"A fish is an animal that swims in a brook"

[rosefox]

(I didn't mean for this Shabbat's parsha post to turn into shitposting just in time for Faffing February or whatever it is. It just, uh, happened.)

I finally caught up on my Torah reading. This week's parsha is Terumah, which explains how to build the tabernacle, the portable temple intended to be carried around the desert until the proper permanent one could be built.

Exodus 26:14: "And make for the tent a covering of tanned ram skins, and a covering of dolphin skins above."

me: o.O I was not expecting that.

So I did some digging. I learned that there are dolphins in the Mediterranean, which I had not known, so the idea of dolphin skins being among the treasures the Israelites "borrowed" from their Egyptian neighbors is not actually all that weird, despite my immediate reaction of "they're in a desert!". I also learned that the original word there is tachashim, plural of tachash, and no one has any idea what the fuck it means.

Some other proposed translations:

* leather that's dyed blue
* leather adorned with faience beads
* badger
* ermine
* unicorn

The only thing most people can agree on is that it came from a clean animal, because the idea of putting skins of an unclean animal on the Tabernacle is abhorrent (though I will note that dolphins are not kosher, so whoever picked that translation seems to have discarded this qualification), and it was probably either blue or multicolored. (This piece goes into great detail about the various arguments in favor of one reading or another, and comes down in favor of the beaded leather interpretation.)

The dolphin idea apparently comes from a 19th-century scholar who noticed that Arabic for porpoise is tuchash, and suggested the two words were cognates. That's not a bad theory, as theories go. Probably more likely than the unicorn.

While reading various writings on this, I found this commentary in Midrash Tanchuma:

R. Nehemiah contended that it was a miraculous creature [Hashem] created for that precise moment, and that it disappeared immediately thereafter from earth. Why is it called orot tahashim ("sealskins," lit. "skins of tahashim")? Because the verse states: The length of each curtain shall be thirty cubits (Exod. 26:8). What known animal could supply enough skin for a curtain of thirty cubits?

Thirty cubits is 45 feet long. That is pretty big! Especially for a porpoise-like, blue-skinned, possibly one-horned or long-necked animal...

At that point I started researching what fossils have been found in that region. After all, like most deserts, it was once an ocean.

My conclusion is that Hashem, whose presence extends throughout spacetime and to whom billions of years are as a day, dragged a poor confused plesiosaur out of the Cretaceous and dropped it at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it was turned into curtains.

I'm glad I could solve this 3,000-year-old mystery for everyone.

Comments

[sovay]

My conclusion is that Hashem, whose presence extends throughout spacetime and to whom billions of years are as a day, dragged a poor confused plesiosaur out of the Cretaceous and dropped it at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it was turned into curtains.

As a drive-by Jew with an opinion, I endorse this idea.

[rosefox]

Hooray!

[meepettemu]

I like this :)

[rosefox]

Thank you. :)

[conuly]

Does this mean dinosaurs are definitely kosher?

[rosefox]

Dinosaurs are definitely not kosher! But neither are dolphins.

[leiacat]

Wait, do we actually know that?

I think we can legitimately claim dinosaurs as similar to birds, they're not creatures of land or sea, which have specific metrics to follow, but instead possibly be enumerated into the ok and un-ok ones as birds are. That we did not get to read the list does not signify.

[rosefox]

Ah, I was thinking of the swimming variety that are unambiguously sea creatures, and also the variety classified as lizards. But it's true that some might qualify as birds!

[sara]

I am laughing quite hard, but wearing my science hat, wondering if perhaps the tabernacle was upholstered in the skin of a whale: https://www.livescience.com/63028-pliny-ancient-mediterranean-whales.html

[rosefox]

That's possible! My first thought was "Then wouldn't it just say whale?" but it turns out the taxonomy of sea creatures in Torah is a lot more ambiguous than that.

[sara]

The notion that the Lord would expect His chosen people to (1) come up with a whale and (2) tan a whale-hide to make Him a tent is ENTIRELY in keeping with my understanding of the divinity.

[rosefox]

It's certainly in keeping with that era. I was reading the several places where the instructions for the tabernacle include "as shown in the diagrams that I will provide to you" and thinking about what absolute hell it would be to have God as a design client.

[sara]

He is kind of a micromanager but to be fair people are completely made of people and that's got to be super frustrating for Him.

[minoanmiss]

*giggles and giggles and also giggles*

(some fish are also called dolphin but I'm sure the scholars already considered that.)

[rosefox]

The scholars have considered everything up to unicorns!

[princessofgeeks]

I love this. Thank you.

[rosefox]

:)

[coraline]

All I can think is that maybe there was also a bowl of petunias, thinking "oh no, not again"

[rosefox]

That seems extremely plausible.

[isis]

Hee, this is delightful!

[rosefox]

Thanks. :)

[threeofwands]

DOLPHINSAUR.

(also, this is K, British former PW reviewer & friend of Cat's, with a new DW account. hi!)

[rosefox]

(Hello!)

[alatefeline]

💜

[rosefox]

:)

[kitchen_kink]

This is hilarious!

Curious though: why aren't dolphins kosher?

[rosefox]

Same reason as lobster: they swim in the sea but don't have scales.

[seekingferret]

More important question: Where aren't there dolphins on Only Connect?

[kitchen_kink]

Ahhhh. Makes sense I guess. I figured that the mammal thing wouldn't come into it, but I'd forgotten it's fins *and* scales.

Just looked it up to find out if it also leaves out sharks, eels, rays and such, and, yes. Apparently swordfish is a, ahem, bone of contention, though.

Neat.

[yarrowkat]

there are marvellous Byzantine mosaics depicting dolphins! they are strange and wonderful, and clearly dolphins. it is said that the empress Theodora had a mosaic of dolphins in her bedroom. i don't have sources for that offhand tho.