Magic Haggadah

My hair has been restored to something approaching normalcy. Eitan Avshalom did his thing and I am now shorn. Which leaves me with nothing to write about except birds and Hebrew. (Of the seven people who read this blog three of them are ardent Jewish bird fans -- the rest hope to get actual information about my life and family. This one is more for the Hebreo-Ornithologists in the crowd.)
I would be remiss if I did not take the period approaching Passover to address the best known Jewish birds since the dove and the raven of Noah. I am talking about those grotesque, playful half-bird, half-Jew illustrations in what is known as the Bird's Head Haggadah. I went to a talk on Shabbat by David Golinkin about illustrated Haggadahs. (The haggadah is the book which lays out all the rituals and stories of Passover and has been the focus of a lot of Jewish artistic energy over hundreds of years.) He spoke about, among others, the Bird's Head Haggadah which is visually fascinating both because it is so lively and also because it is so weird. It is the only Haggadah which depicts human beings with non-human, specifically, bird heads. Balanced on top of their little bearded bird heads are Jew's hats. (In Medieval times, principally in Europe, Jews were often required by law to wear distinctive clothing, the Jewish star being only one example). They caper, they play, they get bake matzah. They generally look pretty happy about being redeemed from bondage. The Bird's Head Haggadah is dated to 13th century Germany. It is -- as far as I understand -- the only illuminated Haggadah from that place and period -- so it is a little hard to know how typical the whole bird thing was of those Haggadahs. It is however the only surviving Medieval haggadah which uses the bird's head device.
So why'd they do it?
The standard explanation was that some zealot had the idea that it was not okay to draw the human face, especially in a religious context, because of the second commandment. There are a number of problems with this theory. For one, there ARE human faces in the Bird's Head Haggadah. The Egyptians, it seems were drawn with human faces, just not the Jews. Second, Jews had a long-established tradition of drawing human faces by the 13th C. and nobody ever seemed to mind before, so why all of a sudden get picky? Third, is it so much better to draw a bird than a human? If the concern is idolatry, certainly idolatry to a bird-headed idol is about as bad as idolatry to a human-headed idol?
Theory two. "They will soar on wings of eagles..." says the prophet Isaiah (40:31). The illustrator is making a visual quotation appropriate to the idea of God redeeming the Jewish people. This is possible, but -- and this I did not know before -- there were other illustrated Jewish books from the period of German Jewry which also have humans depicted with animal and bird faces in a variety of contexts; apparently there was a little boom in animal headed humans in German Jewish art of the 13th Century! These have no apparent correlation to the animal's Biblical iconography. What is known as the Ambrosian Bible has a picture of a variety of were-humans enjoying the Feast of the Righteous at the End of Days where God serves up the Leviathan and other mythical menu items. (The picture reminds me of those creepy cartoon advertisements of pigs happily eating hot-dogs). And something called the Tripartite Machzor has all the WOMEN depicted as animals (The illustration is of Catwoman Ruth talking to human headed Boaz). Curiouser and curiouser.
Theory three. It was magic. A fellow named Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger (and David Golinkin agreed with him) argued that the half-human half-animal motif is evidence of some kind of magic. It is unclear to me from reading the article whether the magic is being depicted in the illustrations (ie. at the time the Jews were taken out of Egypt the world was transformed and the Jew's odd appearance as birds at the time is a manifestation of that. An obvious problem with this theory is that the Jews in the Bird's Head Haggadah, like most haggadahs, are not all depicted at the time of leaving Egypt, but, as the illustration above shows, are also doing contemporary Passover stuff; baking Matzah). Or the illustrations themselves are supposed to have some magical property to them (ie. having a Haggadah with these half-Jew half-bird creatures in them will protect you against the evil eye or some other force subject to supernatural control). Or both.
Another explanation, which makes about as much sense as these three that I haven't seen anyone else put forward, is that there were a lot of bird- and animal-headed people walking around Germany in the 13th Century, so the illustrators were just drawing what they saw. Then it got better.
Whatever the Why of it, the birds heads show a healthy Medieval delight in the grotesque and bizarre. More than that, I always get a kick out of those images of the bird-Jew with his Jew hat which suggest to me a kuntz, a playful messing with the Medieval non-Jewish depiction of Jews as supernatural, uncanny, humans-but-not-quite, like he could have a thought bubble over his head saying, "If that's the state of humanity, I think I'd rather stay a bird, thanks."

