Marcus Jastrow

We had many dictionaries in rabbinical school, but three main ones.

They were our lifeline, the Frank, the Jastrow, and the Brown Driver Briggs, the BDB.

These dictionaries were definitely more our companions during those five or six years than any of our actual friends.

We got very familiar with them, their niche uses, which one for what, why, how to use them, and for which texts a dictionary would actually give us the complete wrong answer.

Many expressions in literature indicate how persistent was this belief.

Among the Babylonians, the word liver was used in hymns and other compositions precisely as we use the word heart, and Jastrow gives a number of illustrations from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin sources illustrating this usage.

The belief arose that through the inspection of this important organ in the sacrificial animal, the course of future events could be predicted.

The life or soul as the seat of life in the sacrificial animal is, therefore, the divine element in the animal, and the god in accepting the animal which is involved in the act of bringing it as an offering to a god identifies himself with the animal, becomes, as it were, one with it.

Hepatoscopy thus became, among the Babylonians, of extraordinary complexity, and the organ of the sheep was studied and figured as early as three thousand BC.

In the divination rites, the lobes, the gallbladder, the appendages of the upper lobe, and the markings were all inspected with unusual care.

The earliest known anatomical model, which is here shown, is the clay model of a sheep's liver with a divination text dating from about two thousand BC, from which Jastrow has worked out the modern anatomical equivalents of the Babylonian terms.

To reach a decision on any point, the phenomena of the inspection of the liver were carefully recorded, and the interpretations rested on a more or less natural and original association of ideas.

Rabbi Yehuda Omer [foreign language].

Rabbi Yehuda says enough to make, there's [foreign language] again, the hair crown, and that's the Jastrow dictionary definition of kilkul.

The Jastrow is the dictionary of the Talmud.

Since [foreign language] is not specific and probably can't mean the same thing each time it is used in this particular Mishnah, we have to go with the common translation because so far we don't have anything that makes sense.

And the common translation here is if you're carrying lime, you will be liable if you are carrying enough to smooth down the hair on the temple.

But basically taking lines, taking them somewhat out of context and just being honest about that, this line can be a gem in and of itself, separate from like the entire Moses narrative and everything that comes after it.

And I try to give, here's what Jastrow says about this word.

I try to give some of those resources there so people can play with.

But I think making it smaller and bite-sized allows us to slow down and really open into it the way you might with a chant, right?