When Gogol Bordello performed "American Wedding" at the concert of theirs I went to, Eugene Hütz started by asking the audience, "Have you ever been to an American wedding?" (Unlikely, given that this was in Edinburgh.) With a chuckle, he then asked, "Have you ever been to a Brazilian wedding?" (Brazil being where he lives now.)

I was tempted to fire back "Have you ever been to a Jewish wedding", but didn't, because I thought that, although it probably scored a bit better than an American wedding (I've heard stories of Jews going to non-Jewish weddings, expecting there to be food as well as drinks at the reception, for example, and coming away afterwards ravenous), a typical Jewish wedding probably still fell far short of the multi-day extravaganza you might have seen on the Channel 4 documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, or [ETA: see comments for reason for strikeout] as portrayed in the lyrics of the song:

Have you ever been to [an] American wedding?
Where's the vodka, where is marinated herring?
Where's the musicians that got the taste?
Where is the supply that gonna last three days?
Where is the band that, like Fanfare,
Gonna keep it going twenty-four hours?

Like in the song, you end up with people starting to drift off at one o'clock in the morning. On reflection, however, I think we'd have done a bit better than I thought: Though the wedding feast itself only lasts one day, in traditional Jewish society, friends of the couple host smaller-scale feasts for them throughout the next week, to which at least one person who has not attended the wedding will always be invited.

Not that Eugene Hütz is likely to have known that.

Postscript: I've been meaning to post this for a while; it's got nothing to do with the fact liv and jack are getting married in less than a week. Oh, except for the fact it reminded me to post this. And the fact they're having a four-day celebration with their friends, so good-comparison points to the two of you as well. Fancy inviting Eugene Hütz? ;^)

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( Food aid in the ancient world ) </blockquote> XV.10.356 offers an interesting insight into Herod's behaviour:

The Gadarenes were induced hereby, and made no small cry against him, and that the more boldly, because those that had been delivered up by Agrippa were not punished by Herod, who let them go, and did them no harm; for indeed he was the principal man in the world who appeared almost inexorable in punishing crimes in his own family, but very generous in remitting the offenses that were committed elsewhere.

( We think of the Second Temple as having been rebuilt by Herod, but in fact rebuilding work went on in other periods as well )

( In the same way that Alexandra tried to get control of the kingdom by taking control of the Temple beforehand (see earlier posts), the Romans did the same thing by taking control of the High Priestly vestments ) </blockquote>

[Please comment at my collected Book XV notes post, on Dreamwidth for preference, or on LiveJournal.]

Josephus notes

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Très cool.

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Ah, the youth of today: what it must be like to read an article about Lowry and not be instantly earwormed with "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs". I was five, or possibly a little short of it, when that song was a hit: that's good staying power (though YouTube helps...).

In other news, whilst Desert Island Discs was off the air for a few weeks, I amused myself by listening to various programmes from its archive (available online back as far as 1986, and likely to retreat further into the past in the future). Among these was the one with the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, as guest. Picture my astonishment when the first piece he chose was a song by an apostate Jew ("Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde," from Das Lied von der Erde by Mahler, who converted to Christianity because he felt he could not make it in his day as a Jew). Didn't think properly about the message you'd be sending out with that, ha-rav your lordship, did you?

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Josephus now goes into the reign of Herod at extreme length, which I shall be abbreviating considerably here. After Herod had killed his wife Mariamne, he fell ill, and, when it was thought he would not survive, Mariamne's mother Alexandra tried to get hold of the reigns of power by taking possession of the Temple (XV.7.247): ( Read more... )(It didn't work out well for her: Herod recovered, and killed her too.)

XV.7.250 mentions Herod's "cousin-german", a man named Achiabas. This appears to be an early example of the name Akiva. ("Ch" in Greek was, as I mentioned earlier, in the process at this time of changing from an aspirated K to a /kh/ sound.)

XV.7.257 uses the phrase "filthy lucre". According to Wikipedia, the term in English comes from the NT. I wonder whether this is an artefact of Whitston using a stock phrase, or whether Josephus used it too.

XV.7.259 gives us a tidbit about the laws of divorce: ( Read more... )(FWIW, under the rishonim a thousand years later, women were indeed permitted to initiate divorce, then under the acharonim in the last five hundred years, the pendulum swung back the other way and once again divorce could only be initiated by the man.)

XV.8.298 describes how Herod built a temple at Shomron/Samaria/Sebaste: ( Read more... ) I wonder what kind of a temple it was. Herod is famous for enlarging and beautifying the Jews' Temple in Jerusalem, but he also went on to build lots of pagan temples around the eastern end of the Mediterranean too. I'd guess this one is probably the first of the latter, rather than being either Jewish or Samaritan.

XV.9.305 provides evidence of food aid in the ancient world, when there was a severe famine following on from two years of drought:( Read more... ) </blockquote> XV.10.356 offers an interesting insight into Herod's behaviour:

The Gadarenes were induced hereby, and made no small cry against him, and that the more boldly, because those that had been delivered up by Agrippa were not punished by Herod, who let them go, and did them no harm; for indeed he was the principal man in the world who appeared almost inexorable in punishing crimes in his own family, but very generous in remitting the offenses that were committed elsewhere.

We think of the Second Temple as having been rebuilt by Herod, but in fact rebuilding work went on in other periods as well (XV.11.391): ( Read more... )

In the same way that Alexandra tried to get control of the kingdom by taking control of the Temple beforehand (see above), the Romans did the same thing by taking control of the High Priestly vestments (XV.11.403):( Read more... ) </blockquote>

Josephus notes

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Poll #1839212 Wedding attire
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

It's livredor's wedding in a week and a half. livredor's instructions say "For the ceremony, there is no strict dress code. [...] We hope that [you] will help us to mark the occasion by wearing elegant clothes, but you are welcome to set your own style." How should I turn up?

