Antigonos' Annals: News Flashes

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

News Flashes

Rabbi Elyashiv, the reactionary Lithuanian rabbi who has been attempting all his life to go forward to the 18th century [or maybe the 17th], and who is considered one of the Torah Sages of this generation, at least by his followers, has died today in an Israeli hospital at the age of 102.

Seven Israelis have been killed, and many more wounded, in a suicide bombing of an airport transport bus in Borgas, Bulgaria.

There must be a connection there somewhere...if not, there ought to be some sort of moral that can be derived from the proximity of the two incidents. Must think about this.

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Milon (Glossary)

OLEH: an immigrant to Israel. The root of the word comes from the verb "to ascend". The plural is "olim". A female is an "olah", and a bunch of female immigrants is "olot".

YORED: an emigrant from Israel. The word means "to descend". Plural is "yordim".

MA'ABARA: pl. "ma'abarot". Tent cities which were built as transit camps in the years immediately following Israel's independence, as nearly two million Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries arrived, often only with the clothes they wore.

MEDURA: pl. "medurot". Campfire.

TZENA: austerity, the name given to the period between Israel's independence and the mid 1950s, when times were very tough.

SHEMITTA: every seventh year, the land in The Land is supposed to lie fallow. Since this would lead to starvation, the ancient Sages developed a whole body of law that permitted cultivation using certain methods and/or the legal fiction that the fields in question were "sold" to a non-Jew for the year. Not all the ultra-Orthodox (virtually none of whom are farmers, and who lived for centuries in non-Jewish communities in the Diaspora where this wasn't a problem) will accept these ways around the commandment, and will only eat either imported produce or produce grown at vast expense in trays of soil raised OFF the ground (therefore not technically being grown "in" the Holy Land. Only a Jew would think of this)

CHAMETZ: literally, "leaven". It means all food which it is prohibited to have "in one's possession" during Passover. Different Jewish ethnic groups interpret this in different ways. Obviously yeast and fermented items are forbidden, but some communities will eat legumes and others will not; some will not eat anything made with matzah or matzah meal which has been in contact with water (gebrochts) like matzah balls. Some communities will eat rice, others will not.

TZITZIT: ritual fringes that males wear, often on the edges of a scapular worn under a shirt, or on the prayer shawl worn in the synagogue. There is a precise way to tie them, so that the knots and twists will add up to 613, the number of the commandments in the Torah.

SHAKSHOUKA: Eggs cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. See http://www.recipezaar.com/148450 for a recipe.

TESHUVA: Penitence.

LITVAK: An very Orthodox Jew from Lithuania. The foremost sage in that community, in the 19th century, was the Vilna Gaon, who excommunicated the hassidim as schismatics because of their mystic belief in their "wonder-working" rabbis. The Hassidim promptly returned the favor. "Litvaks" are noted for their minute, but rationalist, dissection of Jewish texts, and have a distinctive accent in Hebrew. The two communities both wear the black long coats (capotes), have long beards and sidelocks, and are often confused by outsiders as being the same.

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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

News Flashes

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Milon (Glossary)