Rishon - articles

I may place an article here when I think there will be readers. I also placed quotes of interest below.

https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/collections/exodusegypt/ Scholarly collection of articles.

Yosef Karo & his Magid https://www.sefaria.org/Maggid_Meisharim?tab=contents

The contents of the Wisdom of Ben Sira are of a discursive nature, not easily divided into separate parts. Chapters 1–43 deal largely with moral instruction; 44:1–50:24 contain a eulogy of the heroes of Israel. There are two appendixes in which the author expresses his gratitude to God (51:1–12), and invites the unschooled to acquire true wisdom (51:13–30). quotes: Chapter 1

(כג) אַל תִּמְנַע דִּבֵּר בָּעוֹלָם, וְאַל תַּצְפִּין אֶת חָכְמָתֶךָ.

(23) Do not withhold speaking from the world, and do not hide your wisdom

Chapter 2 line 9

יִרְאֵי יְהֹוָה קַוּוּ לְטוֹב, וּלְשִׁמְחַת עוֹלָם וָחֶסֶד.

Those who fear the LORD hope for good, and everlasting joy and mercy.

Some quotes.

Matthew Chapter 22 23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’[b]? He is not the God of the dead but of the living

Lamentations 3:8 גַּ֣ם כִּ֤י אֶזְעַק֙ וַאֲשַׁוֵּ֔עַ שָׂתַ֖ם תְּפִלָּתִֽי׃

RASHI שָׂתַם תְּפִלָּתִי. סָתַם חַלֹּנוֹת הָרָקִיעַ בְּפָנֶיהָ:

He represses my prayer. He shut the windows of the heavens before it.

Resumption 9/2022

Avot 2;4 הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר, אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, וְאל תַּאֲמִין בְּעַצְמְךָ עַד יוֹם מוֹתְךָ

Yochanan (John Hyrkanus) the High Priest was the son of Shimon the Hasmonean and succeeded him as high priest and political leader

Brachot 29a

וְהָא תְּנַן: אַל תַּאֲמִין בְּעַצְמְךָ עַד יוֹם מוֹתְךָ, שֶׁהֲרֵי יוֹחָנָן כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל שִׁמֵּשׁ בִּכְהוּנָּה גְּדוֹלָה שְׁמֹנִים שָׁנָה וּלְבַסּוֹף נַעֲשָׂה צָדוֹקִי.

Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 1:3

תַּמָּן תַּנִּינָן. אַל תַּאֲמֵן בְּעַצְמָךְ עַד יוֹם מוֹתָךְ. מַעֲשֶׂה בְחָסִיד אֶחָד שֶׁהָיָה יוֹשֵׁב וְשׁוֹנֶה. אַל תַּאֲמֵן בְּעַצְמָךְ עַד יוֹם זִקְנוּתָךְ. כְּגוֹן אֲנִי

תמן תנינן וכו'. בפ"ב דאבות

Feynman "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

Kenneth Craik "The nature of exploration" 1943" "people construct mental models of reality to help anticipate events."

מדרש (סוכה נג ע"א)על הלל הזקן

אם תבוא אל ביתי – אני אבוא אל ביתך, אם אתה לא תבוא אל ביתי – אני לא אבוא אל ביתך, שנאמר: "בכל המקום אשר אזכיר את שמי אבוא אליך וברכתיך

הוא היה אומר כן : למקום שאני אוהב, שם רגלי מוליכות אותי.

