The Spice Box
THE SPICE BOX Rabbi Hillel, That's Who Perhaps you missed the cartoon from The New Yorker, herewith happily reprinted. R. Hillel does turn up in the strangest places, which goes to show the...
...But it was too difficult for me, and as a result I could not find it...
...Its languages were, instead, Hebrew and Aramaic...
...Below, an excerpt from p. 47 of the DC directory: We wouldn't have guessed that there were enough Arab pests in Rockville to warrant a separate listing, but you never know...
...In the meanwhile, all direct descendents of the original de la Penha have passed away...
...Then, a bit shyly: "It's a beautiful place...
...I heard that it is the words written in the "Hebrew Bible...
...I could not bring myself to believe, however, that even one vehicle of a more conventional sort had been there in the interim...
...I placed the siddur in the car and inspected the surrounding area for traces of human or animal footsteps, or of wheel indentations of any kind...
...It led me through a wasteland totally unlike the Eden I had been promised...
...Rabbi Maltzman: Recently I was impressed to hear the Hebrew words "tim showl" (it means "there is the way forward" or "the way is opened"), when I was watching TV movie "The East of Eden...
...Their rationalist counterparts will disagree...
...Why should it have been ordained, the mystically inclined among us may thus ask, that very shortly after one Jew blundered into that desolate wilderness a second Jew should do the same...
...And when he told me how many sections (Texas talk: one section equals one square mile or 640 acres) of land his spread encompassed— considerably more, I gathered, than there are in all of Manhattan—and how bountifully Nature had endowed it, I was inclined to agree with him on both counts...
...I share with you (with the permission of the correspondent) one of the many letters recently received, this one from an executive of a large Japanese chemical company...
...They claim the bird landed in Kyoto...
...I'm sure you'll enjoy seeing it...
...Labrador Retrieval The Jewish Western Bulletin (British Columbia) reports that William of Orange was once saved from death at sea by a Sephardlc Jew named de la Penha...
...There was no indication at the scene, incidentally, that when he mislaid his siddur our man also lost the tallis and teflllin he would certainly have had with him, and which were obviously more indispensable to him than a siddur...
...The terrain seemed suitable for nothing but tank maneuvers and, for all I know, may have been used for precisely that purpose during the war that had just ended...
...Perhaps a rationalist approach to the workings of our universe is the only philosophical choice modern man may logically make...
...A few hundred feet passed by before I reached an acceptable turning site...
...Scarcely conceivable...
...He would also have had to be a very pious one: How many other Jews, after all, are in the habit of carrying siddurim anywhere, let alone into deserts...
...Tsk, tsk, E ©'N...
...We need not be concerned that the loss could have kept him even temporarily from reciting his thrice-daily and other prayers, for such a man would undoubtedly know all the appropriate texts by heart...
...The danger of becoming inextricably bogged down in the desert sand was now acute...
...But who would want to do ajiything like that...
...Hyp er e vans, Bolicnovak A recent Evans-Novak column reported breathlessly on a "hush-hush parley" of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council in Houston, where, the authors allege, Prime Minister Begin ("the feisty Israeli leader") "came under savage attack behind closed doors" and was "emotionally defended by hard-line backers...
...We set a date...
...I pick it up now and then, and I ransack my imagination...
...I began to scan the ground that lay ahead, hoping desperately to find a patch solid enough to permit me to reduce speed without losing traction, make a U-turn, and retreat to less inhospitable and safer territory...
...Perhaps so...
...We hope the development thrives, so Goldman will not have to Rue the day, and all that...
...I found it, in the summer of 1946, in a place where there no longer was a path at all, in a remote and absolutely unpopulated corner of the West Texas desert, not far from the New Mexico line...
...Whose hand brought it to the barren and inaccessible hinterland in which I found it...
...We've known about the migration of names for some time—as in the rendering of Sheinberg as Belmont...
...I wrote them down carefully...
...If possible, would you mind teaching me this "tim showl" in original Hebrew letters...
