of eggs of the time of the Jews in the dessert. 'Modia' is known to be one-third of 'amphora', of which many examples remain, and the volume of the egg measured by amphora is the same as the eggs of today.

2.Rambam sates that one egg is equal to 11.7 silver dinars, which was measured by Geonim to be equal to a gold coin shashdang. Many of examples of these coins remain and they yield an egg of the same size as contemporary eggs.

3.An amah is related in the Talmudic sources to the size of the egg. We now have a description in the Chizkaiahu's tunnel that states that its length is 1200 ama. We can measure the tunnel and obtain the exact measurement of an amah. This also yields contemporary size for the size of an egg.

4. If one tabulates the ratios of various measurements mentioned in the Talmud, they only work out appropriately if the Talmudic egg was the same size as our egg.

One must add that the Geonim write in sources not available to Nodah B'Yehuda, that "eggs and olives were chosen to serve as units of measurements because they are found everywhere and do not change".

If we take this to practical conclusion, all of our mitsvah - measurements will shrink by approximately a half.

Now the story.

IN 1982, Professor Greenfeld of Bar Ilan visited the Steipler and showed him an article that presented some of this information. The Steipler told him that it should be published. After it appeared on Megadim, the Steipler and two other rabbonim took the unusual steps of responding to the article. Professor Greenberg responded with more and additional evidence and a reinterpretation of the Talmudic term on which everything was based. This term is rochav agodal.

This term is usually understood as thickness of the thumb at the knuckle; in other words, the distance across the width thumb. Professor Greenfeld argues that it should be taken as the thickness of the thumb from the nail to the opposite surface, which reduces rochav agodal by one half and removes the contradiction of Nodah B'Yehudah.

You may have lost me by now. That's OK, I cannot possible explain it with the same persuasive power and scientific and talmudic acumen that Professor Greenfeld displays in the papers linked below. He marshals a great deal of evidence from the Rishonim for this interpretation of this term.

Where does this leave us? With nothing less than a revolution in the accepted basic and essential set of measurements, and from a professor, no less.

To some, this may be hard to accept. To me, it changes the paradigm of how we relate and compartmentalize various fields of knowledge and presents formidable challenges for the relationship of scientific and Talmudic argumentation in determining Halacha. Thus far, Professor Greenfeld's work has largely been ignored, but it is convincing. Earlier or later, it will have an effect. If archeology can force change, why can't other scientific fields? Should they?

links: Download LinearMeasurementHalacha.pdf

Download HAVEEGGS.pdf

This is a big thing!

"The massive central door in the side of Noah's Ark was thrown open Saturday -- you could say it was the first time in 4,000 years -- drawing a crowd of curious pilgrims and townsfolk to behold the wonder.

Of course, it's only a replica of the biblical Ark, built by Dutch creationist Johan Huibers as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible.

Reckoning by the old biblical measurements, Johan's fully functional ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 20 cubits wide. That's two-thirds the length of a football field and as high as a three-story house."

A tour can be accessed from, http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/04/28/dutch.ark.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

This replica is five times smaller than the Ark descibed in the Bible.

Answering the heretics...

Pshat or derash?

As we study midrashic methodology, earlier or later we inevitably encounter passages that appear to mean something different than what the Rabbis say they mean. The problem is compounded when a Halacha depends on this interpretation; not surprisingly, several such passages have served as lightning rods for sectarians throughout the ages. One such passage is found in this week's parsha, Vayikra Ch. 23.

And HaShem spoke unto Moses saying:

10 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When ye come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring the sheaf of the first-fruits of your harvest unto the priest.
11 And he shall wave the sheaf before HaShem, to be accepted for you; on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.
12 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the waving; seven sabbaths shall there be complete...
16 even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall present a new meal-offering unto HaShem...

The simple meaning of these verses is that the Omer is counted after the first Shabbos after the beginning of Pesach festival. According to this understanding, the "Sabbath" means exactly the same thing each time that it is used, namely, Shabbos, the seventh day.

The Chazal[1], however, explain that the Sabbath in verse 11 refers to the first day of Passover, whether it falls on Shabbos or during the week. Here yom tov is called sabbath. The priest always waves the omer on the 16th of month of Nissan, no matter what day of the week it falls on. The other Sabbaths in the passage mean not the Shabbos day but rather weeks. The difficulty of course is that the same word is said to mean two different things in proximate verses. This difficulty has not escaped sectarians who gleefully point to it as disproving the traditional understanding of the passage and claim that their understanding of the passage is the original anf true one.[2]

This week we will not discuss a specific midrashic passage. Rather, we will attempt to reach a sophisticated understanding of the Rabbinic exegesis of this particular Biblical passage. Please G-d, a new understanding of the rabbinic derivation may emerge.

We start with the well-known disagreement between Rabbinic and sectarian definitions of date. Every Jewish child knows that the day begins at nightfall and ends at night- fall of the following day. It may be surprising to realize that there are many Biblical passages that seem to suggest differently - that day starts at daybreak and ends the following morning.

