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 ...

Yup, clickbait title. To my chagrin, I have not updated the blog in quite a while. I've considered a few post ideas but never got around to writing them down. I've spread myself too thin in recent months, trying to balance my doctorate, research assistant commitments, personal research projects, and other things. I'm here just to post something small but perhaps significant that caught my attention last night. I was skimming editions of an old scholarly Jewish Studies journal published by Yeshiva University in the 40s-50s (if I'm not mistaken), called Talpiyot (תלפיות; all articles are in Hebrew). In volume 4, issues 3-4 (published in Kislev of 5710 - winter of 1949), pp. 677-691 there's an article by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher entitled "חות דעת ע"ד המגלות הגנוזות" (An Opinion on the Hidden Scrolls). The Hidden Scrolls in the title is an old term sometimes used for the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were still a very new discovery back in late 1949. In fa...

 AKA, why hasn't there been a post in nearly a month. Well, I've been incredibly busy and I'm still incredibly busy. And I haven't really had something to post. I'm back on the media team for the second season of excavations at Tel Tibneh, and I'm designing the new logo, plus working on a few other things. My dream is create an artistic reconstruction of one of the areas of the site, but I don't know if I have enough coloring experience for that. I was been cramming instruction videos for the last week or so, plus putting in some sketchbook practice, something I haven't done seriously in...years... Other stuff: I was sick for a few days this past week. I've been working on a paper I would like to try to publish. Not the one that was mentioned here in previous posts. That's on hiatus due to reasons not in my control. This is other paper is what one of my professors would refer to as "P.I." (post-interesting). It actually interests me a l...

So, life got in the way (more on that in a future post) and I was not able to create the second post until now. Apologies to anyone who may have been waiting. To recap, the destruction of Shiloh and the apparent subsequent removal of the Tabernacle from there are never explicitly mentioned in the Book of Shmuel. We only have some later hints to this in Yirmiyahu and Tehillim. That question is: This seems to have been a moment of great tragedy to Am Yisrael, according to the two instances in which the event is hinted at. Why then was this not recounted explicitly? Last time I offered my own idea. This time I'll offer up an idea by Rabbi Eitan Shandorfi in his book "הדר הנביאים" - "Hadar Ha'Nevi'im" (the Splendor of the Prophets). Rabbi Shandorfi dedicated an entire chapter of his book to discussing the matter. He finally concluded that the primary purpose of the Tabernacle was to serve as a dwelling for the Holy Ark of the Covenant. No Ark in the Tabernac...

I've been quite busy lately and still am. I've started a number of posts but haven't gotten around to finishing them. However, yesterday I realized something interesting while reading a book, and it's short, so I'm sharing it. So Purim has come and gone...several months ago. But when you think about it, maybe Purim should be year-round because the whole build up to the grand finale of Esther was years in the making. Anyway, Daryavesh, or Darius, the one under whom the Second Temple was completed, was, according to Jewish tradition, the son of Queen Esther and King Achashverosh (see for example Midrash Yalkut Shimoni on the Torah 536 ). However, this is never openly acknowledged in Tanach. There might be any number of reasons for this, including that we have misunderstood our sources and they are not referring to the same Daryavesh under whom the Temple was completed; that Daryavesh was so far gone from Judaism that there was no point; IT'S A THEOLOGICAL CONSPIRA...

A few days ago I was privileged enough to hear a fascinating short TED-sized lecture by one of the doctorate students in my department at university. This student, a rabbi in his profession, spoke about his doctoral thesis which just recently he handed in to the university's review board and was pending a verdict from them. The thesis, which I won't discuss at length here for a number of reasons, the main being that it's still pending a verdict from the board (and the others being that for the most part, it's not Tanach-related), focused on the Mishmarot Kehunah of the Second Temple Era and later. The Mishmarot Kehunah were the divisions of priests that served at set times year-round. Each division served for about two weeks every year and everyone served together on Chol Hamo'ed. Now, I came up to him after the lecture and asked him a question on one aspect of his theory: Per his theory, the four priestly families that came during Shivat Tzion and recreated the pr...

One quick idea I heard yesterday. I started university earlier this week. Things are really hectic right now as I'm trying to find my bearings. but I wanted to share a fascinating thought I heard from one of my lecturers yesterday. His name is Prof. Eyal Regev , and although he seems to hold some Biblical Criticism views which I do not like, his class was very interesting. We began by studying the early Second Temple period, and he noted something about Chaggai 2:1-9 . In those verses, Chaggai, speaking for Hashem, tells the people in Yerushalayim not to be upset that the new Temple isn't as nice as the old one (for those that could remember it). He promised them in the name of Hashem that eventually, the Temple will be the glory of the whole world. Regev pointed out this promise was never fulfilled in the Second Temple era. It's true that during Herod's time, the Temple received a serious facelift, but still two things were missing from Hashem's promise: a. The She...