Harold Camping, Shemini ‘Aṣereth, and heretics who do do not know enough to copy a text straight

Jewish date:  26 Tishri 5772 (evening) (Parashath Noaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Bobby London (Church of the SubGenius).

Greetings.

This is going to be a variety of things.

1) You may remember that Protestant minister Harold Camping predicted that the world as we know it would end on May 21, 2011 (noted in “Mark your calendars for the Rapture, but don’t hold your breath”, “The Rapture and soft maṣṣah”, and “The Rapture and Pesaḥ preparation”), which of course failed to happen.  Well, Camping came up with a new prediction after that that the world as we know it would end on October 21, 2011.  Unless this blog post is a figment of your imagination, this did not happen.  Details can be found at “Oct. 21 'Doomsday' So Far Pretty Quiet” and “Radio prophet gone from airwaves on new Judgment Day eve”.  I hope he will figure out his system does not have good predictive power and quit, but I am not that optimistic.

2) Shemini ‘Aṣereth/Simḥath Torah:  I spent a lot of Sukkoth sick and under self-imposed quarantine in my apartment.  This naturally limited what I could see people do.  I did get out before Shemini ‘Aṣereth/Simḥath Torah (I went to see a doctor and found I was not infectious), so I can report what happened then.  Simḥath Torah is distinguished by the haqqafoth ritual, in which the Torah scrolls are carried around the reading table seven times (nominally, practically much more than this) with singing and dancing to celebrate the end of the annual reading cycle and the start of the new one.  Unhappily for me, the disease I have is a respiratory infection, which made singing for me unrealistic.  Good thing that there were a lot of other people there to take care of that.  Dancing was somewhat more limited than what I am used to.  The synagogue I currently attend for Shabbath and holidays meets in trailers, as their permanent location is currently under construction; this results in crowding even under ordinary conditions.  On Simḥath Torah, this resulted in slower dancing and fewer fancy moves than there might have otherwise been in order to avoid collisions.  Haqqafofth also have a tendency to go on for extended periods of time, which prompted my synagogue to do some creative scheduling.  At night, dinner was served at the synagogue right after services, thus avoiding any delay from people having to go home and get everything ready.  In the morning, qiddush was held at the synagogue between the Torah reading and yizkor (the memorial prayer for the dead), avoiding the need for anyone to wait until a few hours into the afternoon to eat.  There is also the practice of calling up all men to read from the Torah on Simḥath Torah; at first I thought they were skipping this practice entirely, but they placed it at the very end of the services.  This is the first time I have ever heard of such a practice.  I heard mention of secondary haqqafoth being done elsewhere; even though I had not heard of that practice, due to my condition, I declined to investigate it.  Maybe next year.

I have put my willow and myrtle branches into a vase with water in the hopes of growing them.  The willow seem to have grown the beginnings of roots.  I also hope to grow trees from the seeds in my citron, but I plan to wait for it to fully ripen first.  I have no hope for growing anything from the palm frond.

This wraps it up for the Tishri holidays.  The next holiday, other than the monthly Ro’sh Ḥodhesh (new moon) is the very recent Yiṣḥaq Rabbin Memorial Day, which I am eager to find out if anyone really pays any attention to and why.  (Really.  The man committed treason by enabling the enemies of Israel and ignoring that said enemies had no real interest in making peace.  That, if anything is a reason not to dedicate a holiday to him, even if he did get assassinated.)

3) Every year, observant Jews are expected to read through the entire Torah three times, twice in the original Hebrew and once in a language they understand, usually Aramaic.  They also commonly read commentaries on the Torah as well; this year I have chosen to read the classic Hertz’s Ḥummash (Hertz, J. H., ed. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation and Commentary. London: Defus d’universitah Oxford, 1929-1936. 2nd ed. London: Soncino Press, 1961. Print.) and, since I have this thing about religious fallacies and misinformation, a heretical (“Conservative”) commentary (Lieber, David L., and Jules. Harlow. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. Travel-size ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004. Print.).  To be sure, reading a “Conservative” commentary which makes it clear in the introductions that the people who put it together do not believe in Judaism in the traditional sense of the term is annoying.  But what is more annoying than the commentary is the text of the Torah printed above the commentary.  Why?  Because they dared change the text.  I am well aware that annotations have been added to the printed text of the Torah due to the script being defective.  But the heretics decided that certain passages (Genesis 2:23; 3:14-16; 3:17-19; 4:6-7; 4:23-24; 7:11 in my reading so far, not to mention the entire hafṭarah for Parashath Bere’shith) are poetry, and so they took the liberty of taking liberties with the spacing of the text to show off the poetriness.  This is a direct violation of a great unwritten rule:

YOU WILL NOT TAMPER WITH TRADITION.