(Originally posted on Dreamwidth, where there are comments. Please fill out the poll on Dreamwidth rather than here, if you have an account there.)

In the conflict between Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, Hyrcanus had come out tops, with the help of Herod's father Antipater and the Romans; however Aristobulus's son Antigonus invited the Parthians in to try and install him as king, deceiving Hyrcanus and Herod's brother Phasael, who were taken hostage. Phasael having managed to get a message through to Herod, Herod fled from Jerusalem with his family, making his way southeast and then ultimately to Rome, where the Romans would proclaim him king, and send an army back with him to turn declaration into reality.

Before this happened, though, in the early stages of his flight, when at any moment it looks like he might have been overtaken and captured, Josephus tells us (XIV.13.356): ( Read more... ) Interesting to reflect on how different subsequent history would have been—and how much less bloody, in the next few decades—if Herod had succeeded in killing himself at that point. ( Read more... ) though he would go on to order something truly horrific on his deathbed, there is not a trace in Josephus of the Massacre of the Innocents referred to in the Gospel of Matthew; this story seems to be borrowed in its entirety from the similar episode at the beginning of Exodus.

XVII.6.175 describes what Herod ordered on his deathbed: ( Read more... )

Fortunately, Salome and Alexas had some humanity in them, and managed to get the people released before the soldiers guarding them found out Herod had died.

Herod's death also brought to a conclusion the long-running saga of his son Antipater, who had engineered the deaths of his step-brothers the sons of Mariamne who had stood in the way of his rise to the throne, and then eventually, out of patience for his father to go the way of all men, conspired against him himself. Herod found out, put Antipater on trial, then put him in jail whilst he waited to hear back from Augustus. But when Antipater wrongly thought that Herod, who was on his deathbed, had died, he instantly tried to bribe his way out of jail and back to power. Herod furious, instantly had him executed, which, frankly, was all he deserved.

[Please comment at my collected Book XIV notes post, on Dreamwidth for preference, or on LiveJournal.]

Josephus notes

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The Book of Ruth contains an curious version (3:15): After Ruth has, at her mother-in-law's instigation, spent the night at Boaz's feet, Boaz gives her שֵׁשׁ־שְׂעֹרִים, literally "six barleys", and she returns home. What can "six barleys" mean? Either six measures of barley, which would be an awful lot, too much for her to carry, or just six stalks of barley, which is incredibly miserly.

I heard a cool explanation a year or two ago, in which it was just six stalks of barley that Boaz gives Ruth, which turned out to be a coded measure to Naomi, which she understood but Ruth did not—much the way Naomi sending Ruth to Boaz involved non-verbal messages that Boaz picked up on but passed over Ruth's head. Unfortunately, I do not appear to have this interpretation written down, and can't remember what it is. Googling briefly shows me only the traditional commentators making of it references to thinks Naomi wouldn't have known or been interested in.

Is anyone familiar with this interpretation, who can enlighten me once again?

(And yes, it's a little early for studying Ruth, but I have a tutorial on Shavuos with my conversion student coming up soon, and I'd like to tell him about it.)

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In the news today: the ESA approves a mission to Jupiter to assess its moons for the potential for life.

I was a teenager when I read 2010: Odyssey Two and was entranced by its depiction of life in the oceans of Europa, deep beneath its thick, icy crust. As the Voyagers concurrently proceeded on their Grand Tour of the solar system, it became apparent that Europa, or possibly some of the other outer Galilean satellites of Jupiter, were the only places in the solar system other than Earth to have a reasonable chance of supporting life (or life based on carbon chains with water as a solvent anyway; there are, I'm sure, other local optima for life in the sea of hostile chemistry, in conditions very very different from here on Earth, but they're difficult for us to predict).

One of the exciting things about this was the realisation that it might turn out possible, within my lifetime, to find out the truth about Europa (or wherever) for certain, by launching a probe there which would touch down, melt its way through the crust, and have a sample of (or even release an autonomous underwater craft into) the moon's briny ocean. In a way, the Russians are doing something similar at the moment with Lake Vostok, melting down through the Antarctic ice cap to same the waters of the lake to see if it contains life cut off for the rest of the biosphere for the last fifteen million years.

What's frustrating, though, is the slow rate of progress. Galileo was sent to Jupiter in 1989, arrived there in 1995, and provided evidence in favour of Europa possessing an ocean, but no more. A NASA mission was planned, but was cancelled in 2002; a further mission was proposed but cancelled in 2005. Now the latest ESA mission is tentatively given the green light, but it won't launch in 2022, won't get there until 2030, won't touch down on any moon, and certainly won't drill through the ice. Its mission is to assess the possibility that the moons could host life, not to actually search for it.

If it returns a favourable answer, I'm sure eventually a mission will be mounted to actually search for life on the Galilean satellites, but by the time that launches I'll be an old man, and who knows whether I'll survive long enough to see it get there and start the search for real.

It's frustrating. It shouldn't have to take over sixty years from when Clarke wrote 2010, bringing the possibility of life on Europa to public attention, to find out whether it's science fiction or fact. I want to see an answer to this question in my lifetime! (It's the only lifetime I've got.)

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Going out on a limb (*gulp*):

Heute habe ich die Pilzsuppe gemacht, dass aviva_m traurich an(?) Pessach vermisst hat. Jetzt muss ich nur nicht die essen, bis sie kommt!

Corrections welcome. (I should possibly embarrass myself do this more.)

And, because I don't want to alienate half my already small readership:

Today I made the cream of mushroom soup that aviva_m sadly missed at Pesach. Now all I have to do is not eat it until she comes!

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