Friday, April 28, 2023
Why Kings Are Annointed With Oil in The Bible
Nadene Goldfoot
When the Temple is rebuilt, the oil will be revealed from its hiding place – together with the Ark – and the future King of Israel (aka the Messiah, Mashiach in Hebrew, which means "the anointed one") will be anointed with it.
The anointing oil is referred to in the Torah (Exodus 30:22-33)
"You shall anoint Aaron and his sons and sanctify them to
minister to Me, "You shall speak to the Children of Israel,
saying: "This shall remain for Me oil of sacred anointment for
your generations....."
when God instructs Moses to produce it to consecrate kings
and High Priests, as well as the Tabernacle and its utensils
(such as the ark, altars and menorah). That’s a lot of
anointing! But the Talmud states that the original oil Moses
produced in the desert, though only 12 logs (around 1
gallon), miraculously lasted for all of Israel’s history and exists in its full quantity today (Horiyot 11b).
Nathan wrote a chronicle about his father, David and his
reign (chronicle 29:29) most likely one of the main sources for the Book of Samuel).
Why were Jewish kings anointed with oil specifically? And what’s the significance of the miracle of Moses’s oil lasting forever? (Seems like a far bigger miracle than the flask of oil burning for eight days!)
The oil was hidden away by King Josiah towards the end of the First Temple era – when he hid the Ark of the Covenant and some other sacred items, knowing that the Temple was soon to be destroyed.
Why were Jewish kings anointed with oil specifically? And what’s the significance of the miracle of Moses’s oil lasting forever? (Seems like a far bigger miracle than the flask of oil burning for eight days!)
In Judaism, anointing with oil signifies the endowment of divine power, authority, and blessings upon the new king. Oil, which was also used to light the menorah in the Temple, represents the light of Jewish wisdom that illuminates the world. Accessing the pure oil requires squeezing the olive, symbolizing the necessity to put in maximum effort to attain wisdom.
Talmud: We have two of them, the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds. Books of the records of the academic discussions and judicial administration of Jewish Law. This was compiled all before 400 CE for the Palestinian Talmud; 500 CE for the Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud is 3 times as long as Palestinian one, making Babylonian one far more important.
Torah: The Written Law of Moses-the 1st 5 books -Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy or (Bereishis), Shemos, Veyikra, Bamidbar, Devarim)
The Talmud (Megillah 6b) states that God makes a rare promise: no matter what your IQ is, if your yearning for Jewish wisdom is so strong that in translates into blood, sweat and tears, God will open up the gates of wisdom and coronate you with the Crown of Torah. Accessing the wealth of Jewish wisdom is totally available for anyone who wants it badly enough.
Perhaps that is why Moses’ oil will never be depleted. The oil represents the infinite Torah that is available always, to everyone, for all time.
But there’s one more catch. You can only attain it through humility. In the verse, "Where shall wisdom be found" (Job 28:12), the Hebrew word for "where" is "me’ayin" which also means "from nothingness".
The Talmud (Sotah, 21b) says that Torah wisdom can only be found in one who "makes nothing" of himself. That is why a king was commanded to write his own Torah scroll and carry it at all times next to his heart, reminding himself that he is not above God. 
The oil that will be used to anoint Charles, son of Queen Elizabeth as king was consecrated in Jerusalem’s Old City, two minutes away from his office, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 
Olive trees in Mount of Olives, Jerusalem
The new "sacred oil" – that’s how it’s being referred to in mainstream press – was created from olives harvested and grown on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, under the order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who will officiate the coronation.
He said, "This demonstrates the deep historic link between the Coronation, the Bible and the Holy Land. From ancient kings through to the present day, monarchs have been anointed with oil from this sacred place. As we prepare to anoint The King and The Queen Consort, I pray that they would be guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit."
Labels: Archbishop of Canterbury, Bible linked to Holy Land, Jerusalem, King Charles of England, kings, Messiah, Mount of Olives, sacred olive oil
History of the Torah
Nadene Goldfoot
An authentic Torah scroll is a mind-boggling masterpiece of labor and skill. Comprising between 62 and 84 sheets of parchment-cured, tanned, scraped and prepared according to exacting Torah law specifications-and containing exactly 304,805 letters, the resulting handwritten scroll takes many months to complete .Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was already being used by then by the Educated Egyptians, probably as a 2nd language. Like today, people learned many languages.
