"Yehosef"?

Toward the end of the morning service we recite a psalm; which psalm it is varies by day. In our morning minyan we read this in English.

A few weeks ago I happened to notice something that seemed odd in Psalm 81 (Thursday). The English said roughly "it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance from the god of Jacob; he appointed it to Joseph when he went forth against the land of Egypt". And I said Joseph? We routinely talk about the god of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, but Yosef isn't usually included. So why does he rate, I wondered?

After services that day I asked Joe (Joe knows practically everything) and he said "what does the Hebrew say?". (I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't automatically trust translations. :-) ) When we looked he noticed something different -- that "Joseph" (Yosef) was actually written "Yehosef" there. There was an extra letter in his name. So we speculated about that without any conclusions, and my original question fell by the wayside.

This morning's email brought this week's MiOray HaAish, which talks about Yosef's name change. (How handy!) The article gives three explanations from the rabbis:

• When Paro elevated Yosef to second-in-command, Paro's ministers complained and said that a slave wasn't qualified. He said "so find some royal characteristics", and it was decided that he should know seventy languages. He didn't, so the angel Gavriel taught them to him. He wasn't getting it, so Gavriel added a letter from the divine name to Yosef's name and he was able to learn. (Sota 36b)
  
• The extra letter is because God testified to Yosef's faithfulness in resisting Potiphar's wife. (Midrash Rabbah, Lev 23:10)
  
• The ephod (worn by the high priest) had stones that were to be inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes, but to make the letter count work out Yosef's name needed an extra letter. (Err, except Yosef isn't one of the tribes; his sons get that status instead. I actually ran into this discussion while chasing down last week's parsha bit; it's in Sota 36a. I found it a little confusing.)

The article has lots more to say.

short takes

I hope the owner of Penzoil is making good money from the venture. For a cost of $30 and 15 minutes of my time (10 for them, 5 to drive there), I can have other people change my oil, replenish all other fluids under the hood, check and adjust the tire pressure, vacuum the carpets, wash the windows, and take a quick look for incipient problems with belts and stuff. I could do all of that myself, but certainly not in 15 minutes. And the oil itself is, what, $10 of that $30? So for about $3.50 a month, I can have someone else take care of most of the nit-picky aspects of owning a car. What's not to like?

If I understand correctly, credit-card companies instituted that extra 3-digit number on your card to cut down on fraud from stolen card numbers. But more and more online transactions now require that I enter that number. Have we just moved from a semi-secure 16-digit number to a semi-secure 19-digit one? How does this help?

A few links:

Does the first amendment ban public schools? (David Friedman). While intelligent design is a religious teaching that is rightly barred from public schools, he argues, so is evolution -- or history.

Everyone needs Panexa. Ask your doctor for it. Well, maybe you should read the ad first. (Thanks to jducoeur.)

cvirtue asks: how many partridges in pear trees by the end of the song?. I seem to be in a pedantic minority.

American Yule, by siderea is a cogent essay on what this season is and what it could become.

Put the Saturn back in Saturnalia, from goldsquare.