Interesting Posts and Articles #143

1. Life In Israel posts about strawberries and creepy crawly things, particularly on strawberries in Israel. An excerpt:
   

   This year, they say, the strawberries are infested to the point that the bug party is not just at the top by the leaf, but all over the strawberry - by the seeds in the wall of the berry - thus making it impossible to clean properly and eat (unless perhaps if you would peel the strawberry - not very practical).
   ...
   Just for kicks, I bought strawberries on Friday for shabbos. I took a couple of random berries from the bag and inspected them very closely, but only with my naked eye. I pulled out the little pips and inspected them, and under them. I inspected the whole berry very thoroughly. Yet I was unable to see any creepy crawly or clingy buggies.

   I don't know if there were any thrips on them. I am no expert in identifying thrips. They are quite small, and hard to see. Though some say that once you are shown them, you can spot them even on other strawberries. Here is a YouTube video with the claim, and someone getting the thrips to move, and pointing them out on a berry; and how even after washing in soapy water, a thrip survives. This video is blown up -- the strawberries are larger than life, and even there, the thrips are hard to see, but are visible in the end. But this also means thrips are 1/2 or 1/3 the size. Check it out:
   
   
   It seems like they are moving in response to being prodded. It could be that this could have halachic impact, aside from the small size. Also, I wonder at this soap solution, which they are saying is not working on the present strawberries. Strawberries are spongy. Does the washing of the outside of the fruit, as shown, really get out soap absorbed into the internal flesh of the fruit, or is there still soap inside?
   
   
2. Blog In Dm points out a bunch on musical errors in a dvar Torah all about music, "The Seven Keys of Music." E.g.
   

   It is likely, then, that another tradition handed down from Yuval is for the keys that play major notes to be white, for happy songs, while the black keys, which play the minor notes, are black, for mournful music. White is a source ofchessed for Klal Yisrael (this may be one reason why doctors wear white); on the Yomim Nora'im we wear white kittels. Black, on the other hand, represents the trait of gvurah and is a source and an expression of melancholy.

   In response:
   

   The white key/black key distinction is fairly recent, as keyboard instruments and that color scheme are not that old. Most instruments don't have this distinction at all. A violin, or clarinet, for example, don’t have black keys. Yuval predates the concept of white/black keys by five thousand years or so. (That's a low-ball estimate assuming he takes the chronology of Maaseh Breisihis literally.)
   
   The key of A minor and some other minor modes use white keys only.

3. A bathroom mirror two inches too high drags a family-owned restaurant into a lawsuit.
   
   
4. At Thanbook, Cantor Sherwood Goffin posts from Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid, that trup goes all the way back:
   

   Proof Text #1: In Parshat Yitro (19:19) it says: “...Moses would speak and G-d would respond to him with a voice.”
   ...
   Rabbi Yehuda HeChasid ... writes that “voice” is the Taamei HaMikra, the musical “trop.” How could they listen to G-d reciting an entire parallel Oral Law as Moses taught the Torah? The answer given by the Sefer HaChassidim is that this was the heavenly melody of the Torah Trop that punctuates the text of the Chumash and therefore serves as a “code matrix” from which emanated the Torah she-b’al peh!

   I've posted about theories of the age of trup before on parshablog. Here, for example, is part xxx of a selection from Shadal's Vikuach where he addresses the age of trup. There is, admittedly, a difference between the orthography and the application of trup, but it seems that many famous Biblical commentators did not hold that trup was miSinai.
   
   
5. The Jewish Worker does not need prizes to give tzedakka. Maybe so, but these gimmicks serve as a way of reminding folks, "hey, we're here."
   
   
6. At Mystical Paths, Reb Akiva debunks an email going about:
   

   By email from a friend, alerting me to the amazing approach of Mars in August of 2009, which aligns with a blood moon statement of the Zohar during Elul...
   
   ...
   
   

   This comes right from the Zohar that tells us the Geulah will begin with the appearance of the blood moon in Elul!!!

   Man that sounds good! Except...it's not true. It's actually from 2003, when Mars did make it's closest approach in 60,000 secular years and appeared 6 times larger than usual for a few nights - which made it still 10 times smaller than the moon.

   I would add my own debunking. Who says a blood moon is Mars?! Surely Rashbi, or Ramdel, knew the Hebrew word for Mars. Meanwhile, the blood moon, or hunter's moon, (I think named for its color) is the first full moon after the autumn equinox, and I think it makes sense at around Elul. {Update: Or as Joe in Australia points out, a lunar eclipse, when the moon looks red.} I have not seen the particular Zohar inside, but I know how people kvetch Zohars. But I would guess that it is in part derived from the pasuk in Yoel 3,
   the continuation of the famous pasuk we cite in the Hagaddah:
   
   

   ג וְנָתַתִּי, מוֹפְתִים, בַּשָּׁמַיִם, וּבָאָרֶץ: דָּם וָאֵשׁ, וְתִימְרוֹת עָשָׁן.	3 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
   ד הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ יֵהָפֵךְ לְחֹשֶׁךְ, וְהַיָּרֵחַ לְדָם--לִפְנֵי, בּוֹא יוֹם יְהוָה, הַגָּדוֹל, וְהַנּוֹרָא.	4 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come.

   If so, it stands to reason that this Zohar is a reference to the moon, rather than to Mars. But this is of course off the cuff, and I should check out this Zohar inside, I suppose.