1. "And the flesh of his peace offering for thanksgiving - it shall be eaten on the day that it is offered; none of it shall be left until the morning" (Vayikra 7:15)

2. The Flood lasted "forty days and forty nights," Moshe ascended Har Sinai and remained there "forty days and forty nights," and after the Flood God promises: "So long as the earth remains, sowing and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and DAY AND NIGHT shall not cease" (Genesis 8:22)

3. 'And it was evening and it was morning' (Genesis 1,5) The Torah does not say here 'it was night and it was day,' but rather 'it was evening' - for the first day was coming to an end, the light was setting,'and it was morning' - the end of the night, for the dawn was breaking. And thus the first of the six days, mentioned by God in the Ten Commandments, was completed. And then began the second day. The Torah does not mean to teach us here that evening and morning constitute a day, for we need only understand how there were six days: DAYBREAK CAME AND THE NIGHT WAS FINISHED; HENCE ONE DAY ENDED AND THE SECOND DAY BEGAN." (Rashbam, Genesis 1:5 [3])

There are other, albeit more arguable passages as well.

On the other hand, as Ibn Ezra points out in Iggeres Hashabbos, we have two clear and unambiguous Torah passages that indicate the day starts and ends at nightfall.

"In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month IN THE EVENING shall you eat matzot, until the twenty-first day of the month IN THE EVENING." (Shemot 12:18)

"It is a Shabbat of Shabbatot to you, and you shall afflict your souls, on the ninth of the month in the evening; FROM EVENING UNTIL EVENING shall you commemorate your Shabbat." (Vayikra 23:32)[4]

See also Megillas Esther (4:16): "Fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days NIGHT AND DAY.

One can reconcile the contradiction by posing that in fact there existed two different counting systems for "day" - one that went from daybreak to daybreak and the other that was reckoned from nightfall to nightfall. The former may be termed "natural day" and describes phenomena of nature; the other is the "ceremonial day" and is used for purposes of festivals and rituals. This type of "day" lasts from night to night.

One must realize that Omer is a ritual inextricably associate with the passage of seasons and new crops - it, therefore, unless specifically mentioned, would be counted using the "natural" counting scheme. Yet, it is also a part of festival system.

It follows, therefore, that the Torah uses the term Sabbath precisely to indicate that we must use the ceremonial count just as we do for Yom Kippur in the verse above.  Just as Shabbaton means tot ell us that "ceremonial days" should be used, so the term "sabbath" is used to tell us that ceremonial and not a natural day should be used. There is no other term that would carry this meaning[5]. On the morrow of Sabbath means this ceremonial kind of the day, from evening to evening, not the one that goes from morning to morning. More specifically, it means that the kohen shall perform Omer waving on the morrow of the day that ended at nightfall, in other words, on the 16th, not 15th of Nissan. Shabbos is being used losely to mean Yom Tov so as to say, "ceremonial day", not "natural day".

We once again find that what at first glance appeared to be an indefensible reading, is in fact the actual and very possible meaning. Moshe Emes V'Toroso Emes.

---

The preceding analysis demonstrates that the Sabbath must be counted from nightfall to nightfall. If so, we would expect it to be specifically stated, or at least hinted  somewhere in the Torah. But where?

Homiletically, the prohibition to measure Shabbos = day + night can found in the following verse (Genesis 8, 22):

While the earth remaines, in seedtime and harvest, and in cold and heat, and in summer and winter, day and night they shall not keep Shabbos. (lo ishbosu).

---

1 Toras Kohanim here and Menachos 66

2 "If we interpret "Sabbath" as a Yom Tov, that is, as a Holy Day [on which work is forbidden], how do we interpret the verse "Seven complete Sabbaths". If the meaning here is a week which contains in it a Sabbath, as the Rabbanites claim, we find that in one instance the meaning of "Sabbath" is Holiday and in another instance its meaning is a week which contains in it a Sabbath. This is untenable for the Torah mentioned "Sabbath" twice in the same breath and it can not have two different meanings unless the Scripture explicitly indicates it does" (http://www.karaite-korner.org/light-of-israel/pentecost_classical_proofs. shtml)

3 This passage of the Rashbam commentary is not found in standard editions and has been claimed to be a forgery. It is, however, found in Rabbi David Oppenheim's manuscript, currently at the Bodleian Library.

4 I am indebted to a recent shiur by Rav Meir Spiegelman for many of these sources. A good discussion of the issue for those who do not mind an admixture of non-traditional views is Umberto Cassuto's commentary to the beginning of Genesis.

5 A related discussion regarding the meaning of the word Pesach is found in R. Y.Z. Zevin Festivals in Halacha, Section Pesach. Suffices to say, using "Morrow of the Pesach" would indicate the day that follows the Passover sacrifice - the 15th of Nissan. "Chag" would mean the sacrifice as well, or the entire 7 day Passover holiday. Listing a date would, of course, lead us directly to the "natural", day+ night counting system as above. Thus, Shabbos, already used in reference to Yom Kippur as proxy for "festival" remains the only possible choice to communicate the desired meaning and is the one that the Torah selects.

