daf bit: Bava Batra 74

[cellio]

From a mishna about selling ships the g'mara moves to a discussion of Leviathan, the great sea monster. Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: all that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in this world, He created male and female. Likewise He created Leviathan the male serpent and Leviathan the female serpent, and had they mated they would have destroyed the world with all their progeny. What then did the Holy One do? He castrated the male and preserved the female in salt for the righteous to feast on in the world to come, as it is written: he will slay the dragon that is in the sea (Isaiah 27:1). And also Behemoth were created male and female, and had they mated they would have destroyed the world. (A note in the Soncino edition says that they ate daily the grass of a thousand hills.) What did the Holy One do? He castrated the male and killed the female. Why not preserve it in salt like with Leviathan? Salted fish is palatable; salted meat is not. (74b)

(I had previously thought that Leviathan was a singleton, and therefore that the one in the sea was the one that would become the feast in Olam Haba.)

Unrelated, for my LiveJournal friends: I don't know if this will crosspost because of some very recent changes at LJ, but if it does: they've reportedly changed the terms of service in some very problematic ways, and it's likely that very soon the interface that allows Dreamwidth (or anybody else) to import your journal will stop working. If you haven't migrated to Dreamwidth yet, or at least backed up your content somewhere, please do so Real Soon Now. (I haven't yet had a chance to look into the TOS change, but chances are good that I will stop crossposting soon. Possibly they'll break crossposting too and force my hand.)

Comments

[dr4b]

The crossposts won't work anymore if you don't accept the TOS, no.

For the record, I think crossposted posts still are stored on LJ. I'm not okay with that, so I went and deleted all of my posts from there, crossposted or not.