•ST
8 — THE BULLETIN — Thursday. October 11,1979
Were the Jewish people already Jews** when they received the Torah, or was it the receipt of the Torah that made them Jews?
Neither, in the way you formulate it. The term "Jews'* is from the kingdom of Judah so that the name was not used until after the destruction of the First Temple. The question should be reformulated: Was it the receipt of the Torah that made them into the "children of Israel"?
To this there can only be one answer they were called the "children of Israel" while still in Egypt and in the. account of the giving of the Torah it is said, "In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai" (Exodus 19 : 1).
I would surmise that what you
really mean is, was the giving of the Torah only the addition of further laws or did it change the status of the people? To this the rabbinic answer is that there was a definite change of status, from that of "sons of Noah" into the "children of Israel," not alone in the older sense of children of the Patriarch Jacob but also in the new sense that they now belonged in a different category from that of "sons of Noah."
In a remarkable Talmudic passage (Sabbath 146a) it is implied that mankindvjiad been tainted with something like "original sin" but that when Israel stood at Sinai this taint was taken away from them. In another Talmudic passage (Yevamot 46a and Rashi) their new status is spoken of as a "conversion" which required the conversion rites by means of which, in later Judaism, a would-be proselyte becomes a Jew.
RABBIS WHO SPURN MEAT
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Why is it, I am asked, that some rabbis will not eat meat at public functions, even when the slaughtering is under their own supervision?
Why indeed! If they have any doubts about the kashrut of the meal they have supervised they ought not to permit others to eat of it.
I suppose their defence would be that we do find the idea that extremely pious folk may refrain from eating even kosher meat if there is somewhere an authority who holds that it is trefa or if there is the most far-fetched reason for supposing it is trefa, even if that reason is rejected by the law./^'
In such instances it would certainly be wrong to be pious at the expense of others by declaring the naeat trefa, which by law it is not, yet the rabbi may decide to be strict with himself.
There is a reference in the Talmud (ChuUih 37b) to the Prophet Ezekiel saying that he had never eaten the meat of an animal which had to be brought to a sageto decide whether or not it was trefa (i.e., even if he decided that, in fact, it was kosher).
There is an old gibe about the Behomot and Leviathan served to the righteous at the great banquet after the coniing of the Messiah. Q-d slaughtering both for the Zaddikim
(the righteous ones). Why both? Because there will no doubt be there Zaddikim who will not trust even G-d*s shechita and He will have to provide them with a fish meal.
(Copyright JCN &FS).
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How did the objection to counting the number of Jews arise?
The objection is stated in the Talmud (Yoma 22b). Here it is said that whoever counts Israel transgresses a prohibition, for the verse says: "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured" (Hosea 2,1) i.e. the verse is read as if it said that Israel must not be measured, that is, counted.
the reason may be that to count is to suggest limits, tending to imply that it is good for the numbers of Jews i to Jje kept dpwn. It^ also possible that belier in 1^ is behind the original prohibition.
A very fine idea has been read into the prohibition. There is significance in counting things. Two chairs, for example, are of more use than one and three of more use than two. But each human being is an individual, a world in himself. By counting people
it is implied that each of them does not really "count" in himself.
In various biblical passages it is stated that when it became necessary to determine the number of Israelites they were not counted directly but by means of the half shekels they gave (Exodus 30, 11-16) or by means of pebbles (Rabbinic interpretation of bezek in I Samuel 11,8) or sheep (I Samuel 5,4, Rabbinic interpretation of telaim).
That is why there is no objection to having a census in present-day Israel. (Copyright JCN&FS).
THREATEM KOLLEK
JERUSALEM — A spokesman for Jerusalem's Neturei Karta sect indicated that the ultra-Orthodox group will begin harassing Mayor Teddy KoUek because "he is interfering with our life with traffic on Shabbat on the Ramot Road."
Scientists claim Joshua helped by earthquake
LOS ANGELES - Modern science is now trying to rcA^rite the famous Battle of Jericho, some 2,300 years after the fact.
According to a scientist in California and another in Israel, it was not Joshua*s trumpeting that made the ancient city walls come tumbling down, but probably a strong earthquake that shook the battlefield at the same time.
Jericho lies some five miles from an active fault, which was traced by Professors Amos Nur of Stanford university and Ze'ev Reches of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot after a recent magnitude five tremblor.
Digging back into biblical, archaeological and historical records, the two geophysicists deduced that larger *quakes, ranging between magnitude six and seven, shake the Jericho area about every 200 years. In July, 1927, there was one with a magnitude of six-and-a-half.
In a paper presented to the American Geophysical Union in. Washington, D.C., Professor Nur noted that "it is very likely that the collapse of the walls of Jericho, under Joshua's siege, was caused by an earthquake similar to the 1927 event.
"Aside from the proximity of the fault, there is a remarkable similarity between the description of river flow cut-off and the damming of the Jordan River by earthquake-induced mud slides observed during the past millennium."
He recalled that the biblical account of the battle described the waters of the Jordan rising up"in.a heap", thus exposing solid ground for Joshua's army to cross over in its attack on the city.
The active fault, known as the "Dead Sea Fault," probably marks the boundary where the African and Asian continental plates scrape against each other. JCNS.