Isaac Fried wrote:
I looked up TWOT and saw that he suggests that XALAH [of the famous
rhyme: I baked a little xalah, I baked it by myself, I put it in the
oven, I put it on the shelf,...] is some kind of bagel or pretzel
since its name implies that it is 'pierced'.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
Shavua Tov Isaac,
The fact that the what we call Xallah today is a sweet braided loaf does not
mean that the Xallah used in the Temple looked the same. While there are
other theories about the original meaning of the word Xallah (the Arabic
cognate, for example, means "sweet"), this one is certainly possible.
Do you know that our Matzah, with its rows of holes and its cardboard-like
hardness, is a fairly modern invention? Have you ever seen a traditional
Yemenite or Samaritan matzah? They look much more like what is now called an
Iraqi Pita (the big soft kind without the "pocket".
Yigal Levin
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.