Notes on Maccabees 1

8: Judas hears about Rome, sends a delegation, and makes a treaty. 1–16: An admiring summary of Rome’s successes. 2: The Gauls, i.e., Galatians, defeated in central Asia Minor in 189 bce. 6: Asia, the Seleucid kingdom, as at 11.13 and elsewhere. 8: Eumenes, king of Pergamon. 10: Apparently a reference to the Roman destruction of Corinth in 146 bce. 14: Not one … put on a crown, the Romans are praised for abstaining from monarchy, just as the Greeks were blamed for putting crowns on their heads at 1.9; 1 Macc was likely composed before the Hasmonean Aristobulus crowned himself king. 16: One man, actually two consuls each year. 17: Eupolemus … Jason. Probably these were members of aristocratic families with a tradition of public service; Eupolemus’s father, Johanan, had been a diplomat a generation earlier (2 Macc 4.11), and it seems that Jason’s son was a diplomat in the service of Judas’s brothers (see 12.16 and 14.22) . The fact that both diplomats’ fathers had Hebrew names while their names are Greek points to a relatively recent process of Hellenization—a process that explains how they came to know Greek well enough to be sent as diplomats (and note that this Eupolemus might be the one who authored a historical work about ancient Judean kings, of which some fragments have survived). Despite that process, however, we see them here in the service of Judas. Probably many Jews tended toward Hellenization, when there was no pressing need to choose between that and remaining Jewish, and chose the Jewish side, as did Eupolemus and Jason, when push came to shove and choices had to be made under the pressure of Antiochus’s decrees. Accos, a priestly family (1 Chr 24.10; Ezra 2.61). 22: Bronze tablets, as at 14.18,26,48. 28: Without deceit, i.e., without tricks such as secretly supplying an enemy’s allies. 31: King Demetrius, of Syria, who sent Bacchides and Nicanor (ch 7). 9.1–22 Death of Judas. 1: A second time, after 7.8ff. Right wing, commanded by Bacchides himself (vv. 12,14). 2: Gilgal … Mesaloth … Arbela, the latter two toponyms are problematic, but the reference is clearly to the road coming up from Jericho (near Gilgal) to Jerusalem. 4: Berea, perhaps modern Al-Bira, near Ramallah, some ten miles north of Jerusalem. 5: Elasa, very near Berea. 6: Greatly frightened, as at 3.16–22 and 4.6–11—but in those cases Judas’s speech focused on the power of God, not on the value of manliness. 10: Our time has come, to die; for the notion of time being propitious or not, compare 12.1 and 15.33–34. 15: Mount Azotus, probably a mistranslation for “slopes of the mountain.” 21: “How is the mighty fallen,” from 2 Sam 1.25, David’s lament for Saul, the first king of Israel. 9.23–49: Jonathan is chosen in Judas’s stead. He takes refuge near the Jordan River, has troubles with local Arabs and then with Bacchides. 24: To their side, that of the “renegades” and “wrongdoers.” 27: Prophets ceased to appear (cf. 4.46; 14.41), with Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, in the Persian period. 33: Tekoa, some eight miles south of Jerusalem. 35: Jonathan sent his brother, although this seems to refer to Simon, who is the only brother mentioned so far in the present context (v. 33), in fact this refers to John, as will become clear in the next verses. The confusion caused by the earlier reference to Simon, and the fact that the present verse has Jonathan acting alone and refers to John only as Jonathan’s brother, suggests that the reference to Simon in v. 33 is secondary and meant (as already his presence in vv. 19,62,65) to adumbrate his future status. 36: Jambri from Medeba, in Moab; apparently a competing tribe. Seized, and killed (v. 38). 43: On the sabbath day, when he hoped the Jews’ guard would be down, which could be the case despite the decision announced at 2.39–41. 