A Spectral Presence Rounds the Horn

 

Text and image Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XXI

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XX

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XIX

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Happy Chanukah!

 

Now I'm going to tell you all a strange thing. The night before last, I dreamed that a menorah would come to me. Yesterday, it came. I was in a thrift store with Sandy, and there it was. I couldn't believe my eyes. Of course I could have bought a new one, but I really like it when these things come to me. This menorah is designed and hand-painted (in very fine detail) by artist Maude Weisser. It depicts the Lower East Side of NYC. You can still buy them in New York. They sell for $150. I got this one (which is in perfect condition) in the Hospice Thrift Store for $8. They did not know what it was. Unfortunately, I don't have any candles, but I'll get some. Tonight is only the fifth night of Chanukah.  

We Build Our Prisons

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Psalm 89:3 - Olam Chesed Yibaneh

 

I have been very impressed by a song, now a sort of Jewish anthem, by Rabbi Menachem Creditor. Here is a link:

Olam Chesed Yibaneh

The song is based on three Hebrew words from the third verse of Psalm 89, "olam chesed yibaneh (עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה). These words can be, and have been, translated in a variety of ways. That variety very well illustrates the difficulty of Bible translation.

Here is a sampling of how the verse has been translated, through time:

There are two versions in my edition of the Vulgate. The first is based on the Septuagint (LXX), the translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into Greek, by scholars in the Jewish community of Alexandria, circa 200 BCE:

quoniam dixisti in aeternum misericordia aedificabitur

(for you said that mercy would be built forever)

And, in the same edition of the Vulgate, a translation based on the Hebrew text, as it existed and was known in the late fourth century CE:

quia dixisti sempiterna misericordia aedificabitur

(for you said that eternal mercy will be built)

We now move ahead more than a thousand years, to the King James Version (KJV):

For I have said, Mercy shall be built up forever:

The New American Standard Bible (NASB):

For I have said, "Lovingkindness will be built up forever;"

The Revised Standard Version (RSV), of 1952, and the NRSV:

For thy steadfast love was established for ever,

The New King James Version (NKJV):

For I have said, "Mercy shall be built up forever;

The New International Version (NIV):

I will declare that your love stands firm forever,

The Liber Psalmorum published by the Vatican in 1945:

For you said: "Grace is established forever;"

There are, obviously, problems of disagreement between/among all these translations.

I looked at the English translation in my Tanakh (Hebrew Bible):

For I have said, The world is built by love:

So, what the heck does the actual Hebrew say?

כִּ־אָמַרְתִּי עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה

Translated (as best I can), this means:

For I have said, "Let a world of mercy (or loving kindness) be built."

Why so much variation? Well, first of all, pre-Masoretic Hebrew texts had no vowel points. Secondly, Biblical Hebrew grammar admits of different interpretations. For example, when God says in Genesis "Y'hi or," we take it to mean "Let there be light," but then it says "va y'hi or," which we take to mean "and there was light." But it could also mean, "there will be light." The same verb form, in other words, has three possible meanings. A lot depends on context.

Further clarifications: The Masoretic Text clearly says "I have said," not "you have said." But it may not have been so clear in an unpointed Hebrew text underlying the LXX or St. Jerome's version that was based on Hebrew. In addition, the Hebrew word "chesed" traditionally means "mercy," but it does also have connotations of love and kindness.

Also, the normal way to say "forever" in Hebrew is the idiom "l'olam," which literally means "to the world." But what we see in this Hebrew verse is not "l'olam," but simply "olam," which means "world."

So when we see differences of the kinds that we see above, we should not immediately assume that someone is trying to "twist" a meaning (which is very unlikely), but rather that they are honest differences of reading or interpretation. For this reason, it seems to me that one should pick a Bible translation that they like, and stick with it.

The song says (in English), "I will build this world from love . . ." / "And you must build this world from love . . ." / "And if we build this world from love . . ." / Then God will build this world from love . . ."

What Rabbi Menachem Creditor has done here, in this song, is absolutely brilliant.

Text Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

There Is Only Consciousness

 

Our reality is built of consciousness. 

