Interesting Posts and Articles #73

1. Welcome back, JRants. We've missed you. You serve an important role in the JBlogging community. {Update: Oh well, it was up for a few hours, at least.}
   
   
2. Motts will help you water down your juice if you like.
   
   
3. Andrew Jackson famously said "One man with courage makes a majority." Avakesh discusses "the three ways of pesak," with an Ashkenazic / Sefardic divide. And that was a comment on an interesting series of posts on Ishim veShitot on autonomy vs. precedent in pesak (see here, here and here, and the comment sections in those places.)
   
   
4. Well, the mystically inclined community has been publically predicting mashiach before Rosh HaShana of this year for a while now. But now that the year is almost over, Dreaming Of Moshiach is surprised:
   

   One word - SURPRISE. We were so sure Moshiach would arrive.

   But then the recent financial woes have her hopes back up. Even so, the shift is already being made from the claim that mashiach must come in the 7th of the 7th, on shemitta, to yovel, which is next year. And they found a source to back this up. This gives them another year to hyperventilate.
   
   And so Shirat Devorah has a nice gematria proving next year mashiach is coming. There was another post I cannot locate right now, on the same blog, saying about two years from now, 5770, being a good year for mashiach to come, because 770 is a gematria of Beis Mashiach. Of course, that term "Beis Mashiach" is a term used specifically by Chabad, and they made the gematria up because of the prominence of 770. (And chamor beli daas, an insulting expansion of the acronym Chabad, also has the gematria of 770.) But it was being touted here divorced from any meshichist connection -- she was not saying the Rebbe is mashiach.
   
   At any rate, my point is that if, chas veshalom, mashiach does not come tomorrow, certain apocalyptic websites have a whole year to hyperventilate. And if, chas veshalom, next year passes without messianic fulfillment, they have the next year already in hand, with a nice gematria to boot. And so on and so forth.
   
   
5. Also at Shirat Devorah, she announced a new lecture, tomorrow, from "Redemption 5768" (I wonder what they will do in terms of their name and website in a month). Part of what will be discussed is: say:
   

   Ezekiel 38 describes Gog as the head of Meshech and Tuval. Who in the world today represents Gog, and are Meshech and Tuval real places? How come no one over the past thousands of years could identify their location?

   I guess the Torah Temimah should be miffed at being considered a no-one. After all, as we see in this Yeranen Yaakov post:
   

   Yoma 10 - Tuval - this refers to Beit Onayki. Meshech - this refers to Musia. Tiras - R' Simai and the rabbis disagree about it. One opinion says that this refers to Beit Tirayki, and the other says that this refers to "Paras".
   
   The Torah Temima commentary to Bereishit (10,2) says: Tuval - this refers to Beit Onayki. In the Yerushalmi Megilla (1:9) and in Midrashim, there are various versions of the text, and instead of "Beit Onayki", the textual version is "Bitunya". In fact, there is today a portion of Asia Minor by the Black Sea (i.e. in Russia) by the name "Bitunya". Meshech - this refers to Musia, that is the land of Musia that's in Asia Minor, close to the land of Bitunia (in Russia).

   That does not mean that the identification is necessarily the correct one, but it seems incorrect to say that no one has identified it.
   
   
6. Don't forget that you can follow the Rif on Daf Yomi Gittin at my Rif Yomi blog.
   
   
7. Plastics linked to heart disease and diabetes? From Reuters:
   

   A study has for the first time linked a common chemical used in everyday products such as plastic drink containers and baby bottles to health problems, specifically heart disease and diabetes.
   ...
   Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry group, said the design of the study did not allow for anyone to conclude BPA causes heart disease and diabetes.