By -

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

By -
Image
Queen for a Day  Nazir 19   Our mishnah is one of the places where we hear about the intriguing figure of Queen Helene or Heleni HaMalka. Here she is described as taking a Nazirite vow while still in the Diaspora, and then having to redo part (or all) of it when she arrives in the land of Israel. Who is Helene, where is she from and what can archaeology tell us about her? We hear about Helene and her sons Monbaz and Izates in a number of places. Josephus, who was almost her contemporary (she probably died when he was a child, in the mid first century CE), writes about the family’s conversion to Judaism. Helene and her husband Monbaz were the rulers of a country called Adiabene or חדייב in Hebrew. It is located on the northern end of the Tigris River, near ancient Nineveh and the Assyrian kingdom. Today it is in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan:   http://womenofhistory.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/queen-helena-of-adiabene.html Adiabene’s location was on a major trade route a
Read more
By -
Image
The Writing on the Wall Shabbat 149 The Gemara here discusses the Mishnah about not reading from a written guest list or menu on Shabbat. Is the concern that you might come to erase something from the list, or that it might lead you to reading material that is inappropiate for Shabbat? In this context, the Gemara discusses a case where the list is written on a wall, and how high the wall is, i.e., whether it will be difficult to erase. Those of us who regularly write out Shabbat menus and guest lists may find this Gemara somewhat strange to say the least. In what civilized home would you write your lists directly on the wall? In this situation, it is helpful to compare our case to one of the few places in the ancient world where the walls and everything on them survived completely intact: Pompeii . The volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii in the year 79 CE preserved the city and all its contents, including those people unlucky enough to not escape in time. As such, Pompeii
Read more
By -
Image
What’s Cookin’? Shabbat 38 What did our ancestors’ kitchens look like? What are all these terms thrown around in Shabbat and in Menachot: tanur תנור , kirah כירה , kupach קופח , furni פורני ? Are they at all parallel to the baking and cooling appliances we use today? To answer that question I looked at three sources: Zeev and Shmuel Safrai’s Mishnat Eretz Yisrael, Shmuel Avitzur’s encyclopedia of traditional tools אדם ועמלו , and Dr. Rafi Frankel’s comprehensive article on baking in Talmudic time (Catedra 2011, link at bottom of the post). Safrai tells us that unless you were very wealthy, no one in ancient times had a kitchen as we think of it. Not only was most of the preparing, baking and cooking done outside in the communal courtyard (everyone knows what is or isn’t in your pots!) but there rarely were surfaces to work on. The women would squat or sit on the floor and the baking and cooking “appliances” were on the floor too. Safrai gives a short description of a ta
Read more