45: The battle is in front of us and behind us; the water of the Jordan, better: the battle (i.e., the enemy) is in front of us, and the water of the Jordan is behind us. On this side and on that … there is no place to turn, the river extends far to the north and south of here, so we cannot escape by going around it. 9.50–73: Bacchides, Alcimus, and Jonathan. 54: Tear down the wall, a wall within “the inner court of the sanctuary” would be useful for keeping lay Israelites out; tearing it down would amount to a statement opposing such separation between priests and others. Alcimus’s attempt to break the wall down, here condemned as violating divinely sanctioned tradition (“work of the prophets”), may have been an attempt to solicit popular support; condemnation of his move, by the Hasmoneans’ court historian, amounts to enlisting prophetic support for the priesthood. Correspondingly, Josephus reports (Ant. 13.373) that when a later Hasmonean high priest, Alexander Jannaeus, was having his troubles with the Jewish masses, he built a wall around the altar and the priests’ court, in order to keep the people away. 57: For two years, ca. 159–158 bce. 62: Bethbasi probably near Tekoa (v. 33). 66: Odomera … Phasiron, Arab nomads. 68: Fought with Bacchides, who was besieging Bethbasi and now caught between Simon’s men and Jonathan’s. 73: Michmash, in the hills some seven miles north of Jerusalem. For its biblical associations as the base for building a Judean kingdom, see esp. 1 Sam 13–14; these words resonate well with the depiction of Jonathan here as one who began to judge the people. 10.1–50: Jonathan is wooed by two competitors for the Seleucid throne. In this chapter the pro-Hasmonean author enjoys reporting how Seleucids competed with each other for Jonathan’s favors. 1: Alexander Epiphanes, known as “Alexander Balas,” claimed to be a son of Antiochus IV. 6: Hostages in the citadel, see 9.53. 12: Strongholds that Bacchides had built, 9.50–52. 21: Seventh month, Tishri, September/October, 152 bce. Festival of booths, Tabernacles, Sukkoth (Lev 23.42–43). And he recruited troops, the focus on this rather than on any cultic function suggests the true meaning of the appointment for Jonathan. 25: Demetrius addresses the whole nation, circumventing Jonathan and even suggesting the possibility of another high priest in his stead (vv. 32,38). 26: Since you have kept your agreement with us, a diplomatic misrepresentation. 30: Three districts, districts contested between Judea and Samaria (see also v. 38 and 11.34). 39: Ptolemais … a gift, i.e., the income from that area. 46: Did not believe. This out-of-hand rejection of Seleucid promises shows that, just as Judas was not naïve (7.10–11,30), so also Jonathan. 47: The first, apart from Demetrius (v. 6). 50: Demetrius fell, died, in 150 bce. 10.51–66: Jonathan is honored by Alexander Balas. 51. Ptolemy VI Philometor, reigned 180–145 bce. 57: Cleopatra Thea (b. ca. 165 bce), who was to marry several Seleucid kings. 61: Malcontents, same word translated as “scoundrels” in documents at 15.3,21. 62: Purple, royal vestments, worn by the king’s “friends” (as at 2 Macc 4.38). 65: Chief Friends, a court title higher than “Friends.” General and governor of the province, Judea; Alexander shied away from treating Jonathan as a king. 10.67–87: Jonathan defeats Alexander’s enemy, Demetrius II. 67: Demetrius son of Demetrius, born ca. 161 bce. 72: Twice put to flight, perhaps referring to 6.47 and 9.18. 75. Joppa, Jaffa, adjacent to modern Tel Aviv. 77: Azotus, Ashdod. 83: Beth-dagon, “House of Dagon,” temple of a Philistine deity (Judg 16.23). 89: King’s Kinsmen, another court title. Ekron, another city in Philistia (Josh 13.3), near the border of Judea, halfway between Jerusalem and Ashdod.

