1. Widely regarded as mark of respect that you visited the grave of a distinguished scholar. Became generalized to show you visited any grave. This was the answer I gave in Berlin as to why headstone for Moses Mendelssohn shows these stones.
2. "Tallit," although used TODAY to mean "prayer shawl," simply means "bolt of cloth. See Baba Metziah 1:1 and http://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/2008/11/two-have-hold-of-tallit-abr aham-joshua.html Baba Metziah" ============================== 1) If two people are grasping a cloak: One says, "I found it" and the other says, "I found it", or one says "It's all mine", and the other says, "It's all mine", they each swear that they don't own more than half of the cloak and they split the cloak. 2) (If) one says, "It's all mine" and the other says, "It's half mine", the one who says, "It's all mine" swears that he doesn't own less than ¾ and the one who says "It's half mine" swears that he doesn't own less than ¼, and the former takes ¾ and the latter takes ¼. ============================== It is the tzittzit that make it a prayer shawl. This *may* be derived from "Gather us from the four corners (kanfot) of the earth. See for example http://books.google.com/books?id=9_akQQPpS9IC&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=%22gathe r+us+four+corners+of+the+earth%22&source=bl&ots=mQk8IAwT7_&sig=aY67SZ8oBL64Y uFQWg0twvpCQ7U&hl=en&ei=EgY3SvKZBIfGMpHTjYkN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&r esnum=3 but others may want to comment. Indeed, the prayer for putting on the tallit is "Who commanded us to wrap ourselves in the tzittzit." ______________________________________________________ Dr. Don Weinshank Professor Emeritus Comp. Sci. & Eng. 1520 Sherwood Ave., East Lansing MI 48823-1885 Ph. 517.337.1545 FAX 517.337.1665 http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weinshan --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@osu.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
