{"id":11961,"date":"2018-04-17T21:39:42","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T21:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jassa.org\/?p=11961"},"modified":"2018-04-17T21:39:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T21:39:54","slug":"to-work-or-not-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/?p=11961","title":{"rendered":"To Work or Not to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Auguries from twig tossing have a long history. An interesting fragment regarding such practices is found in Kupfer\/Lewicki coming from Moses ben Jacob of Coucy’s<\/b>\u00a0(Moses Mikkotsi)\u00a0 Sefer Mitzvot Gadol\u00a0<\/i>(<\/span>\u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05d5\u05ea \u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc<\/i>) – a 1247 or so discussion of the 613 commandments.<\/p>\n

“It happens that those undertaking a journey rely on the guidance of twigs before setting out. They take a twig and tear off the bark from one side of it it, leaving the bark untouched on the other. Then [he] takes the twig and tosses it from [his] hand. If after it falls, the bark lands topside [he] says ‘that is a man’. Next he throws another twig. If the side stripped of bark, white, lands topside, [he] says: ‘that is a woman.’ A ‘man’ followed by a ‘woman’ represents a good sign. So [he] takes the journey or undertakes whatever other labour he intended. If the bark less side comes up first and then the bark, [he]s says; ‘First ‘woman’ and then a ‘man’, so the [undertaking] won’t be successful.’ If the bark lands twice topside or if [instead] twice the white, debarked side comes up, that is a ‘man’ after a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ after a ‘woman,’ then the expected result will prove mediocre. They then take on the planned matter. They do this in the land of Esklavonia.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the editors point out, Saxo reports on these too among the Polabian Slavs on Ruegen and similar practices were known to Germans as per Tacitus (Virgam frugiferae arbori decisam<\/em>…), Lithuanians (they cite Moszynski), Finns (E. Lenquist), Scythians (Herodotus) or Alans (Ammianus).<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a92018 jassa.org All Rights Reserved<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Auguries from twig tossing have a long history. An interesting fragment regarding such practices is found in Kupfer\/Lewicki coming from Moses ben Jacob of Coucy’s\u00a0(Moses Mikkotsi)\u00a0 Sefer Mitzvot Gadol\u00a0(\u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05d5\u05ea \u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc) – a 1247 or so discussion of the 613 commandments. “It happens that those undertaking a journey rely on the guidance of twigs before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11961"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11974,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11961\/revisions\/11974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}