Our consciousness. 

If our consciousness is distorted, 

perverted, or stunted, 

then, as a society, 

we are lost.

                    --Yablom

Text and image Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

He Peers through Dimensional Fog

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XVIII - Yoga Retro

 

As I mentioned in the last instalment of this series, I recently "put my back in" through the use of a yoga posture. That posture is the Supine Spinal Twist, which is Supta Matsyendrasana (Reclining Lord of the Fish Pose) in Sanskrit. It's a wonderful asana (pose, posture, seat), with many benefits. I've used it many times times for restoring a back that I had "thrown out."

The following illustrations are from 2/16/2006, which is sixteen, almost seventeen years ago. In addition to illustrating the asana, they serve as a retro reference point for this Aging Project series.

Text, images, and video © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler.

Aging Project XVII

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Thirty-five Hundred Years

 

Author's comment: Considering that Proto-Sinaitic writing appears to be about three hundred years older than Ugaritic pseudo-cuneiform, we may actually have been doing this for closer to four thousand years. Of course, other forms of writing in the Middle East, including pictographic and ideographic ones, are much older.

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XVI

 

For contrast and as a reference point, here I am eight years ago, in 2014:

In some ways, I think I look younger now. Is age being transcended? Perhaps, but only temporarily.

Text and images Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XV

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

He Speaks for Another World

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XIV

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

He Works in a World

 

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A Meditation on the Shema

 

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יהוה אֶחָד׃

There is one small difference between the Shema (Devarim/Deuteronomy 6:4) as I have typed it above and as it appears in most printed Bibles, but the difference does have significance. In most printed editions, the last letter of the first word and the last letter of the last word are printed in a larger font size, like this:

The size-difference is sometimes even greater. The purpose of this typological trick is to emphasize the verse and set it apart. I am not aware of any other verse in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) that is treated in this way. The Shema is, arguably, the most important verse in the entire Tanakh:

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."

This "One" has to be put in historical context. Judaism is classified by scholars of comparative religion as "ethical monotheism." We see the ethical part in the Ten Commandments. The neighboring countries of ancient Israel had many gods. Was Judaism the first monotheism? Not quite.

Pharaoh Akhenaton (the alternative spelling "Aknenaten" is due to Wallis Budge's convention of putting in an "e" wherever the correct vowel quality was unknown) was history's first monotheist. He replaced Egypt's huge pantheon with a single god, the disk of the sun, which he called "Aton." When he promulgated this revolution, he also changed his personal name (as opposed to throne-name) from "Akhenamun" to "Akhenaton." Unfortunately foe Akhenaton, his monotheistic revolution put a lot of priests and temples out of business, and so was highly resented by the priestly establishment. In time there was a counter-revolution, which seems to have put Akhenaton out of business. His son, Tutankhamun, became Pharaoh, and was probably murdered at the age of eighteen.

The Egyptian monotheism of Akhenaton had a symbol, the disk of the sun with many rays, each terminating in a hand holding the "Ankh" (Life) sign. The monotheism of Moses (מֹשֶה, Moshe) used no such symbol for its deity, and did not allow graven images.

This Moshe had an Egyptian name. In names such as "Tutmose" (Son of Thoth), the "-mose" means "son." But Moshe was the son of One who could not be named, or pictured. This Moshe doubted that the Israelites would listen to him, because he "spoke with uncircumcised lips," so Aaron spoke for him. This Moshe was Egyptian.

"Shema" is an imperative. This is what we are to do: "hear, listen."

"יהוה" is the tetragrammaton, the Name, too holy to be spoken except by the High Priest in the holy-of-holies, once per year. In place of that Name, we customarily say, "Adonai," usually translated as "Lord."

But this "Adonai" is an odd-looking word. If it is taken to mean "my Lord," then it should be in the form "Adoni," and it appears as such in many biblical names (e.g. Adoniram, "my Lord has exalted"). Some may explain it as an "honorific plural," as Elohim supposedly is for El, but I am not convinced. My own theory is that it is Egyptian for "my Aton," originally referring to the disk of the sun, and having come to mean "my Lord." This confusion of vowel quality fits well the hieroglyphic sign that looks like a vertical feather, transliterated as "a," "i," or "ai." "Adon" in Hebrew means "master," "Lord," or "sir." "My adon" in Hebrew is "adoni," not "adonai."

