Stop Wining?

The purpose of this blog is to raise spirits at the Shabbat table. Please print and share. 

Dedicated to Marc and Lily in honor of their anniversary - Mazal tov!

Dedicated also to my grandparents - Sima bas Mordechai Yaakov and Eliezer ben Zelig - whose yahrzeits are tonight and Monday night - both of whom enjoyed lifting a glass for kiddush and l'chaim.

One count-down ended, a new one begins ...

 

Quick - name the one and only food on which you can make a beracha on my behalf even if I'm not going to eat it?

If I've stumped you, read on. This is going to be a bit of a labyrinth today....

Next question for your table:

Who's smarter, Apple or Google?

Does that sound like a loaded question?

Last week's mathematical missive generated a desired result - people wondering how big indeed is 2^613?

It turns out that most calculators - including the one that comes standard with Mac OS - cannot compute 2^613. Mac's maximum is 2^534 - after that, it gives an error: "Not a number"!!!!

(Can anyone explain why Macs are so Macmatically challenged, limited to a measly 160 digits)?

But Google disagrees. Its calculator thinks that 2^535 is indeed a number, and so is 2^613.

Second question for your table: How many digits would you guess the latter answer has?

Answer:

3.399283 x 10^184

That's basically a 3 with 184 zeros after it.

For those who wonder what that looks like:

30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

So why do we care about this again? Well, it's a bit of a carry-over from last week.

This week, let's shrink the numbers down. Like all the way down.

You may have heard of a place called Yerushalayim. Remember that stateless city (according to the birth certificates and passports of my children born there)?

If you've been there, you know that the old city is surrounded by a wall. Inside, there are four "quarters" plus the Temple Mount. The Jewish Quarter is in the SE and is much smaller than the others.

The Christian Quarter is much larger, to the NW.

There are a handful Jews who live there, just as there are a handful of Christians who live in the Jewish Quarter. That's what usually happens in a free country.

However, the idea of Jews actually buying property there is offensive to some, and if they choose to do so, the Washington Post cooperates with their propaganda and brands these Jews "settlers".

Just ponder for a moment the chuzpah behind that - to call a Jew who lives in a certain neighborhood of Jerusalem a settler. Will their children be settler too? How many generations does it take to become a resident? Most of those Christians are Arabs, so they can trace their local ancestry back maybe a few hundred years. Most of us probably had ancestors living there 2,000 years ago. And a few of us want to buy (from willing sellers) and live there, and we're settlers?

Lest this become a soapbox, let's make it a question: When did your family settle where you currently live? When did you stop being settlers?

Believe it or not, this all has something to do with wine.

Wine is super important in Judaism. We use it with almost every ritual. How many can you name that use it?

As you make your list, you'll probably leave out one that most people don't know: giving the bereaved a ceremonial cup of wine.

What is interesting is that the Torah singles out wine as the source of some of the most depraved human behavior.

If so (question for your table), why is it so important for our rituals?

Final question for your table: someone told me today that all of his children enjoy wine, which is a huge contrast to my own children, none of who enjoy wine, unless it's super sweet. Given its Jewish importance, do you think I should worry about that?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - Besides taste, ever wonder about the differences between red and white wine? More than you might expect.
PPS - Figure out answer to the riddle at the top of the page yet?


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