Off the Daf and Into Israel

Amen Sela! Shabbat 65 By Ruth Lieberman One of the most famous coins in Talmudic times appears on our daf, Shabbat 65. The 'Sela' coin was based on the Roman system, similar to the Tyre tetradrachm, and was worth twice the value of the famed 'Shekel' coin - always minted in silver.  Half shekel of the Temple Tax Hoard of the minting year 4-5 CE.  At the time of the Jewish revolt against the Romans, the Tyrian mint stopped issuing silver shekels, yet they were still needed by the Jewish population of the time, for their annual temple tax of a half-shekel. The Jewish authorities of the time decided to mint their own version, a thicker one shekel, half and  quarter shekel coins. We have examples of these, from years One through Five of the Great Revolt, leading up to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. You'll notice the beautiful and very 'Jewish' symbols:  a rimmed chalice on one side and three pomegranates on the other. Ancient

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

Shabbat 15-16 People Who Live in Glass Houses   These pages contain a discussion about at which historical point glass vessels were considered capable of becoming impure. The earliest option is the time of the zugot, Yosi Ben Yoezer and Yosi Ben Yochanan, 2 nd century BCE, then the suggestion is eighty years before the destruction of the Temple (late 1 st century BCE) and finally the time of Usha (2 nd century CE). We also hear about how glass is similar to and also different from both earthenware and metal vessels. So what do we know about glassmaking? Glass production started at least five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia. Egypt was an important center for it. As far as we know, glass was not manufactured in the land of Israel but glass objects were imported here. This glass was beautiful but not transparent or even translucent. Glass pieces from the manufacturing process were reused (important for our daf – glass can be fixed, i.e., made into a new vessel). For some

Shabbat 6 What Does Your Neighborhood Look Like? Masechet Shabbat has begun and with it a whole slew of new and complex concepts. We are talking about the reshuyot, the different areas where life is conducted. The most accessible to us are the public - reshut harabbim – and the private- reshut hayachid. But within those two as well as in addition are many other concepts. It may be helpful to examine some of the terms the Gemara uses and see what they looked like in the ancient world.   What is a reshut harabbim asks our daf.   The answers: a  סרטיא    seratia and a פלטיא   plateia, as well as thoroughfares that are open at both ends מבואות מפולשין . The open thoroughfare is easy enough to understand and if you have been to the ancient site of Susya in the southern Hebron Hills you have seen such a main street, with the passageways to courtyards branching off of it: (Wikimedia commons) But what of the other two terms? Rashi explains a סרטיא   as a highway: a ro