"Eloheynu" means "our God."

"echad" means "One," which in this context is the key word.

The remaining verses through verse 9, we are told to love the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength, to keep the words of the Shema in our heart, to teach them diligently to our children, to speak of them when we sit, when we walk, and when we lie down, and when we rise up. We are also told to bind them for a sign upon our hand, have them as frontlets between our eyes, and to write them on the door-posts and gates of our houses (which is why there are tefillin and mezuzahs).

What other words of the Tanakh have been stressed to such an extent? I cannot think of any.

Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

 

Aging Project XIII

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

I Want to Speak in Rhythmic Cadences

 

Text and image Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

This "I"

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XII

 

80.16 years

Anyone who makes it into their eighties is likely to have a few battle scars, from things that happen and the resultant surgeries. That is true of me as well, although I've been relatively lucky. On Thursday, November 17, I had surgery to repair an inguinal hernia. The hernia had been quite visible for about five years, and had reached the stage where it looked like I had a baseball under my skin. Now it's gone.

The above shot is from the day of the surgery, about five or six hours after the operation. The incision, nearly three inches long, is outside the frame and not visible. What looks like a monogram tattoo is the surgeon's initials. Mine were there too, verifying the correct location for the procedure. For the first time in years, there is no visible hernia.

In this second shot, taken five days after the surgery, the thin, dark line is the incision. Although you can't tell from the photo, the incision is sealed up with something like super glue. The thicker line, taking off at an angle, is a post-op bruise, of which there are several. The surgeon's initials can still be faintly seen, although I've been trying to wash them off.

In this third shot, also taken today, five days after the surgery, one can see more of the post-op bruising. It's not too bad, but it does also affect the scrotum, with which the hernia was involved.

It's a great relief to have this done and behind me. My recommendation to anyone needing this type of surgery would be to go for it. Advances in medical science over the past twenty years have made the recovery far quicker and easier than it was before.

Text and images Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler.

At Eighty Years

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project XI - I Have Got My Body Back

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

On Translating the Psalms - IV

 

I published the following translation of Psalm 137 on December 10, 2018:

By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows,
there in its midst,
we hung our harps.
For there, those who
had taken us captive
requested words of song from us,
those who were afflicting us
demanded joy.
"Sing us some songs
of Zion."

How shall we sing
the Lord's song
on foreign soil?
If I should forget you,
O Jerusalem,
may my right hand
go also to oblivion,
may my tongue
stick to my palate
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
at the head of all my joy.

Remember, O Lord,
the sons of Edom,
on the day
of Jerusalem,
saying "destroy it,
destroy it,
down to its
foundations."
O daughter of Babylon,
you despoiler,
blessed is the one
who will repay you
for what you have done to us.
Beatus qui tenebit et adlidet
parvulos tuos ad petram.


I included the ending, Verse 9, only in Latin. Due to its cruelty and barbarity (so I thought), I could not bring myself to translate it into English. (This trick was also used by the Victorians, whenever the thing being published or translated contained sexually explicit material. It caused many young students to study their Latin much more diligently.)

Here is Verse 9 as it appears in the RSV:

"Happy shall he be who takes your little ones

and dashes them against the rock!"

Putting the verse into inclusive language doesn't help:

"A blessing on those who will seize your infants

and dash them against the rock!"

(THE INCLUSIVE BIBLE by Priests for Equality: Lanham, MD, A Sheed & Ward Book, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2009. ISBN-13:978-1-58051-213-8; ISBN-10: 1-58051-213-5)

Houston, we have a problem! This time, it may be an insoluble one.

In retrospect, Psalm 137 was pretty much the end of my project to translate the Psalms. But Psalm 137 was only the tip of the iceberg.

