Hebrew prayer book fills gap in Italian earthquake history | Hacker News Reader

Hebrew prayer book fills gap in Italian earthquake history

phys.org

71 pointsdefrost26 comments

Nitpick: the translation used "hold the hands of the poor" should probably be "strengthen the hands of the poor". It's not a surprising mistake as both words share the same root, and even are pronounced the same in this context.

Not necessarily. The relevant part in the text reads

>> [...] טעונין בר ולחם ומזון ויין להחזיק יד עני ואביון ולכל איש אשר יחסר לו [...]

לְהַחֲזִיק literally means "to hold", though in some contexts (especially in older texts like this) it also means "to maintain" or "to support". While it's close to לְחַזֵּק, which means "to strengthen", להחזיק isn't usually used in that meaning (apart from lyrical contexts, perhaps).

I agree with all your points except the last.

This phrase originates from Ezekiel 16:49, where it specifically refers to supporting the poor. (Which also by strange happenstance is relevant to the portions of the bible read this week.)

So yes, "support" would be the more correct translation. </nitpick>

Can you elaborate which "last point" you're referring to? I'm not sure how the Ezekiel reference contradicts anything I wrote.

In "rabbinc" Hebrew להחזיק is used that way in a number of places though. Just do a search for להחזיק יד. And I think it's quite clear for the sentence that this is the meaning used here.

Edit: to clarify, my search found results mainly in later, medieval texts.

I just did a search (using https://tablet.otzar.org, as I don't currently have access to my academic resources), and I couldn't find an instance where this specific phrase (להחזיק יד, and its variants. My search query was `&??חזיק{0}יד`, without the backticks) is used in the meaning "to strengthen the hand". All I could find was of the "to support" meaning. Can you point to specific references where this isn't the case?

I apologize for being more clear. I thought you were arguing against the usage of "support", so I was pointing out that there is such usage. I read again and see that I was mistaken. My apologies.

Wow, you're pretty good, I tried reading it but totally failed. 14th c. cursive hebrew looks more like modern arabic than modern cursive hebrew.

It's a common cursive for Sefardic tradition and also is commonly used in modern printing for commentaries.

Modern Hebrew cursive is based on Ashkenazic one, that's why it's different.

I wasn't able to read most of it either, but was able to find that specific phrase.

to me, it looks similar to Rambam's (Maimonides) signature

almost as if

nevermind

Almost as if what? If you have something substantive to say, say it.

It's not a secret that Hebrew and Arabic share a common ancestor, and that the languages are related. It's also not a secret that Arabic played significant role in Jewish history, some very meaningful works of Jewish literature were originally written in Arabic before being translated to Hebrew.

I'm really not sure what you were trying to get at with your cryptic comment.

just to clarify what you said, Hebrew and Arabic languages have a common ancestor, but also Hebrew and Arabic writing also have a common answer. It's something of a rule of thumb that languages are spoken (most people for most of history were fluent and illiterate) and languages are not writing systems, although for many extinct languages the writing is all we have to go on.

lots of semites deny the idea of millennia of crossdrift amongst semitic communities, culturally, genetically, linguistically, never really thinking about it, including perhaps font choices. I see it all day every day, I can give examples if that’s an absurdity in your world

it was the substantive thing to say, I’m glad you got it and my comment prompted your inference, I wouldn’t have wanted to be responsible for pointing out that solved mystery

I wasn't able to track down the original Hebrew and don't see it in the article (except for in the illegible, to me, manuscript). Was the root/shoresh חזק?

Could not the meaning change over the centuries ?

Sort of. Hebrew was not a primary spoken language, so it was much more static than other languages, so you can generally assume similar use across long periods of time. But in practice, yes, you definitely do find evolving usage of terms.

For the word on its own? Absolutely. Even in the bible we find instances of variations of להחזיק used in the meaning "to strengthen" (as seen in Nehemiah 3, for example). In this specific instance, however, it's used as part of a well known phrase throughout the Talmudic and the later rabbinical literature (whose source is from Ezekiel, as noam_k helpfully noted).

Man I wish I could read this.

How does one look for earthquakes, and think to look inside a prayerbook? I'm not being snarky - it's a real question.

Was the note cataloged in some way?

Mt guess is that someone was going through the prayer book and thought to check if the earthquakes were documented, and if they could add any more details if the earthquakes were.

From the article,

> Paolo Galli, who found the note in the Apostolic Vatican Library while looking for contemporaneous accounts of another historic Italian earthquake...

Sounds like he was being thorough in his research. It's not like we have millions of books from back then, it's plausible he read through every book in a date-range. But also, this pre-dates our understanding of the mechanics behind earthquakes: god was to blame. In some sense, where better to look, than a book of appeals to god?

I don't really understand what "prayer book" means in this instance.

In my understanding a prayer book can refer to either (1) a notebook specifically used to list things to pray for, or (2) a book with liturgical(formal) prayers for use at certain times end events.

The text quoted in the article seems to detailed for (1) and too specific for (2). Maybe I'm looking at this from a too Christian perspective? Do prayer books have a different meaning in Judaism?

A Jewish prayerbook (or siddur) is basically (2) — giving the text of the prayers to read for the daily services and other events.

However, my understanding is that this note doesn’t form part of the prayers themselves, but merely happened to be written on a page of the prayerbook.

The prayer book in this article is most likely a book with liturgical prayers. The text that the article discusses was just written on a leaf in that book (likely one of the opening or ending ones). It's quite common to find in books of the era notes about personal or communal events written on what were blank (or mostly blank) pages.

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