...Occasional Indian raiding parties may have been there before me, perhaps a troop of conquistadores searching for an elusive Eldorado, perhaps a covey of Conestoga wagons moving west to California, perhaps a hardbitten prospector or two...
...A pause...
...The book I had hit with my car wheel was, in short, a siddur that somehow had been lost or thrown away in a stretch of wilderness through which few if any non-Jews, and presumably no Jews at all, ordinarily traveled...
...Bar Mitzvah has evidently become not only a verb, but an aphrodisiac: "Very attractive, professional, intelligent, slender, 5'6", 115 lbs., DWF, no children, 34, seeks sincere Bar Mitzvahed male counterpart (33-49) for permanent relationship...
...For more than a third of a century my West Texas siddur has occupied an honored place—the honored place—in my library...
...My Son the Take Your Pick Thanks to Bill Arem for the following license plate he noticed in— where else?—Los Angeles recently...
...That this second Jew should lose his bearings and, in an area of hundreds of square miles, should turn around at exactly the spot in which the first Jew chanced to lose a siddur...
...He had seen our company's advertisement in a national magazine and was interested in exploring the feasibility of installing one of our systems on his ranch...
...It was, of all things, a book—and a book, moreover, that was not even printed in the English or Spanish common to the region...
...They presented me with a gift—a fan with a Magen David on one side and a raven on the other—on their way to deliver the same token to the Queen of England...
...I reached the pot-holed country road I was looking for and followed it for the better part of an hour...
...Vain questions to which there are no answers...
...D. Matnai introduced your community...
...Invitation Readers are invited— and encouraged—to submit material for The Spice Box...
...In the course of a year in Japan, I have had fascinating encounters with a number of individuals and groups who have expressed concern, curiousity interest, or fascination, with Judaism or the Jewish community...
...My front right wheel ran over it...
...Photo and phone appreciated," Who Modifies What...
...R. Hillel does turn up in the strangest places, which goes to show the staying power of a good question, or three...
...Steering it gingerly into a counterclockwise arc, I noticed a small, white, rectangular object lying in my path...
...It follows, then, that our traveler must have lost it...
...That's What's In a Name...
...Still, what was our wanderer doing there, and why did he leave no footprints...
...In gratitude, King William gave de la Penha all of Labrador, a gift attested in an official and still extant deed...
...I asked for specific instructions on how to get to the ranch...
...There is every reason to think so: How many non-Jews, after all, are in the habit of carrying siddurim into deserts...
...And why...
...Be sure to include your name, address and telephone number...
...When I arrived at what I took to be the landmark described in my notes, I turned south into a rutted, unpaved swath...
...Nevertheless, I am willing to keep an open mind...
...The book remained perfectly usable, but the two exposed pages now bore a well-defined impression of a set of tire treadmarks, outlines of which had also been embossed on a number of pages lying below...
...Nor, driving back to the primitive trail from which I had come, did I see any tire tracks or markings, aside from those my own car had made...
...Lost and Found in the Desert No rare book dealer would give it a second glance, no Judaica librarian would care one way or another whether he had it on his shelves...
...I asked the Embassy of Israel in Tokyo, then Mr...
...Actually, the amiable discussion of the limits of dissent in American Jewish life took place at a plenary session of NJCRAC, and though the doors were closed, the session was hardly "hush-hush...
...Did it come from the air...
...It may be inferred that if the three items were kept together—in a tallis zeckel, let us say, whose drawstring had come loose—only the siddur slipped out...
...Some people read timetables...
...And that this second Jew should thereby be privileged to earn the mitzvah of rescuing that sacrosanct object...
...The two pages to which the siddur was open deal with Sukkot and Hanukkah...
...One day, I received a call from a West Texas cattleman...
...At left, an example of ecumenism run riot...
...These markings, all of them, are as clear today as they were then...
...Material cannot be returned...
...He gave me explicit directions...
...If there is anyone who feels that he is able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of a properly constituted beth din that he is the rightful owner of the siddur so long in my possession, let that individual step forward and present his claim...
...Too bad...
...An oriental rabbi's life is never dull...
...But to me it is a treasure...
...A few miles more, and even this dusty track faded away...