What are we to do when the values of Scripture do not match our own values? Are we to believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, because Genesis would have us believe it? Should we still be practicing "an eye for an eye," just because it was relatively merciful in its own time? Should we ignore the dictum of science that approximately ten percent of every mammalian species is homosexual (from birth, not by choice)? Should we be so respectful of tradition that we are cruel, just because our ancestors were cruel? Should we cling so tightly to traditional beliefs that we devalue what we know in favor of what we believe, and so live our lives in ignorance?

 Author's text Copyright © 2018-2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project - X

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Hitching a Ride

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project - IX

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

So God Created Mankind - Gen 1:27

 

Text and image Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

The Pleasure-Path

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

The Child Sleeps in the Man

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Psalms 8:5 - What Is Mankind?

 

Text and image Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

DSS 1QM 1:8 - The Children of Righteousness

 

Text and image Copyright © MMXXII by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project - VIII

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Aging Project - VII

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Eighty Years

 

Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

World without End

 

איך אני יכול להיות שם, כשאני כאן,

או כאן, כשאני שם,

עולמות בתוך עולמות, באוקיינוס

של נצחיות, עולם בלי סוף

(אמן), עולם ללא לב,

או הצלת אמנות, עולם ללא אהבה,

מנותק מלמעלה, עם בקושי

חבר, עולם בלי סוף,

עולם ללא סוף,

אָמֵן. אָמֵן. אָמֵן

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

A Matter of Trees - III

 

What we can be fairly certain of is that the translators of the OT part of the Peshitta, in the second century CE, had no referents for the Hebrew words תוהר and תאשוּר. The same was apparently true of the legendary "Seventy" translators of the Septuagint (LXX), in about 200 BCE. If Isaiah was written ca. 720-700 BCE, then it only took at most 500 years for these two tree names to be lost.

This being the case, how did the translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls determine the meaning of תוהר to be "yew?" I suspect that they found a tree name with some phonetic similarity in a closely related Semitic language, such as Aramaic or Arabic. So, what is the word for "yew" in Arabic? It is "taqsus." Same initial consonant, vowel shifts between "a" and "o" are common, and the second consonant is, in both cases, a guttural. Don't ask me about the "-sus" part--I don't know what it means. Not proof, of course, but it's a distinct possibility. What word is used in Modern Hebrew for "yew?" Taqsus. The original, Hebrew word, has been lost.

A word for which there was a current need would probably not have been lost. But the yew may have been felled to extinction in that area. I can think of two possible reasons: 1) to make longbows, and 2) to avoid the poisoning of livestock in the course of grazing. Every part of the yew is poisonous.

"Taxus" is, of course, the Latin word for "yew," so who knows?

The second mystery tree name, תאשור, looks to me like a corruption of the Aramaic for "of Assyria." If there was a tree that was called "Assyrian," the knowledge of which tree it was had apparently been lost before the time of the translators of the Peshitta (second century CE), and even before the time of the "Seventy" (second century BCE. In other words, this knowledge had already been lost 1000 years before our oldest manuscript of the Masoretic Text. This, I think, puts Bible translation, especially of the Old Testament, in its proper perspective.

[Note on the illustration: The graphic shows verses 12-27 of Chapter 41 of Isaiah. The text is in the beautiful Estrangelo script, which began to be used for Aramaic in the first century CE. Verse 19 is exactly the same as I have given in Part II of this series, in the Hebrew letters that are in use today.]

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler.

 

A Matter of Trees - II

 

I began to make progress when I was reading THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS BIBLE: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English, by Martin Abegg, Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich (New York, Harper One, 1999) On page 336 I found this note: "820. 1QIsa-a and MT have different spellings of this obscure tree." Checking my Tanakh, I saw that the MT had תִּדְהָר (tid'har), while the DSS had תוהר (probably tohar or tuhar, while there are other possibilities in an unpointed txt such as this). But there is no known tree called "tid'har." Clearly, what has happened is that the Masoretes mistook a vav for a daleth.