Klawans, Jonathan; Wills, Lawrence M.. The Jewish Annotated Apocrypha (p. 249). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Some quotes.

Lamentations 3:8 גַּ֣ם כִּ֤י אֶזְעַק֙ וַאֲשַׁוֵּ֔עַ שָׂתַ֖ם תְּפִלָּתִֽי׃

RASHI שָׂתַם תְּפִלָּתִי. סָתַם חַלֹּנוֹת הָרָקִיעַ בְּפָנֶיהָ:

He represses my prayer. He shut the windows of the heavens before it.

Resumption 9/2022

Avot 2;4 הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר, אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, וְאל תַּאֲמִין בְּעַצְמְךָ עַד יוֹם מוֹתְךָ

Yochanan (John Hyrkanus) the High Priest was the son of Shimon the Hasmonean and succeeded him as high priest and political leader

Brachot 29a

Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 1:3

תמן תנינן וכו'. בפ"ב דאבות

Feynman "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

Kenneth Craik "The nature of exploration" 1943" "people construct mental models of reality to help anticipate events."

מדרש (סוכה נג ע"א)על הלל הזקן

הוא היה אומר כן : למקום שאני אוהב, שם רגלי מוליכות אותי.

Quotes - not kept up.

From 2017

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” wrote the American activist and novelist Upton Sinclair. Just so, it is difficult to get a scholar to understand something when his entire scholarly enterprise depends on his not understanding it. https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2017/07/the-corruption-of-biblical-studies/

Mathematicians, like other scientists, rejoice in unexpected new discoveries and delight when new ideas produce new methods to solve old problems and create new ones. Melvyn B. Nathanson

misinformation and fake news is war Ferrari

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” — Thomas Henry Huxley

The fractal complexity of the law might be more than an evocative metaphor. Samuel Arbesman. Overcomplicated

Nautilus Feb 2 What Quantum Gravity Needs Is More Experiments, Math won’t solve quantum gravity. Experimentation will. BY SABINE HOSSENFELDER

Mathematics is a tool to carry through deductions, but no mathematical conclusion is better than its assumptions. So, logic isn’t enough to decide among physical theories. The only way to find out which theory describes nature is experimental test.

Those working on different approaches rarely if ever speak with one another; and, if they do, they never agree.

In the end, mental gymnastics, no matter how sophisticated, always come down to aesthetic or philosophical preferences in the choice of assumptions.

The light obtained by setting straw men on fire is not what we mean by illumination.

Getting out to make good things happen beats sitting down and thinking big things up.

The narrating self doesn’t replace sense with story; it makes a story that makes its own ...sense.happiness is where you find it, and you find it first by making it yourself. book review by Adam Gopnik New Yorker March 20, 2017 Issue

Quotes 2016 and some references

סוכה נג א הלל הזקן כשהיה שמח בשמחת בית השואבה אמר כן אם אני כאן הכל כאן ואם איני כאן מי כאן הוא היה אומר כן למקום שאני אוהב שם רגלי מוליכות אותי אם תבא אל ביתי אני אבא אל ביתך אם אתה לא תבא אל ביתי אני לא אבא אל ביתך

He [Hillel the elder] used to say to the place that I love there my feet lead me.

No one can become an expert at anything overnight. Expertise requires experience, and experience is more about time than tools. M York Gear vs. Skill Videomaker 1/2017

The question of whether "in the begining" was the word [John 1:1] or the pictureis a facinating topic best discussed elsewhere. Mandelbrot

MK Genesis -- the words are to form a picture.

Mandelbrot's Noah and Joseph Effects

The main use of a model is the pleasure derived in making it. Cundy & Rollett Mathemaical Models Page 14

a nerdy bumper sticker reading, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”—

Scratch for kids for dummies by Derek Breen

You know what is more valuable than money? Time!

Modernity is the Size of an Olive raphaelmagarik

https://ofthewheels.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/modernity-is-the-size-of-an-olive/

The historian cannot avoid plot; without it, information lacks order and meaning.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

It's much easier to figure out how something works when you've got something to work from than

it is to figure it out on your own.

while failure is a part of taking risks, it is also a tool for learning and a foundation on which to build the next idea.

http://www.intellectualventureslab.com/

We seek novelty, but not too much.

Learning includes copying

WSJ article

...the sort of idea so absurd only an intellectual could believe it.

Yuval Noah Harari Ted Talk Yuval Noah Harari: What explains the rise of humans?

We alone of all the animals on the planet can create and believe fictional stories. And as long as everone believes in the same fiction everyone obeys and follows the same rules, the same norms, the same values.

https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_humans?language=en#t-467394

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Harari, Yuval Noah

Fictional reality

"If you think that science is certain--well that's just an error on your part" Richard Feynman

the joy of learning for its own sake

... it is usually difficult to understand {such} general principles before you have seen specific examples.

Stephen Wolfram The Mathematica Book, Fifth Edition

Ḥazal teach us that “ ein adam lomed Torah ella mi-makom she-libbo ḥafeẓ ” ( Avodah Zarah 19a)—“a person learns best from a place that his heart desires.”

Psalm 1 But whose desire is in the law of the Lord. Said Rabbi: A man can learn [well] only that part of the Torah which is his heart's desire, for it is said, But whose desire is in the law of the Lord.

כי אם בתורת ה' חפצו פריש רבי ואמר אין אדם לומד תורה אלא ממקום שלבו חפץ

דף יט, א מסכת עבודה זרה פרק א

Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah Marc Saperstein

p 159 ...sacred rabbinic texts were not only interpreted and explicated but also reinterpreted and and transmuted in accordance with intellectual and spiritual needs arising from a world view radically different from that of the sages.

