Tanach Thoughts

Famously, there are two main traditional understandings for the word צהר (Tzohar) used with regards to the description of the Ark: 1. Window. 2. Glowing gemstone used for light. Presumably, the second interpretation is based on a wordplay on זהר (Zohar), which means "glow" or "aura". However, I admit that the logic of the second interpretation was never clear to me. Glowing gemstones are for movies and comics, right (at its base form, you draw the gem and add radial lines around it) ? Wrong! As it turns out, multiple sources from the Roman, Byzantine and early medieval periods, both Jewish and non-Jewish, record the existence of various types of stones that glow in the dark. Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber wrote an article on the topic over 40 years ago. And, there is even a Wikipedia article on luminous gemstones . The wiki article dismisses most such sources as unrealistic (as it is often wont to do). I recall, however, seeing sometime in the past, a suggestion by a s...

This is an interesting idea I came across some time last year: In Beresheet Rabbah 36:3 it says: "Instead " To plant a vineyard "; from where did he acquire it? Rabbi Abba son of Kahana said: "He gathered to him planting vine shoots and saplings of figs, and cuttings of olives" The grapevine were taken to make wine, and it seems to me pretty obvious that Noach wanted to drown out his sorrows with wine, and knew he would need this ahead of time. But why fig saplings? Rabbi Yishai Zargeri wrote in his book Bigdei Yesha (בגדי ישע), pp . 67-68 (my translation): "And it seems to me that the explanation is that we find that Noach prepared sacrifices when he exited the ark, and to light the fire he needed wood, and since all of the trees were soaked with water it wasn't relevant to light the fire from them, and so Noach needed to bring with him trees into the ark. And it says in the mishna in masechet Tamid ( p. 29a ) that wood from all the trees were fit fo...