Because these idiots have reformatted the text as poetry, some reader who is not so well-informed on the history of the formatting of the Hebrew Bible may get the wrong impression that the poetic formatting is actually part of the text and impose an interpretation which may not be correct.  Good going, heretics.

Peace.

’Aharon/Aaron

The Rapture and Pesaḥ preparation

Greetings.

Jewish date:  18 ’Iyyar 5771 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Today’s holidays:  Day 33 of the ‘Omer/Lagh ba‘Omer (Judaism), Fifth Sunday of Easter (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Elphinstone (Church of the SubGenius).

Topic 1:  This is a followup to the last post, in which your humble blogger noted that Saturday (21 May 2011) was supposed to be the Rapture according to Harold Camping.  (This is actually the second time he has predicted the Rapture; the first was 1994.)  As should be obvious to anyone, he was wrong—as everyone who has predicted the end of the world as we know it has been before.  Other people have felt inclined to comment on this whole incident, both on when the Rapture was supposed to occur and the silence from Harold Camping afterwards (“Predictor of May 21 doomsday to watch it on TV”, “Broadcaster silent as "Judgment Day" hours tick by”, “The Rapture Is Not Saturday -- It's Tonight”, “As hours tick by, "Judgment Day" looks a dud”).  At least one atheist has taken advantage of it for profit by agreeing to take care of people’s pets after the Rapture if paid in advance (“After The Rapture, Who Will Walk Your Dog?”).  Some people downright made fun of it:





Personally I do not find the failure of the Rapture to appear so funny.  Some people actually believed that Camping was right and spend their life savings.  Now these people look like a bunch of idiots, are broke, and are going to have to deal with the social and economic consequences.  Great going, Camping.

Topic 2:  More on Pesaḥ (Passover) in Israel.  Preparation for Pesaḥ was largely unremarkable, though made somewhat easier because I have a small apartment and thus not much to clean.  Having a small apartment also makes it a lot easier to search for ḥameṣ (leavened grain products, which are forbidden on Pesaḥ), as there was less area to search.

Getting rid of ḥameṣ was accomplished by making sure I ate it all before Pesaḥ.  The common practice of selling one’s ḥameṣ to a non-Jew before Pesaḥ was totally irrelevant to me.  Some, such as the Ga’on of Vilna, have decried the practice as not being a real sale, at least as normally performed; in my case, if I had any ḥameṣ left, it was in the form of individual crumbs or grains hidden in inaccessible parts of my apartment.  In practical terms, such ḥameṣ is worthless and unsellable.  No one in their right mind is going to buy isolated crumbs, and if they really wanted to buy such crumbs (maybe due to insanity), one cannot really take possession of and exercise the authority of ownership on something one has no real access to.  Such a sale would therefore be, to say the least, absurd.  I therefore relied on disowning any such ḥameṣ, which is pretty easy since it was nothing anyone would want anyway.

There is a common practice of burning any ḥameṣ left over on the morning before Pesaḥ, and this was practiced very publicly over here.  There is a field next to the local mall, and there were large piles of and barrels filled with ḥameṣ being burned.

That is my shadow you see in front.  I personally would have preferred that a lot of this ḥameṣ would have been given to non-Jews (no point in wasting edible food), but there are very few people who are visibly non-Jewish here in Giv‘ath Shemu’el.

Now somebody prod me to talk about the sedher, qiṭniyyoth, and yom ṭov sheni on Tuesday.  If I pick up the pace, I may actually get caught up with discussing the Jewish holidays before Shavu‘oth…

Peace and enjoy burning stuff this Lagh ba‘Omer.

’Aharon/Aaron

The Rapture and soft maṣṣah

Greetings.

Jewish date:  16 ’Iyyar 5771 (Parashath Beḥuqqothay).

Today’s holidays:  Day 31 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Feast Day of Bernardine of Siena (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Edward II (Church of the SubGenius).