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| I like the letter A of the Paleo-Hebrew as it really looks like today's capital A only laying on its side. All Hebrew is read from right to left, the opposite of English. The first surprise is that Hebrew was spoken in Canaan before the Israelite conquest. 400 years before, Abraham had lived there, and now his descendants and others who had joined them were returning. The Hebrew language was still being used, proven by the Tel el Amarna Letters. This was pre-exile biblical Hebrew with a rich vocabulary that had borrowed many words from surrounding languages. The Northern Kingdom used a slightly different standard language. After the exile, the language continued for over 500 years, but had started to decay because of the influence of Aramaic from 539 to 331 BCE. Aramaic had become the language of officialdom and was spoken by many Jews. At the same time, Mishnaic Hebrew was emerging and was the new colloquial language from 200 BCE on. It's from some pre-exilic colloquial dialect and became a literary language through the tannaim in the 1st century CE. They didn't use it as much when speaking after the wars of 66 to 70 CE or after the final wars from 132 to 135 CE with Bar Kokhba. |
The Assyrians had conquered and taken the 10 Tribes of northern Israel, leaving Judah in the south in 722 BCE. This was after the time of King David who ruled from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE and his son, King Solomon ruler from 961 BCE to 921 BCE. The kingdom of Judah had to carry on alone against all the surrounding enemies of which Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was the next.
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| Proto-Hebrew I like the ayin which is a small zero. Ayin is silent anyway. |
In 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, defeat Babylon, he allows the Jews to return and rebuild of the Temple to begin. This is the beginning of the Second Temple Period. After Seventy-years of captivity, many of the descendants of the Jewish captives had forgotten the Hebrew tongue and alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet was adopted for the Hebrew language by some Jews. This helped the Jews make the transition, to still be a distinct people and yet being able to communicate with the society around them. Manuscripts of the Torah and Prophets were written in the Aramaic square
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| Notice the absence of vowels except for the vov which is a consonant and a vowel. Beginners today get to use something like a code of dots and dashes under the letters giving the word the sounds needed that vowels create. One does sight reading quite a lot in reading Hebrew more than phonics with adult literature. |
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| Shrine of the Book Museum housing Dead Sea Scrolls, Jerusalem "The Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum: from ancient scripts to nanotechnologies A comment overheard there: The white dome is supposed to, in some way, remind us of the covers on the stone jars in which the scrolls were found. It is unbelievable to enter this circular room and look at the scrolls that are over 2000 years and ponder all that they represent. It makes me ask the question: what else could be hiding out there in the caves in the desert??" |
Resource: http://www.truthnet.org/Bible-Origins/4_How_was_Bible_written/index.htm
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/Pictograms/pictograms.html
5/3/18: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia p. 3839, Alphabet, additional information
Labels: Cyrus the Great, Moses, Nehemiah, Paleo-Hebrew Script, Phoenician script, Solomon Birnbaum, Torah, Ulpan Hebrew, writing
Thursday, April 27, 2023
The Very Narrow World of an Oregonian; Maurice Goldfoot
Nadene Goldfoot
I say the very narrow world of my father, Moses/Morris/Maurice Goldfoot is because he was born on July1, 1908 at 277 Baker Street in South Portland and died in 1967. His father died from an accident involving his horse and wagon when he was 4 years old and his brother, Charlie, was 6. They sold newspapers on the street and were able to make change. My father, the smaller and lighter haired trailing behind his brother got the most business, he told us. Then they'd come home and give the change to their mother. Sometimes they managed to go to the movies. Their mother, my Bubby, was so short she was almost midget-size, and only spoke Yiddish, completely illiterate from Lithuania as both parents were.
As a child, he went to movies. Motion pictures debuted in Oregon in 1894 when a kinetoscope arrived in Portland. The innovative technology allowed boxing matches, vaudeville acts, and other popular entertainment to be shown in penny arcades and peepshows and, after 1906, on the nickelodeon.
Soon early films were being projected in theaters, first at Cordray’s Opera House in Portland. By 1897, local documentary films were being made, including Fishing on the Willamette (1897), The Portland Fire Department (1901), Decoration Day Parade (1902), Panoramic View of the Columbia (1904), and Opening Ceremonies of the Lewis & Clark Exposition Grounds (1905). One of the first feature films made in the state was The Fisherman's Bride, a 1908 silent film produced by Col. He picked up English when he started school.
He lived in a day consisting of the radio. Just before he died in 67, we had TV in the house by 1953. One of Portland's first radio station licenses was granted to The Portland Telegram and the first broadcast was heard on November 21, 1921 from the Telegram's offices in the Pittock Block. By his teens at 13, the year would have been 1921, so he may have had radio by then. "The Sheik of Araby" w. Harry B. Smith & Francis Wheeler m. Ted Snyder was popular.
I remember sitting around our radio in the living room in Portland's Ladd's Addition and listening to Lux Theater. Lux Radio Theatre, sometimes spelled Lux Radio Theater, a classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network (1934–35) (owned by the National Broadcasting Company, later predecessor of American Broadcasting Company [ABC] in 1943–1945); CBS Radio network (Columbia Broadcasting System) (1935–54), and NBC Radio (1954–55).
Dad went in for all the sports; running, and loved baseball. He had to quit high school before he started his senior year to help support the family of his mother, brother and two sisters. He hated giving up baseball but could weigh the more needed skill that he had-working-against enjoying something.
