And now… the last and final verse of the Pirke Avot! Drum roll, please:\n
Ben Hai Hai said, According to the labour is the reward.<\/blockquote>\n
Do you remember last week that I said there was a story about Ben Bag Bag’s name? Here it is: Rabbi Yochanan was the child of a father who was ben ger<\/i>, the son of non-Jews and a mother who was bat ger<\/i>, the daughter of non-Jews. It is unusual for a married couple to convert, or for two converts to marry, so this Yochanan was notable for a Rabbi who was the son of two converts. Thus he had a nickname: ben Bag Bag, the son of bg-bg, ben-ger and bat-gar. But the bg<\/I> abbreviation for ben-ger<\/I> has another connection, as well. It’s— numerology time!\n
Y’all know about Hebrew numerology? It’s pretty simple, on the face of it: the letters have number values (like the Roman Numerals, but superior in every way), and words have the value of the sum of the letters, and words that have the same value are connected in some way, and words that add up to other words are connected, and so on and so forth. In practice, it can be insanely complicated, and it makes no sense whatsoever as attempts to understand the universe, but you can make certain kinds of alphanumeric puns with it, which is kinda cool. OK, cool is probably not the correct descriptor.\n
The first nine letters have the values one to nine: aleph<\/i> is one, bet<\/i> is two, gimel<\/I> is three, dalet<\/I> is four, hay<\/i> is five, and so forth. The next nine are ten, twenty, thirty and so on, and then the remaining letters are 100, 200, 300 and so on. Pretty simple, yes? So bg<\/i> or bet gimel<\/i> is two plus three, or five. And five is hay<\/i>. Now, what is significant about the letter hay<\/i> in connection with those who convert to Judaism? Anyone? Anyone? No? OK, who were the first to convert to Judaism, who can tell me that? Abraham, yes, and his wife Sarah. Only… come on, let’s see hands, now. Yes, that’s right, before the conversion, their names were not Abraham and Sarah but Abram and Sara; the Divine renamed them by adding a hay<\/i> to their names<\/strong>. He, in point fact, gave them five, giving them a hay<\/i> which is numerically the same as giving them bg<\/i>. Thus ben Bag Bag is also ben Hay Hay, or ben Five Five, or Ben Abraham and Sarah.\n
What lesson do we learn from this?\n
We learn that Jews can be real jerks toward the children of non-Jews, and even to the children of converts. Very clever nickname, there, Hillel.\n
Yochanan gets the last word, though, and although he doesn’t actually say Genetic Judaism is for shit<\/i>, I think the implication is pretty clear.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger is finished. Really. Done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-14058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","tag-pirkeavot"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19544,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14058\/revisions\/19544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}