Note:  I am working my way through An Episode of Flatland, so there is another theological review coming up, though with the other things I am trying to do, this will take some time before it gets written and published.

Topic 1:  The Rapture according to Harold Camping is tomorrow (21 May 2011).  See “May 21: Is the end near?”, “May 21 End of the World: Harold Camping's $72M business”, and his farewell letter.  Please note that though the end of the world as we know it has been predicted many times before, all of these predictions have been wrong.  If the Rapture actually happens tomorrow, I will be nothing less than shocked.

Topic 2:  Back to discussing Pesaḥ.  One thing they have over here which I only heard about in the United States is soft maṣṣah.  The maṣṣah available in the United States is hard and brittle, more of a cracker than a proper bread.  But maṣṣah in the old days was softer.  E.g., korekh literally means that one wraps the maṣṣah around the qorban Pesaḥ (paschal sacrifice, which would be lamb or baby goat) and maror (bitter herbs).  (See “Soft Massa: It’s the Real Thing”.)  I was delighted to find soft maṣṣah commercially available in Israel, and so I bought a three-pack to examine them myself.  These were not the first that I ate; at the sedher I attended they had soft maṣṣah.  The following pictures are of the maṣṣah I bought myself.

This is the box the maṣṣah came in.  Do note that according to the instructions on the box indicate it should be kept frozen, unlike brittle maṣṣah, which requires no refrigeration.  The box was kept in my freezer until Pesaḥ.  I put the box in the refrigerator and let it defrost.

 This is what a soft maṣṣah looks like.  I thought it would look more like a pita than this.

It is also fairly thick.

A soft maṣṣah compared with a brittle maṣṣah.

Comparative maṣṣah thickness.  The soft maṣṣah is noticeably thicker.

Not visible in the photographs are the physical properties.  It is much less bendable than pita, though (expectedly) a lot more than brittle maṣṣah.  It still is flexible enough to wrap lamb and romaine lettuce in it.  The taste is fairly doughy, even though it is thoroughly baked; it takes getting used to.

Topic 3:  Sunday is Lagh ba‘Omer.  “Lagh Ba’Omer - A Gratuitous Holiday” claims that the holiday is not what it is commonly claimed to be.

Topic 4:  For today’s religious humor (something I have not done in a while: “The LOLcat Passover story”.

Peace and Shabbath shalom.

’Aharon/Aaron

Mark your calendars for the Rapture, but don’t hold your breath

Greetings.

Jewish date:  21 Ṭeveth 5770 (Parashath Shemoth).

Today’s holidays:  Feast of Raymond of Penyafort (Roman Catholicism), Synaxis of John the Holy Glorious Prophet, Baptist, and Forerunner (Eastern Christianity, Gregorian Calendar).

Topic 1:  “Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts”.  This is very relevant to the question of judging people.  Humans are not perfect, so even the accounts of people doing their utmost to tell the truth may be imperfect.  We must therefore at least be open to the possibility that reports uncorroborated by other evidence might not be perfectly true and act accordingly.

Topic 2:  “Afro-Cuban priests predict social unrest in 2010” and “Biblical scholar's date for rapture: May 21, 2011”.  Both of these deal with predictions made on a religious basis.  The former article deals with predictions made by Santeria priests in Cuba for 2010, which they have predicted to be “a year of social and political unrest, struggles for power, and treachery.”  This prediction is rather fuzzy, applying to a lot of politics on this planet.  It is also noted that this group has been wrong for the past two years, and another Santeria group predicts “that 2010 would be a year of improving health”, also not very specific.  The latter article deals with Harold Camping, a Protestant preacher who believes based on his own personal numerology that the Rapture will be May 21, 2011.  His specificity is appreciated, but it is noted that his previous predicted date, September 6, 1994, proved wrong.  General rule:  Be wary of the predictions of people with a bad track record or who give vague predictions.  In the meantime, I have to start keeping a list of predictions in order to better test who is reliable.  May 21, 2011 is already marked in iCal on my computer.

Topic 3:  Jews and Christians (and probably a number of other religious groups) are supposed to bless their god before they eat.  Today’s religious humor is in this spirit:  “Tank u, ceilingcat, for our daily nomz « Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats” and “Lord, for what I am about”.  NOTE:  Some people may not appreciate the later LOLanimal.





Peace.

Aaron