coveting

Our torah-study group got to the last of the ten commandments on Saturday. In English it's usually rendered "do not covet your neighbor's wife; do not covet [property, livestock, etc]". In the first version, in Exodus, the same word is used for "covet" both times -- "tachmod". In the repetition in Deuteronomy, the first is "tachmod" and the second is "titaveh".

"Titaveh" is the word that's used when the people demand meat instead of manna in the wilderness. It's a strong, negative, feeling. JPS translates it as "crave", which fits the incident with the quail. The people were so persistent and demanding that God rained down dead quail upon them until they were waist-deep in it. The people gorged on it and a lot of them died.

It's possible that the second phrase, which lists a bunch of things not to covet (or crave), is just amplification, as it ends with "nor anything that is his". If it's not amplification, and we're meant to see these as two ideas -- don't covet the wife and don't crave the property -- it's striking that the property gets a sterner warning than the wife. I mean, isn't it more important to protect people from unwanted attention than to protect property? Or is it, instead, saying that craving property is bad and merely desiring another's spouse is equally bad? Could be either, both, or neither -- there are 70 faces to the torah. So nothing deep here, but the question grabbed me.

This is the sort of thing I'd expect Rashi to have something to say about, but he just says the words are synonyms. Gee, thanks. :-)

home maintenance

The roof is nearing the end of its lifespan. No acute problems, but it's about time to start talking to purveyors of replacements. There are books on the third floor, after all. :-)

If you have comments (pro or con) about roofers in the Pittsburgh area, I'd appreciate hearing them.

If you have favorite resources (particularly if they're on the web) that will help us make whatever decisions are involved (materials, what else?), I'd definitely like to hear about them.

parsha bit: Sukkot

The torah tells us to celebrate Sukkot because Israel dwelt in sukkot in the desert. The talmud records an argument about what those sukkot were. Rabbi Akiva said that they were physical booths, like we build today. Rabbi Eliezer disagreed, saying that the word "sukkot" refers to the clouds of glory, the divine presence that protected Israel. Both agree that the sukkot (whatever they were) signified Israel's special relationship with God. (Sukkot 11b)