...Send us your vanity plate pic, and you, too, can be a TSBer...
...None of the books I have ever owned has given me as much pleasure as this little volume—this siddur that was issued by the Hebrew Publishing Company in 1931 and was sold, I should imagine, for fifty cents or less...
...The letter was preceded by a visit from members of a Japanese sect that worships the raven sent from Noah's ark...
...Dear Mr...
...Becovering from my initial shock, I examined my find...
...I stopped the car, stepped out, and picked it up...
...Its compiler, Isidor Weisberg, chose to call his prayer book Shevil Hadash, "A New Path...
...We reserve the right to edit all submissions...
...Moreover, a devout Jew, it need scarcely be said, would never throw a siddur away...
...So there I was, a week later, driving under a blistering sun through the arid plains of West Texas in the ailing 1940 Hudson I had acquired on my release from the army a few months earlier, and worrying whether it would carry me safely across the vast expanse of land...
...I affirm here and now that I will abide by the ruling of the court, should it go against me...
...But our friend (and contributing editor) Steve Whitfield provides us with a newer example: In Tucson, where most streets have Spanish names, a neighborhood developed by one Goldman has a street called Calle Hombre de Oro...
...I was living in Houston at the time and working for a manufacturer of private telephonic equipment...
...Pumikazu Hasemi KANTO DENKA KOGYO CO...
...There were none...
...And, to complicate matters, they lead to others...
...For myself, however, I prefer never to hear the explanation whose existence its advocates must willy-nilly posit with regard to my siddur if they are to sustain their personal and unshakable faith in a totally prosaic world—a faith, it should be pointed out, which is no less profound and comforting to them than the one their opponents profess...
...Apparently, the case was brought to the attention of the British Privy Council back in the 1920s, but they tossed it out...
...I would appreciate your rapid response...
...My Hudson was now traveling over, and sinking into, a yielding desert floor...
...Overkill, if we ever saw it...
...You can't miss the place," he replied, "it's just too darned big to miss...
...Depending on length, we'll pay from $5 to $50 for material that is accepted...
...The mystics, they will argue, are deluding themselves...
...Was our man a Jew...
...They occur toward the end of the siddur, on texts composed by the compiler that provide concise descriptions of the various holidays in the Hebrew calendar...
...We read telephone directories...
...And tried to find the original word in an English-Hebrew dictionary...
...It was altogether unprepossessing, but it was intact...
...There is too much here to be mere coincidence, these mystics may well contend—there must be a hidden purpose behind it all...
...Or vehicular or animal tracks...
...Note: The word (timshol) appears in Genesis 4:7—"You may rule over it...
...we do well in the labradory...
...There must be a straightforward and entirely mundane explanation, they will insist, as to how and why my siddur came to be where it was when I found it...
...Greatly relieved, I slowed the Hudson to a crawl...
...It could not have lain very long on the desert floor before my car ran over it, for though it was open, with two of its pages bared to the blistering rays of the sun, it showed no signs of scorching...
...Other Distant Places Reader Rabbi Jonathan Maltzman sends us the following letter: One of the many interesting aspects of a rabbi's work, particularly in an unusual setting such as Tokyo, is the contact—both personal and official— with the greater com-munity-at-large...
...From a low-flying, open-cockpit airplane...
...Surprisingly, it did...
...Please send us ideas, notes, curiosities—ajrything you'd like to share with our subscribers...
...Michael Pollak Multilingual Merrill Lynch Now and again we come across additional evidence that the Jews have made it In America...
...Let us hope, in that unhappy eventuality, that the plaintiffs story will console me at least partially for my loss by being as colorful and as bizarre as it is convincing...
...DWBMM Rabbi Sidney Jacobs of Media, PA, shares with us a personal ad his eagle eye spotted m a recent issue of Philadelphia Magazine...
...As I was impressed so much that I decided to make it the motto of the department of our Company...
...It would have had to be thrown out, deliberately...
...No, the original owner of the siddur was a man who traveled on foot, astride a mount of some kind, or in a vehicle...
Vol. 7 • March 1982 • No. 3
