Off the Daf and Into Israel

Bava Kama 101 The Rainbow Connection On our daf we have the seemingly strange question of if wool is dyed accidentally, or malevolently, are the wool and the dye two separate items or have they become one new item.  In either case, we ask how can we determine the value of the item(s) and who receives the payment for them. This leads us to the topic of dyes and dyeing – how was it done, what did it cost and other details. Dyeing is an ancient craft and was often a family business, with the trade secrets passed down from father to son. Jews were dyers in the time of the Mishna and continued in the trade through the Middle Ages and even into pre-modern times. When Benjamin of Tudela writes in the 12 th century about visiting Jewish communities all over the world, he often talks about the Jewish dyers. He tells us there were dyers in Jerusalem and the Ramban, a century later, mentions the same fact.  Even today, you can meet people with the family name of Sabag, which means dye

Take Out the Trash! Bava Kama 30 Today's daf (and previous ones) talk a lot about what public spaces looked like and what was allowed there. Today we discuss the specifics of throwing your garbage into the street as well as leaving it there to compost. What did ancient streets look like? Was there garbage collection? Seems like streets were pretty nasty places till very recently (the Ottoman Turks cleared away Jerusalem's garbage once a year) but a recent fascinating archaeological discovery suggests that Jerusalem actually had municipal garbage collection two thousand years ago. Here is the Haaretz article with certain relevant highlights bolded. Thanks Tzvi Bessin for the article! Today we are also advanced in our garbage collection   http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/ archaeology/.premium-1.727585     *Ha’aretz*   June 28, 2016 4:23 PM       *Archaeology*     *Ancient Romans, Jews Invented Trash Collection, Archaeology of Jerusalem Hints*     *Archaeologists digging u

How to Get Rid of Pesky Demons   Gittin 68 The lengthy discussions about demons and Ashmedai in Gittin are not out of the realm of Gemara discourse but are certainly strange and completely unrelated to the topic of divorce.  Or are they? In a fascinating article   Avigail Manekin Bamberger shows that Aramaic incantation bowls discovered in Babylonia sometimes used the language of gittin to rid the house of demons. The bowls had a formula that bore similarities to divorce papers. They cite that this is a divorce between the owner of the house and Lilith (or another demon) and even include the standard וכל שום דאית ליה ; and any (other) name the owner has. Bamberger suggests that this shows how widespread and accepted the gittin formula was among Babylonian Jews, as well as how perhaps scribes could have written both writs of divorce and incantation bowls (gotta make a living). Divorce those demons and have a happy home! http://thegemara.com/naming-demons-the-aramaic-in

We'll Always Have Yavneh Gittin 56 Give me Yavneh and her sages תן לי יבנה וחכמיה .  Among the many stories presented in the Gemara, this vignette in Gittin, with Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s daring escape from Jerusalem and his prescient request of Vespasian is one of the most famous. We often tell it to help explicate how Judaism was able to survive one of its greatest catastrophes, the destruction of the Second Temple. But what is Yavneh? What did Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai really accomplish? And how? Yavneh was, and still is, a relatively small town, not near the major cities of the time: Jerusalem, Zippori, Caesaria.  It was part of the tribal area of Judah and was centrally located  – not far from the sea, near the coastal road, close to the metropolis of Lod. It had a Jewish and a Hellenized population in Second Temple times. And it was the first stop outside Jerusalem for the nomadic Sanhedrin: www.lib.cet.ac.il But most significantly, according t

Gittin 21 A Real Page Turner We are in the midst of a discussion about valid writing materials for a get. Here are some fascinating websites I discovered that help us to picture and understand what Hazal are talking about. http://papyri.tripod.com/vellum/vellum.html See especially the end, about how parchment would often be erased and reused to write something else, exactly what the Mishnah is worried about. http://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrology-collection/ancient-writing-materials Different types of writing materials with great examples of each (see the “mummy tags” for wood). http://www.balashon.com/2008/02/daftar.html Nice blog post about the connection between the Greek word diftera, used in our Gemara to refer to a type of skin that may (or may not) be used for writing a get; and the Hebrew word daf.