Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries Blog //Talking the Talk: Arets
Blog //Talking the Talk: Arets

In this series we honor the contributions made on the Zooniverse Talk boards for our project, Scribes of the Cairo Geniza. Talk is a way for citizen scientists on Zooniverse to converse with one another and experts on the different material they are working on, ask questions, and explore new insights. Each week we will feature a talk conversation that we love. Thanks for the participation #genizascribes!

Subject 30740380:B 1989–1, B 1989–2, The University of Manchester Library

@stefriegel: The last sign (looks like a reverse samech tet with a hooked line above) occurs repeatedly in the text. Does it mean something special? @ev111

@judaicadh: Talking to one of the content specialists, we think the letter is a final tsadi. Here, it’s appearing as part of the word alef-resh-tsadi (ארץ), which would be the word arets — similar to land, territory, or country (as opposed to physical ground or soil).

@ev111: My friend , you are picking on the most rarest symbol :) In this 2000 characters page , it appears only 6 times ! And always inside this 3-letters word . So Judaicadh’s suggestion is the most sensible ,but , if it is a “special” word , like slang , we just don’t have enough clues to guess otherwise .

@stefriegel: Thank you both. The word arets is familiar to me. Bereshit barah elohim shamajim w’ ha arets.

@Chavi-NY:I think you’re seeing חוצה לארץ at the end of the Subject, meaning “outside the land (of Israel)”. Earlier in the document, “ארץ יש would be short for ארץ ישראל = Land of Israel.

@ev111: This is a collection of phrases from many places , all about Israel . #bible #torah #yalkut_shimoni I agree with you that the 4 times “ארץ יש” is Israel, and that the 1 time “חוצה לארץ” is also Israel. I see these 3 also about Israel : ארץ נחלי מים ארץ אשר אבניה ברזל אל תקרא אבניה אלא בוניה ירכיבהו על במותי ארץ

But , as to @stefriegel question , i can suggest another theory: I like to think that instead of writing the full title “the land of Israel” the writer made this short symbol, for fun.

You can view the entire conversation here.

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By Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries on May 30, 2019.

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Exported from Medium on April 14, 2020.

Cite this post: admin. “Talking the Talk: Arets”. Published May 30, 2019. https://judaicadh.github.io//blog/2019-05-30-talking-the-talk/. Accessed on .