The Owl of Minerva

Hi everybody; I am having a hard time blogging. I have been working on my fiction since we came back and for some reason I cannot contend with an imaginary world and this one at the same time (I can hardly contend with this one at the best of times, part of why I enjoy escaping into made up worlds so much). It is a weird time right now because we still have 3 months to go. It isn't time to pack our bags yet but it feels like things are winding down. Passover is soon, with a big break from school for the boys and then we will be both feet on the slippery slope to return. My feelings are mixed. I miss Montreal tremendously these days but I also feel like I have squandered my year here. I feel regret. Regret is the cruel cousin of wisdom.
I thought I would give you a bird related update that fits with my mood. I saw what I think was an owl the other night on our street, at the other end, near the Scout's building over by the open field behind the gas-station. I was walking in the dark and a big grey bird swooped past. Could have been a crow (the crows here in Jerusalem are grey crows, with grey wings) This looked bigger than a crow and was flying in the dark. What most made me think it was an owl was how quiet its flight was. That could have been an illusion of eye and ear, but like I said this was big bird and it flew past me about twenty five feet ahead, pretty fast without a whisper of sound. Owls have specialized feathers that make them silent fliers and of course they are night birds -- hence one of their Hebrew names, "Lilith." Lilith of course is also the name the Rabbis gave to Adam's first wife, the one the Bible doesn't tell us about, a sort of succubus figure, a woman demon. (Among the creatures produced from this liaison was a sort of proto-Michigan J Frog -- the cartoon frog who sings and dances but never when anyone is around. In brief, R. Haninah goes to the market and buys a dish, in the dish is a cute frog which does tricks. He is very kind to the frog, but the frog grows and grows to enormous proportions and eventually eats him out of house and home. Finally the the frog talks and says, "I'll reward you what do you want." R. Haninah says teach me all of Torah and the seventy languages of the world beside. The frog complies. The frog says to Mrs. Rabbi Haninah, "You were nice to me too, I'll reward you, too." He takes the Haninahs out to the woods and commands all the animals to bring precious gems. Then he reveals himself as the son of Adam and Lilith.)
The rabbis got the idea of the demonic Lilith from the ambiguous use of the word (I believe it is what is technically called a hepax legomenon, the lone surviving use of a word) in the ornithological cornucopia of the prophet Isaiah 34:11-15 (for those not into the the wrathful deity you may want to skip this bit)
Isaiah is generally foreseeing bad stuff for the kingdom of Edom, than he goes all avian...

34:11 Wild birds of night shall possess it (It is generally agreed that Kaat and Kipod here refer to some birds, perhaps -- and this seems really speculative-- the marabout and the bittern respectively. A kipod is a hedgehog in modern Israeli Hebrew... flying hedgehogs, go know) the owl (yanshuf) and the raven will settle in it. HE will stretch out over her the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of emptiness.

34:12 Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom and all her officials will disappear.

34:13 Her fortresses will be overgrown with thorns; thickets and weeds will grow in her fortified cities. Jackals will settle there; ostriches (banot yanah) will live there.

34:14 Wild animals and wild dogs/jackals will congregate there; wild goats (se'ir: for some reason the Koren Tanach wants se'ir to be a Scops owl, but they also want the banot yanah/ostriches above to be owls so I can only conclude that somebody was a little owl-crazy) will call to one another. Yes, lilith will rest there and make for itself/herself a nest. (The Koren Tanach goes so far as to call the lilith a Tawny Owl)

34:15 Owls (kipoz, I have no idea why they think a kipoz is an owl, the Koren Bible even has Great Owl) will make nests and lay eggs there; they will hatch them and protect them. Yes, hawks will gather there, each with its mate.

So that is a possible five different words for owl if you include the ostriches; yanshuf, bat yonah, se'ir, lilith, and kipoz. (That doesn't include kos from Leviticus which is generally translated as "Little Owl"). The point seems to be that having owls nesting in the ruins of your kingdom is a bad thing. Owls were a symbol of desolation.

Of course, the Greeks, on the other hand, liked owls. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, is symbolized by an owl. The college which Ariela and I attended and where she teaches has Athena's Owl as its emblem. I remember we were pointed there to Nietzche's saying "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk," meaning -- I suppose -- that wisdom always comes too late, hence, regret as the cruel cousin of wisdom, wisdom and ruin together.

Nevertheless, I feel better for having written this (and using hepax legomenon and Michigan J Frog in the same post). Now back to the fiction.