A.K.A Pella

from http://afewjews.com/index.html "The infamous aka pella riots video clip has been released to the masses - CAUTION: it's hysterical!" It is also so in-your-face AMERICAN

a.k.a.pella released an album for sefira that sounds exactly like a non-sefira album. That was accomplished by using the voice of one of the group members, a talented musician whose voice can imitate musical instruments, and then enhancing it electronically so that it is indistinguishable form instrumental music. Should it be mutar? I saw a discussion in the Yated in the spring of 2006 in which R. Y. Belsky stated that even purely vocal acapella recording is now considered music and assur. This is because it is digitally mastered with imperfections removed and thus becomes a recording, performed by an instrument and included in the issur of music. If so, this should certainly be osur. On the other hand, if you accept the equating of digitally mastered acapella with recorded vocal music and permit recordings of acapella singing, as has become customary, this should also be perfectly muttar. The source for the distinction between instrumental and vocal music is the gemara in Gittin 7a about mourning for the Mikdash. From the verse "Don't drink wine with song" (Yishayahu 24:9) we learn that instrumental music is forbidden; from the additional verse "Israel, don't rejoice unto delight like the nations" (Hoshea 9:1) we learn that vocal music is also forbidden. From the order we learn that there is a greater stricture for instrumental music. And according to Rashi there is also a practical distinction, in that vocal music is only forbidden in a wine house whereas instrumental music is forbidden in general. This implies that instrumental music is forbidden because it is associated with celebrations. A later source which reinforces this impression is the statement of the Maharil that it is improper to make a wedding without musical instruments, for these are the main way we gladden the bride and groom (Maharil Eiruvei Chatzeirot). A reasonable conclusion would be that in our time, when recorded music is not only associated with celebration, it should be permitted. However, Tzitz Eliezer15:33 seems to feel that the association is still sufficiently strong that recorded music remains forbidden and such is the common practice. How does this relate to aka-pele? It would seem to me, lehalacha if not lmaase, that this brand of vocal music that sounds exactly like instrumental recordings, is associated with celebrations and that it should remain forbidden. If you hold that it's mutar during sefira, the recording in the above video contains only  digitally mastered human voice. Now another question? Having seen the video, should it be forbidden for other reasons?

Silence

There are seventy ways of interpreting the Torah. One of them is through silence.

(Rabbi David Moshe Friedman of Chortkov, from ASimpleJew.blogspot.com)

Comment: at the very least this teaches us that even if we hear a flawed "piece of Torah", even something ludicrious or with no merit at all, we do not have to respond with criticism but can sometimes comment on it with silence.                  

Organizational Behavior

Intertextuality

The concept of intertextuality has made its way from the study of literature to the field of Biblical interpretation and midrash studies. Jewish interpreters have increasingly utilized it in recent years. It is appropriate, no necessary, to discuss the legitimacy and applicability of this method for those who uphold the traditional understanding of Tanach as Divine Revelation.

Intertextuality as defined in literary criticism should not, in my opinion, be applied to sacred texts. Once you get past the jargon, what it means in literary criticism is that all texts are, in main, unconsciously, in dialog and conversation with earlier texts. In other words, whatever a writer has ever read affects how he or she formulates the aims of his writing, what expressions and devices he uses, and how he shapes his materials into a coherent and meaningful narrative. This definition is clearly unacceptable for a believing Jew, for prophecy derives of God and not from the prophet; it is from beginning to end a conscious and supernaturally endowed endeavor.

Is it legitimate, however, to suppose that prophets may have had some influence on how they phrased and parsed the message that was revealed to them? Is it conceivable that they may have purposefully invoked previously revealed prophecies that they read or heard in order to broaden or sharpen the impact of their own message by incorporating allusions to known texts? Could God Himself have done so? If yes, intertextuality can be admitted into the Sacred as a conscious prophetic technique, albeit in a sharply limited and carefully monitored form. If not, it is a foreign offshoot that feeds of polluted waters and we should leave it to those outside the boundaries of traditional Jewish exegesis.

The Talmud in Sanhedrin 89a writes: "R. Yitshak said: One formulation comes to multiple prophets but no two prophets prophesie in the same language. Obadia (1, 3) said: The evil of your heart lifted you. Yirmiah said: It will frighten you, the evil of your heart will lift you (49, 16)."  This passage says that the prophets shape what they express. This goes back to the fact that prophets other than Moses received their prophecy in the form of a vision accompanied by its interpretation; this necessarily set narrow parameters of sentences and paragraphs but allowed them some latitude to choice of words and word arrangement (See Maimonides, Laws of Yesodei Hatorah 7,6). It may then be reasonable that prophets express what they received in a way that is, to some degree reflective of their previous encounter with other sacred texts, that is in other words, intertextual. It seems that intertextuality, if properly defined and utilized, may indeed turn out a legitimate technique. As always, the success or failure of this method depends on its veracity - on how much Yiras Shomaim it includes and how conscious it is of the underlying principles of traditional belief.