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2 Cheshvan/20 October, 2009
Oct. 20th, 2009 11:21 pmI had a nice walk with Mama in the morning. The weather was nice and sunny today, with a pleasant October cold. It wasn’t numbingly cold or chilly, just pleasant. We bought a bunch of greeting cards.
I finished Chapter 5 of the Hebrew textbook. Translations occasionally are unintentionally amusing. I had to do the exercises of replacing an underlined word in the sentence with a word provided, usually of the different gender, since in Hebrew the ending and vowels of nouns and verbs depend on gender. This led to fun sentences like: instead of “The young woman listened to the father and went to Jerusalem and to the young man” we end up with “David listened to the father and went to Jerusalem and to the young man.” I came up with great stories in my head. I miss fanfic. I have to find amusement where I can.
I also looked into more Hebrew podcasts and other modern technology possibilities. There is a seminary online course on the introduction of Torah that has way too many Jesus references since the Christians view the Torah as anticipation of Christ. It is very annoying and off-putting. I wanted to hear more on Torah in historical context but I can’t listen to fundamentalist and Christian stuff. It makes my skin crawl. I need to find a podcast from Hebrew scholars. Still I find the fact that I can search online and get lessons and information this easily is just amasing.
Numbers WTF moment of the day: chapters 16 to 20 cover a small rebellion against Moses and Aaron that led to the death of almost 15,000 people, God again reinforcing Aaron’s status as priest and the status of Levites, water of cleansing, water from the rock and the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. Why did people still grumble against Moses and Aaron if they just saw the earth literally open up and swallow the leaders of the rebellion with their families? It wasn’t enough of the demonstration? God sending the plague next seems mild. The most icky thing from the reading today is that the water of cleaning contains the ashes of a burned heifer who was an offering for this very purpose. That water is for purifying from sin. Whenever anyone touches a dead body he must purify himself with this water on the third and seventh day. At least the water just gets sprinkled on a person. Still, icky. God has a big aversion to dead bodies; one cannot even touch a bone or a grave without becoming unclean. Moses also loses his siblings pretty close together. Poor guy.
I finished Chapter 5 of the Hebrew textbook. Translations occasionally are unintentionally amusing. I had to do the exercises of replacing an underlined word in the sentence with a word provided, usually of the different gender, since in Hebrew the ending and vowels of nouns and verbs depend on gender. This led to fun sentences like: instead of “The young woman listened to the father and went to Jerusalem and to the young man” we end up with “David listened to the father and went to Jerusalem and to the young man.” I came up with great stories in my head. I miss fanfic. I have to find amusement where I can.
I also looked into more Hebrew podcasts and other modern technology possibilities. There is a seminary online course on the introduction of Torah that has way too many Jesus references since the Christians view the Torah as anticipation of Christ. It is very annoying and off-putting. I wanted to hear more on Torah in historical context but I can’t listen to fundamentalist and Christian stuff. It makes my skin crawl. I need to find a podcast from Hebrew scholars. Still I find the fact that I can search online and get lessons and information this easily is just amasing.
Numbers WTF moment of the day: chapters 16 to 20 cover a small rebellion against Moses and Aaron that led to the death of almost 15,000 people, God again reinforcing Aaron’s status as priest and the status of Levites, water of cleansing, water from the rock and the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. Why did people still grumble against Moses and Aaron if they just saw the earth literally open up and swallow the leaders of the rebellion with their families? It wasn’t enough of the demonstration? God sending the plague next seems mild. The most icky thing from the reading today is that the water of cleaning contains the ashes of a burned heifer who was an offering for this very purpose. That water is for purifying from sin. Whenever anyone touches a dead body he must purify himself with this water on the third and seventh day. At least the water just gets sprinkled on a person. Still, icky. God has a big aversion to dead bodies; one cannot even touch a bone or a grave without becoming unclean. Moses also loses his siblings pretty close together. Poor guy.