The Goods

In response to my previous post (the Year of Men with Hair, see below) my friend Rob said that I needed to show what the situation really was... that I couldn't bitch and moan about my hair and not come through with the goods. Well here it is. 45 lbs of hair standing perpendicular to the surface of my head. Fraggle, n'est pas?

The Year of Men with Hair

(The author has planted a cute story about Benjy in here somewhere in order to entice you to read his ramblings about life. Ed.)
I am currently walking around with a big mop of hair that is weighing me down physically and psychically. I keep saying I am going to get a cut and then not following through. Now that it is so big, my hair will require weeks in the barber's chair once I get there and the thought of all that time spent wearing the funny plastic apron and making inane chit-chat (in Hebrew) with a person who is touching my head (!) makes me defer and it just gets bigger.
This is the story of my life. Towit -- my neuroses (aversion to chit-chat, fear of being judged for having let my hair get too long, hating to make appointments, not liking having my head touched by people outside my family) makes a bad situation worse till I am left with Tina Turner hair.
Then I saw a picture of Bernie Madoff being marched into court the other day and I thought "Look at that hair. Look at those sable curls. I wish I had ten million dollars so I could give it to him to invest for me." The other issue with getting my hair cut is that after all that time wearing the plastic apron of shame, I end up with a standard short-on-the-sides-little-longer-on-top haircut because that's the only haircut a short, Jewish guy can get away with... unless you're Bernie Madoff (I don't know how tall he is but I'm guessing from the pictures he's not more than 5'8"). That guy has money hair, hair that both cost a lot to coif and hair that makes you think it's a good idea to give him your retirement fund. "If I give him my last penny, one day I will have hair like that." And the magic is even more powerful for the tribe of Hebrew elves of which I am a charter member who generally have such a hard time pulling off any 'do longer than two inches without looking like fraggles. They should indict his stylist as a co-conspirator because he would never have gotten away with any of it if he'd gone to Eitan Avshalom for the 65 shekel off the rack Jewish short guy haircut. Even with a blow dry.
By contrast, consider Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois soon to be guest of the state in a whole different capacity. That guy has hair that screams guilty. Federal wiretaps? Save your money! Look at his hair. That is guilty man's hair. Guilty of what? I don't care, he did it.

I am feeling less regretful than in my previous post, butbut still want to share a piece of poetry that I found in a book called 'Company C' by Haim Watzman (who is a neighbour of ours here in Talpiyot, though I haven't met him).
He quotes a poem called "Regret" by Sharon Dolin
"Owl-necked looking back
to where you might have been
or what you should have done."
Don't know how, when thinking about regret and owls, I could have failed to make the connection to those amazing necks. Sorry. I regret the oversight.

Finally, since I have been told I don't include enough family news, we went over to friends for apple pie and Benjy told our friend Michael that he had read a whole Curious George book himself. Michael said, "Wait. Is it the one where George is curious and his curiosity gets him in trouble but eventually it all turns out okay?" To which Benjy replied, "They're all like that."

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.

