Hava Bas-Idis

(By Stephen Stern & Steven Gimbel)

Bad Semitic linguistics from the 1940s: "Gesture Origin of Semitic Languages" by Alexander Jóhannesson in 1944. Made the argument that the Semitic and Indo-European languages derive from the "imitation by the organs of speech of the movements of the hands". www.nature.com/articles/154...

The 8% was just me walking up to the interviewer repeatedly in various disguises

Fascinated by the numbers for Maimonides here.

I study with the Koren Noé Edition of the Steinsaltz Talmud, which I generally enjoy but my #1 grief with it every single time is the "Final halachah" section. Two words that should never be next to each IMO

Definitely not the *whole* of his intellectual project. But he argues that to a large extent, Maimonides regarded the popularity mysticism and midrash as pressing and embarrassing problems in need of solving. There's definitely a strong element of "screw you, dad!" in the life of Maimonides Jr.

participating in the constant process of reconstructing (😉) Judaism by putting Maimonides on blast and looking for alternative inspiration in his forerunners and his critics.

100%! Every generation in every place has been remolding "Jewish thought" to suit their own needs and contexts. For me, I'm of the view that traditional rationalistic Judaism is more hindrance than help to the perceived needs of queer/feminist/egalitarian liberal diaspora Judaism. So I'm

He was definitely reactive, but most of all against Judaism. Check out Menachem Kellner's "Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism", he makes a compelling case that Maimonides was motivated largely by his disgust with the popularity of the Shi'ur Qomah and other contemporary mystical literature.

(I know Philo is typically framed as an apologist to the philosophers on behalf of Judaism, but I think it's at least as valid to interpret him & Maimonides in the inverse.)

I personally think Maimonides and to an extent Saadia Gaon were motivated in no small part by Islamic philosophical polemics against Judaism, to which they responded not by defending the value of Jewish thought, but by redefining Judaism along the very terms by which it was being challenged.

I'm a Buber fan! Re: Rambam & Philo, I find it amusing how Philo is derided by certain Orthodox critics as a "hellenizer", when he and Maimonides shared the same intellectual project. They were both apologists to Jews on behalf of Greek philosophy.

Maimonides isn't really to blame, personally, for what really was the much larger and slower phenomenon of rationalistic Judaism. But he's the rationalistic Jewish thinker par excellence so alas he is my mystical scapegoat.

Notes app screenshot: "I'm not bothered so much Maimonides himself, in truth, as the manner in which his philosophy & legal opinions became "canonized" by his intellectual successors, admittedly a very slow process. In legal terms, the Mishneh Torah marked the beginning of the final crystallization of halachah, something I (a Reconstructionist) feel should never be finalized. But my big problem with him is the very project of "rationalistic Judaism" itself, of which Maimonides has the misfortune of being the mascot. I just can't intellectually countenance trying to turn the Sages into Aristoteleans; the fundamental premise of his whole endeavor is just flatly, demonstrably false. But more importantly to me, I mourn the loss of the divine multiplicity, anthropomorphism, personality, imminence, and mythological richness that leaps from the pages of the Tanakh and Midrash. No more angels, demons, great serpents, magic, divination--all the"

Notes app screenshot: "color and vibrance of tradition turned into an intellectual embarrassment to be hidden and explained away. Maimonides is humiliated and ashamed of the very traditions that I'm most inclined to cherish, and his intellectual inheritors largely succeeded in extirpating them from the rationalistic mainstream. Even the Kabbalah, which to me exhibits far more contunuity with tradition in terms of its spiritual modality, has been covered up and sequestered by the embarrassments of Sabbateanism. Even reading through the works of say Aryeh Kaplan z"l, you can feel the attempts to 'modernize', 'rationalize', 'intellectualize' the Kabbalah draining away its mythic vitality through appeals to Maimonides."

Okay so this is very much a personal bugaboo. tl;dr I'm not fond of 1) the final canonization of halachah and 2) the death of Judaism's mythological heart. I toyed around with applying to rabbinical school, and still might, on the basis of wanting to re-introduce Zohar studies to liberal Judaism.

(In my defense, a little under half of me was joking)

Then I need to switch up my circles bc my referring to him as "one of the greatest disasters in the history of Jewish thought" was not taken kindly

I was recently reminded that it is not good form in certain Jewish study circles to publicly declare that you have quote "mad beef with Maimonides"

Seeing the LibGen / Meta news is so surreal, I literally had a nightmare a few weeks ago that Amazon announced that it had bought LibGen (somehow)

That's kinda why I don't think it's the right connection either, but it's hardly usual for Sidonian kings to be buried in Egyptian sarcophagi, either, which makes me wonder if Eshmunazar II and his parents (also buried in Egyptian sarcophagi) were culturally Egyptianized in some way

So re: "form in life under the sun", one's "form" (tʔr) would be their progeny after them, who have "life under the sun" (as opposed to the dead in Sheol?)? That makes sense, esp as it would basically be a more poetic restatement of a preceding curse (ʔl ykn lm...bn w zrʕ, let have no son nor seed).

Lol. My gut reaction to "nor form in the life under the sun" was to link it with the Egyptian concept of the akh, but I've never read about akhs having any religious currency in Canaan.

Assuming, I guess, that it's not a literal, this-worldly agricultural curse. It's preceded by another curse against any would-be defilers' afterlives, that "they shall have no resting-place with the repha'im" (ʔl ykn lm mškb ʔt rpʔm).

Phoenician q: On the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, what does the curse "let [my defilers] have no root below nor fruit above nor form in the life under the sun" (ʔl ykn lm šrš lmṭ w pr lmʕl w tʔr b ḥym tḥt šmš) refer to in terms of Phoenician conceptions of the afterlife?

Movies you've watched more than six times, gifs only

Bummed. The popular young nephew I've been preparing to rule after me has died under mysterious circumstances. Gonna cry on the shoulder of his charmless but ambitious brother, who was first to offer condolences to me

When in Las Vegas, ḥnqt research is essential!

sense of them when I have the time!

Not bad at all! My reading skills are still poor, I'm still in the process of learning. But the first one looks like a copy of a real text. The second one is a bit garbled because the signs aren't organized properly into squares, but it's real signs and real words. I'll try my best to make

YouTube video by Tango Whisky Terry Riley / Don Cherry ‎– Köln – February 23, 1975 [Full Album]

Music is keeping my mind off of...all this. Terry Riley & Don Cherry in Köln in 1975, absolutely beautiful

youtu.be/i6449e2LsUI?...