Obviously, I was not privy to the deliberations of the DSS translators when they decided that the meaning of the DSS word (which I have underlined above in red) was "yew." Perhaps they found the word in an Aramaic targum, or in a text in another closely related language, With this thought in mind, I looked up Isaiah 41:19 in the Peshitta. Here t is:

אתל במדברא ארזא ואשכרעא ואסא וקיסא דמשחא אסים בפקעתא שרוינא הדירא אכחדא

Surely, I thought, this text, in a closely related language, translated from the Hebrew in the second century CE, would solve the problem of the mystery tree. But no, here it is in English:

I will give in the wilderness cedars and acacia trees and the myrtle and the tree of oil I will put in the plain cypresses glorious, together.

Those who are attentive will notice that there are only five tree names given. The translators of the Peshitta punted, and glossed two unfamiliar names of trees with the word "glorious."

(to be continued)

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler.

A Matter of Trees - I

 

One thing leads to another. I was thinking about the lulav (palm branch) and the etrog (citron) of Sukkot, which also involve myrtle (hadass) and willow (aravah). This, in turn, reminded me of an Israeli folksong that I learned as a young man, in the version of Geula Gill:

Eten Bamidbar - Geula Gill

I thought about translating the words, which are based on Isaiah 41:19, perhaps into my Udugi language. But to do that, or anything like it, I would have to know the exact meaning of the verse. I checked the verse in my Tanakh:

I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shitta tree, and the myrtle and the oil tree; I will set in the 'Arava cypress, maple, and box tree together:

I checked the Vulgate, which goes back to the last quarter of the fourth century CE:

dabo in solitudine cedram et spinam et myrtum et lignum olivae / ponam in desrto abietem ulmum et buxum simul

(I will give in solitude the cedar and the thorn tree, and myrtle and the wood of the olive / I will put in the desert the fir, the elm, and the box-tree alike.)

Since the Vulgate often reflects the Septuagint (LXX), which dates to about 200 BCE, I checked that, too:

I will plant in the dry land the cedar and box, the myrtle and cypress, and white poplar:

Note that the LXX gives the names of only five trees, instead of seven.

This was becoming more than a little frustrating. I checked the good, old King James Version:

I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree and the pine and the box tree together.

There was simply no agreement. I was getting nowhere.

I decided to go back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which go back to the middle (some of them) of the second century BCE (see the screen capture above):

In the wilderness, I will put the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; in the desert, I will set the cypress, the yew, and the elm together.

One thing made the DSS version different from all the others: it mentioned "yew," not included in any of the other versions.

Now the LXX is thought to be a little older than the DSS. But the LXX only gives five tree names in this verse. Were there a couple of trees that they didn't know, even then?

(to be continued) 

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler.

148,000 Visits and Two Weeks in NYC

 

Last night we passed the milestone of 148,000 visits (page-views) in this poetry/writing/photography blog. Instead of the three weeks that it took to get another thousand visits when blog activity was at its highest, it took about a month and a half this time. I'm not posting as many times per day as before--it would be fair to say that I'm slowing down.

It would also be fair to say that I'm doing a lot of other things. In addition to my usual diverse studies, my wife and I went to New York for the US Open in September. Here's a photo:

This was the second time that Sandy and I had attended a US Open. The first time was in 2009, thirteen years before. Believe me, this time it was much, much harder. We are not as young as we used to be.

Then, in late September, we had Hurricane Ian. At first it was projected to go right over us, but somehow it made an early turn into Ft. Myers, instead. We feel blessed.

October is only half over, but Sandy spent a couple of days in the hospital, and gave me quite a scare. She is home again and is doing well.

With one thing and another, I haven't had much time for the blog posts that I usually do. I especially have not had time for the extended series things that I like to do, but I celebrated my eightieth birthday with some additions to my Aging Project.

Yes, I'm now 80. Not only that, but I've decided to try for 100 or more. That should take me well beyond 230,000 blog visits. :)

Thank you all for your continued interest and enthusiasm. I close with another clothed photo, just to show that it does happen:

Photo by Fergus McCarthy of Midleton, County Cork, Ireland.

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

This Is Me

 

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.

Through a Glass, Darkly

 

Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yablom.