Sunday, October 11, 2009

Shiloh Also Was Where The Tabernacle Rested

This is excerpted from Daniel Gordis' lastest blog post-

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No Right to Exhaustion



...But you know what I love about this place, Jay? I love that all the political baggage is mine. The Palestinians. The Israeli Arabs. (Some of) the Haredim. A collapsing educational system. Murders on the streets with a constancy we never used to have. A nation of roads and drivers that kills many more Israelis than our enemies do. That's all my baggage.

But living here, my baggage is also the sight of young secular and religious Israelis going from restaurant to restaurant, inspecting not their kashrut, but how they treat their workers, and depending on what they find, giving them a "social kashrut" certificate. It's the sight of many hundreds of people coming out to hear Rabbi Benny Lau on the Shabbat afternoon before Yom Kippur in a synagogue that couldn't begin to accommodate them all, because, they knew, he would be the one guy in the city among all the derashot that afternoon who would tie whatever he was saying to a vision for a different kind of society, and call on them to do something about it. Living here is about spending a morning on Sukkot, going to the Church in Kiryat Yearim and joining a capacity crowd of Jews and Christians, largely secular but also some people wearing kippot, listening to the choir perform Bach motets on precisely the spot where the Ark of the Covenant once rested.[see I Samuel 7]



I was just wondering if Daniel had been out at Shiloh where the Taberancle rested, for 369 years according to Talmudic tradition:

the Torah describes Shiloh as "the resting place" and the Beit Hamikdash in
Yerushalayim as "the inheritance" (Devarim 12:9). Shiloh was constructed when
Jews finally rested from their conquest of the land and its division. This
sanctuary enjoyed a degree of "house" permanence 369 years but was only a "tent" in preparation for the permanence of the Beit Hamikdash.


We even had a two-day festival there last week, as we did at Pesach in April and in years past.

8 comments:

HolyCityPrayer said...

I am going through nach with a friend and consulting Eliezer Shulman's fascinating Seder Hakorot Batanach from time to time.

I am surprised that the 369 year figure is not calculable from the mikra itself! What do people who do not give credence to Toshba do??

YMedad said...

Dunno

yoni said...

no mention in your link of any argument about the figure of 369 years itself. is there one? i wasn't aware.

yoni said...

if you're afraid to talk about this, i understand. i'm not.

YMedad said...

Zevachim 118b:
ת"ר ימי אהל מועד שבמדבר ארבעים שנה חסר אחת ימי אהל מועד שבגלגל ארבע עשרה ז' שכבשו וז' שחלקו ימי אהל מועד שבנוב וגבעון חמשים ושבע נשתיירו לשילה ג' מאות ושבעים חסר אחת

sorry but can't find the English translation on-line.

yoni said...

yes, but that's a statement not an argument. does anyone, inside or outside judaism argue with the figure of 369 years? (not counting the "arab jubusites" etc.) and where does the figure come from if it can't be calculated from torah sources? torahl'moshe m'sinai?

yoni said...

i think i might be misreading a line of the quote you so kindly provided. back to the books.

YMedad said...

As Gidon above notes, there's a book by Elezer Shulman, whom I knew (amazing story), called סדר הקורות בתנ"ך and on p. 118 he tries to outline the chronicles from Exodus to Temple 480 years. 40 years desert; about 300 years until Yiftah; 140 years approximately until beginning of Temple construction. Btw, he has a spelling error on p. 113, right side towards bottom, should be עלי and not אלי. On p. 112 he outlines the 300 years from Yehoshua through all the judges and arrives at 353, as far as I can tell.