Tanach Thoughts

Couple of interesting tidbits I came across earlier today while perusing various manuscripts of Rashi's commentary on the Torah in search of variants of one particular passage (more on that perhaps some other time): 1. In Ms. HUCA JCF 1, fol. 41r, an artist drew the kohen gadol's choshen (breastplate) and ephod (sleeveless garment below the breastplate. On one side of the ephod, the artist quoted a Tosafistic commentary on the form of the ephod: "האפוד היה כמין שורקוט בלא בתי ידיים." "The ephod was like a kind of sleeveless surcoat." A surcoat was a kind of garment that knights wore over their armor, used to display their coats-of-arms. In other words, the ephod was like a priestly surcoat, and, potentially, the breastplate was the kohen gadol's coat-of-arms. 2. Among the various Temple vessels displayed in the (in)famous scene at Titus's Arch, the vessel that stands out the most is of course the Menorah. A longtime question regarding its design has ...

 I was perusing my files earlier in search of interesting Purim info, and came across an interesting tidbit I had long but forgotten. Yehuda Levi Nachum z"l was a famous collector of Yemenite manuscripts. Not long ago, his collection was donated to the National Library of Israel. Some time last year, I think, while collecting sources for a different project (can't remember what it was), I skimmed some of his published compilations of manuscripts. In the volume מיצירות ספרותיות מתימן (Of Yemenite Literary Works), p. 192, he published a genealogy of a man named Yeshuah ben Aharon (ישועה בן אהרן), which included tracing the man to Yaakov Avinu through Yehudah. What was shocking, however, was that the lineage was not the standard Davidic genealogy (i.e., Yaakov > Yehudah > Peretz > Ram > Aminadav > Nachshon > Salmah/Salmon > Boaz > Oved > Yishai > David >>> [further descendants]), as we find it in Tanachic sources and most later Yehudaic-tri...