Mel Blanc, both born in 1908, a month older
I presume my father listened much earlier, and also in his many trucks. He went to Failing Grade School in SW Portland with Mel Blank .Melvin Jerome Blanc (born Blank May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and radio personality whose career spanned over 60 years. During the Golden Age of Radio, he provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs, including those of Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, The Great Gildersleeve, Judy Canova, and his own short-lived sitcom.
Blanc was born on May 30, 1908 in San Francisco, California, to Eva (née Katz), a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, and Frederick Blank (born in New York to German Jewish parents), the younger of two children. He grew up in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood, and later in Portland, Oregon, where he attended Lincoln High School. He had an early fondness for voices and dialect, which he began practicing at the age of 10. He claimed that he changed the spelling of his name when he was 16, from Blank to Blanc, because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a "blank". He joined the Order of DeMolay as a young man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. After graduating from high school in 1927, he divided his time between leading an orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor in the country at the age of 19; and performing shtick in vaudeville shows around Washington, Oregon and northern California.
The Neighborhood House was right around the corner and that's where he started boxing, and went into it there professionally. He said that if the opposition looked really tough, he'd lay down rather than be beaten to a pulp. He had boxes of his gloves in our basement.
At about that time he tried marriage with a Rose Zusman, but that was over about as soon as it started, marrying June 3, 1928 when he was 19 and divorced August 12, 1929 at 20. He worked for the kosher butcher on 3rd and Lincoln where the Lincoln Theater resided a few doors away.
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Then he met my tall mother, Mildred Elizabeth Robinson and married on April 29, 1932, bringing her home to his mother who they lived with for a few months. Mom learned how to make a lot of Jewish dishes that Bubby was known for. He was still with the kosher butcher when I was born in 1934. His minimum wage was $0.40 per hour. He got so he gave my mom $15 per week for groceries. That's what he paid me per week when I was 16 and could drive myself to work. I'd do his books after school.
Out of 24 hours, he worked 8 here at the shipyards, then the rest in his own business, buying cattle, selling hides to the government, meat to people. He must have slept very little; never went to synagogue, unfortunately; trying to provide security for his family that he never had.
I loved it when he did get together with his sisters in Portland. They'd speak Yiddish and laugh and laugh. Elsie had one son, Donnie. I wonder if they mentioned how Bubby used to use the broom when they were under the bed to reach them. She was outnumbered 4:1. To provide for them, she had been a chicken plucker.
By 1941 we were at war, the 2nd World War. Dad was exempt from the draft as he was in a business of buying hides by then with the beginnings of his own wholesale Meat Co.; leather for army boots. So he, who never hammered a nail, became the manager at the ship yards of a group of workers. With his own business of Lincoln Wholesale Meats, he had butchers working for him; and my little cousin, Don, who finally was able to drive one of his trucks for him after school.
Dad never took a vacation but probably enjoyed the auction houses he drove to across Oregon in buying cattle more than he would any vacation. A Jewish guy wearing jeans and flannel shirts and cowboy boots must have been quite a sight, sort of a Mel Brooks in "Blazing Saddles,"
Dad made it big, but no hat; but wore the boots. You walk around horse manure in cattle auctions, you know. He wound up on Columbia Blvd next door to Swift and Armour with his new business of Silver Falls Meat Packing Co. Though I had been keeping his books for him single-handed since age 15; when he moved in there, he hired professionals with machines. I lost my job! The best I did was enter college, and finally one day, while teaching at Lindbergh Grade School in Ontario, Oregon, got the school camera and made a study of cow to table...went through Silver Falls taking pictures and telling the story of meat.
6 hr 20 min (375.4 mi) via I-84 E driving....Portland to Ontario
When he came home from the road, being gone all week, he'd watch TV. Life was all work and no play; no reading great books or any book for that matter; only magazines.
Dad died on July 23, 1967, flown into Portland from Ontario to the Portland hospital. His illness happened right after Israel's 6 Day War (June 5th to June 10th 1967) He had become ill and died in about 3 weeks at age 59. He probably didn't even follow the war, nor know about any of them as they didn't make the Portland papers. What was in his life was the price of cattle, and what his children were doing. He was so lucky that our mom was the kind who liked her freedom but also felt and needed that security he provided. She and I had a good time together.
Dad died after being in the St. Vincent's hospital in Portland for four days. He was only 59 years old. He died at 11:00pm. He's buried in the Shaarie Torah Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. They spelled his mother's name as Hattie Germankoski on the death certificate.
He had hepatitis. He had had a blood transfusion after surgery. He had gone into shock. They used hypnosis to bring him out. The prostrate was operated on and was swelling. It was hyperplasic.
Since then, I've heard from business men who were helped and got their start in business from my father. That's a very Jewish mitzvah. He helped many.
He died in St. Vincent's Hospital in Portland and so did his father, most likely different buildings between the old hospital and the new one.
Labels: baseball, Billy Meshke, boxing, butcher, meat packer, Mel Blanc, new immigrants, Ontario, Oregon, Oregon shipyards, Portland