From PR for ACM Learning Webinar titled Computational Thinking

The underlying assertion of science is that the world is understandable: fueled by human curiosity and need, this has led us on a journey that has pulled away the veil of mystery surrounding the cosmos and in turn has shaped our very existence. The underlying assertion of computing is that the world is computable: this also has led us on a journey that has irreversibly changed humanity. It was once the case that developing software-intensive systems was the domain of a relative few, but as computing has woven its way into the interstitial spaces of civilization, development is no longer just the domain of professionally trained computer scientists and engineers, for now there has grown a much larger community of amateur and incidental developers, people who must build computational systems as part of their primary focus.

Ruth Calderon "A Bride for the Night"

"The editors, depending on their positions on particular issues, sometimes follow the intuition of the original sages and other times turn it on its head".

In 2015 I collected miscellaneous quotes that struck my fancy.

For now here they are.

Quotes 15

Temptations, unlike opportunities, will always give you many second chances."

Sean B. Carroll in Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom page 138 "Like many events in the deep past, it has been easier to conjure up ideas than to test them.

Page 299 I can't pretend to understand the psychological mechanisms that allow humans to deny reality.

Nautilus article. December 2015 issue What I Learned from Losing $200 Million

The 2008 financial crisis taught me about the illusion of control, and how to give it up. By Bob Henderson

even history requires a model to interpret it.

you always come to data with a structural model behind”—meaning some preconception of causes and effects, and therefore some prejudice for how to interpret the data.

Nobody can predict the future—but it's still important to plan ahead. Vanguard investment

words from Hollywood blockbuster Batman Begins: 'It's not who you are on the inside, it's what you do that defines you.'

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.--William James

Science is not just a career or a body of facts, but, more important, a set of cognitive and practical tools designed to understand brute reality while overcoming the human desire to believe what we like or find emotionally satisfying.

-Jerry A. Coyne, in Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (2015)

I don’t think one can truly prove anything in philosophy; I think one can merely try to convince, and probably one will wind up convincing only those people who started out fairly close to the position one is advocating.

Page 28 I am a strange loop Douglas R. Hofstadter

maybe students are also excited to take courses in which knowing and making are part of the same learning process. Those tech courses are hands-on, collaborative, materials-based (well, virtual materials), and experimental—

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/learn-by-painting By Louis Menand

Of knowledge naught remained I did not know,

Of secrets, scarcely any, high or low;

All day and night for three score and twelve years,

I pondered, just to learn that naught I know.

(Rubā‘iyyāt, Sa‘idī 1991, p. 125)

"Commitment to a lifelong program of Bible study must be a priority of every educated Jew"

In The State and Direction of Orthodox Bible Study by Barry Levy in

Modern scholarship in the study of Torah : contributions and limitations by Shalom Carmy"

from Steve Stern the Frozen Rabbi p8,9

whether it was permitted to pee in the snow on Shabbos (which was tantamount to plowing, which was work, and so forbidden)

Since they refused to acknowledge the Prodigy as officially deceased, the Chasidim were unable to elect a successor and thus came to be know for their veneration of the refrigerated rebbe as the Frozen Chasidim.

separating the gems from the detritus

You don’t have to be Jewish to be a compulsive interpreter, but, of course, it helps. —Harold Bloom

from The Serpent's promise by Steve Jones about dark matter "We do not know; and the explanations, when they emerge, will be at an intellectual pole that most of us will never reach."

from The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference David Berger Littman Library

page140 "An outside observer is, of course, free to argue that belief in the resurrection of the dead,or in a personal Messiah,or, for that matter, in God, is itself irrational. By that criterion, however, all serious Orthodox Jews, myself included, are crazy. "

בתלמוד הבבלי (מסכת פסחים דף קיב עמוד א): "תנו רבנן: שבעה דברים צוה רבי עקיבא את רבי יהושע בנו: בני, ... ואל תדור בעיר שראשיה תלמידי חכמים..

All history is created Brettler

Philip R.Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel,”

JSOTSup 148 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 13, “All story is fiction, and that must include historiography.”

A disease is nothing more then a theoretical model applied to a cluster of symptoms. Campbell, Whole

http://www.imj.org.il/exhibitions/2015/history/en/ Click the Cognitive Revolution

Human language has enabled us to create a "fictive reality" — an imagined realm that makes it possible for very large numbers of people (who do not necessarily inhabit the same time or space) to cooperate and share common ideas. This is the basic condition that allowed for the shaping of religions and the creation of beliefs.