{"id":86735,"date":"2021-01-17T10:58:10","date_gmt":"2021-01-17T08:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=86735"},"modified":"2021-01-24T11:41:12","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T09:41:12","slug":"northern-sights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/northern-sights\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Sights"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"86735","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64450,"related_cahpter":"656","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"What a compass, the afikoman and the Rambam have in common\r\n\r\n","content":"<p>In Psalm 89, the psalmist is praising God for creating the world:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u201cThe heaven is Yours, the earth too; the world and all it holds\u2014 You established them. North and south\u2014 You created them; Tabor and Hermon sing forth Your name\u201d (89:12-13).<\/p>\n<p>First the psalmist says that God created everything above and below us \u2013 heaven and earth. Then he continues to say that God created \u201cnorth and south\u201d \u2013 everything in all directions.<\/p>\n<p>The Hebrew word for \u201cnorth\u201d here isn\u2019t surprising \u2013 it\u2019s the commonly used <em>tzafon<\/em>. Some scholars claim it derives from the root <em>tzafan<\/em>\u00a0meaning \u201cto hide.\u201d According to this theory, <em>tzafon<\/em>\u00a0originally meant \u201cthe hidden or dark region.\u201d This is probably because in the Northern Hemisphere there is less sunlight on the northern exposure.<\/p>\n<p>The similarly spelled <em>tzafun\u00a0<\/em>also means \u201chidden\u201d and is the name of the stage in the Pesach seder when the hidden piece of matzah \u2013 the afikoman \u2013 is eaten. This same root gives us <em>matzpen<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 \u201ccompass\u201d (which points north), and <em>matzpun<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 conscience (what we keep hidden inside ourselves.)<\/p>\n<p>However, the word for \u201csouth\u201d isn\u2019t the common <em>darom<\/em>. In the Bible there are actually four words for south. The most common is\u00a0<em>negev<\/em>\u00a0which appears around 50 times. The Negev desert, in Israel\u2019s south is related to this name. Next is <em>teiman\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 24 times, and is the Hebrew word for Yemen, the country on the southern end of the Arabian peninsula (however, the biblical Teiman was in Edom, near Petra).\u00a0 <em>Darom\u00a0<\/em>appears in the Bible 17 times.<\/p>\n<p>The last word for south is <em>yamin<\/em>. It actually appears 139 times, but only eight of them mean south \u2013 including our verse in Psalms 89. The rest of the time it means \u201cright\u201d (as opposed to left).<\/p>\n<p>While in the modern world, north is usually at the top of the map (with east on the right), this is a relatively recent development. In biblical times, one faced east, and so north was on the left. This is also preserved in the English word \u201cto orient (oneself),\u201d which meant to face east.<\/p>\n<p>Since most people are right-handed, the right side represented strength. In Arabic, we find the cognate <em>maimun<\/em>, \u201cfortunate\u201d \u2013 and this is the origin of the name Maimon, father of the medieval Jewish scholar, the Rambam (Moshe ben Maimon).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":54283,"id":54283,"title":"jo18-Compass_heb","filename":"jo18-Compass_heb.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/jo18-Compass_heb.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/an-orientation\/jo18-compass_heb\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jo18-compass_heb","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":54282,"date":"2019-04-24 09:27:07","modified":"2021-01-17 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