Thursday, December 20, 2007

Rainbow Over Shiloh

On my way to the bus to work at 6:40AM:-


that's Karyut, our Arab neighborhood village to the north in the distance

5 comments:

mnuez said...

You appear to have a decidedly non-Talmudic (or Biblical for that matter!) appreciation of the Rainbow. What gives?

mnuez


(I mean I like it, I'm just slightly surprised.)

YMedad said...

Why? Have I no soul? No appreciation for the beauty of nature? Have you faith in me as a human?

mnuez said...

I appreciate the echos of Shylock but your seemingly hurt response leads me to believe that what I had assumed was a rather uniformly Orthodox approach to rainbows may not be.

In the Yeshivish world rainbows are not greeting with clicks of a shutter but rather with tzitters and shudders - on account of the Noach story and the Gemara's dire (and dour) approach to the whole matter of this colorful spectrum in the sky. I was therefore surprised by this post of yours as I had (apparently mistakenly) assumed that similar religious views regarding rainbows held sway among the non-Yeshivishly Orthodox as well.

My apologies for what must have seemed an insult, it was honestly meant as a surprised compliment.

mnuez

YMedad said...

Shudders? We pronounce a blessing in joy: "Blessed be...He who confirms his Covenant".

mnuez said...

True, but the Gemara does say that everytime a rainbow appears it's a sign that God would like nothing more than to then-and-there obliterate the Earth but that he only refrains on account of that covenant. Hence the Yeshivish attitude.

m

P.S. Don't kill the messenger. I simply report the facts as they are, I do not endorse them.