Thursday, April 2nd, 2015

April Fools

Thursday, April 2nd, 2015 06:54 am
lethargic_man: (beardy)

Well done to [livejournal.com profile] ewx, who it seems was the only one to realise in my last posting that the seasonal relevance wasn't to Pesach but to the fact it was April Fool's Day.

There is no tractate Listim of the Babylonian Talmud; listim means "bandits", and my excerpt—the quotation from Ezekiel (the first two verses of which aren't actually in the book*) and commentary both—was a transcript, with the language changed slightly to make it non-obvious, from the film Pulp Fiction.

* And indeed involved non-Biblical language: there doesn't appear to be a Biblical Hebrew word for "selfish".

In the film, R. Yulai Jules refers to the would-be café robber he's addressing as "Ringo". I took this as a reference to the nineteenth-century gunslinger Johnny Ringo (not to be confused with SF author John Ringo), and substituted "Shimon". Who better for R. Yulai to refer to in this context than R. Shimon ben Lakish, the notorious bandit turned Talmudic rabbi?

Now, is anyone kicking themselves for not spotting the quotation?

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