Egret Tree

Just a quick PS regarding birds on our trip. We saw some kingfishers on the Red Sea fluttering over the water waiting for fish. We also saw something that looked very much like a loon in the ocean at Caesaria. That surprised me because I think of them as being northern birds. I can't find anything even remotely close to a loon in my Israel bird guide. By far the most impressive birds we saw were on our way to Pardes Hanah to visit David and Ronni. There were Vs of migrating birds, big birds that looked like herons or egrets. It was hard to get a good look at them when they were flying but when we were driving around Pardes Hana we saw trees full of dozens and dozens of huge, white birds as if they had grown there. They would all perch on one tree and leave another totally birdless. I think they were egrets. The Little Egret -- Livnit Ketana -- has a plume which I didn't see on any of the birds I spotted. The other egret that is identified in my Israeli bird guide is the Great Egret -- Livnit Gedolah -- not sure if that's what we were seeing.
Not sure what it means but it seems clear that this is some kind of omen about the coalition negotiations here in Israel where Tsipi (her full name is Tsipora which = Bird) Livni is busy laying out terms for her party's participation in the government.

The Big Adventure

After enduring a dust storm -- less dramatic than a sand storm, makes you sneeze a lot -- and pouring rain, we decided that it was time to get out of Jerusalem for a little. Friends from Montreal were visiting so we rented a van and drove South. The rain was so bad we were scared to go by the Jericho--Dead Sea route, so instead we drove West for an hour or so and stopped at Beit Guvrin in the south western end of the Judean mountains, during a break in the rain. It was great, very green and lots of things were flowering. There are giant limestone caves, scary dark tunnels and -- because of the rain -- lots of sticky mud, so the boys had a blast and got filthy. It was just the first in a series of dirt-stompings that Avis's car got from us, by the time we finished, it was filthy (I did sweep it out a little, out of shame, before taking it back). We drove south into the desert through driving rain. The wadis were jumping their banks and washing out the roads, but we drove through with the kids screaming happily/terrified in the back as the water splashed the windows. One of these wash outs in particular had a lot of steam to it. I watched as a big tour bus went through, pulling towards the edge of the road as the water pressed against it. But they made it and I figured we could too. We reached Machtesh Ramon as the storm was abating and saw a rainbow that stretched from one end of the crater to the other. Everyone had to get out and see it from horizon to horizon. The red earth of machtesh ramon got brought back into the van in giant wads, so we had a sort of red/white colour scheme on the upholstery. From about there it was a straight shot down to Eilat. There it was warm and lovely and we spent two and half days camel-riding, snorkeling with dolphins, and under-water-observatorying. We went to Timna, about an hour out of Eilat which was dry by then, though there was a lot of collecting of rocks so the back seat became sprinkled with beautiful pebbles as well. Timna is like being on Mars , red and black and white sand, and then in the middle of it you find little bright green-blue stones which are malachite (I think). It is a mineral with copper in it. There are ancient copper mines at Timna (more crazy tunnels for crawling through). We had a long discussion about copper mining. Our friend Adriana asked how did first person look at this blue rock and say let's make metal out of it? You can't get copper out of malachite or the other common ores it is found in with a camp fire, it isn't hot enough. If I read right, copper was the first metal to be smelted, or extracted by heat from ore. While people probably used gold and iron before copper they just used what they found or mined. So why even try putting rocks in a hot fire to extract metal? The possible answer according to Wikipedia is pretty interesting. Colourful minerals were often used for painting pottery, the blue green colour probably appealed to some potter who painted a clay pot with it and put it in a kiln. When he opened up the kiln the pot would have smashed but the heat would have burned off all the other stuff in the malachite and left behind a few drops of pure copper. Copper goes into bronze, which was a huge technological advance. The Philistines had a monopoly on the working of bronze and made a point of not sharpening or repairing bronze implements of the Israelites when they were at war, a detail recorded in the story of Samson.
We swung back up by the Dead Sea and everyone went for a dip under the moon since it was nearly night by the time we got there. Lev got Dead Sea water in his eyes and I raced to rinse him off. There was a coke bottle sitting by the shore with water in it and I ran over to splash it in Lev's face. At the last minute I decided to take a swig just to make sure it was fresh water and got a big mouth full of Dead Sea water. In case you ever wondered it is really blechy. So I ran spluttering and choking over to the shower and dipped Lev's eyes and my mouth.
Now we are back and enjoying Purim which is weird in Jerusalem since it is two days, unlike most other places and you don't really do anything special on the first day except bake hamentaschen.