Book of Jubilees, פַּרְשַׁת בְּשַׁלַח part 1 of 2

Chapter 48

(Yes, we're going backwards; Jubilees does not tell the story in precisely the same order as the Torah here.)

The Hebrew Bible often has an implicit narrative of what you might call karmic retribution. Jacob deceives his father, for example, and is paid back by being deceived later on by Laban. Such examples are never pointed out; rather, they're for the reader to notice. Jubilees points out one example I've not noticed before myself, at the splitting of the Red Sea Sea of Reeds:

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Now the Egyptians have done their worst and, as per the Divine plan, been defeated, Mastema gets locked up to allow the Israelites to get as far as the Red Sea Sea of Reeds: ( Read more... )

Chapter 50

I told thee of the Sabbaths of the land on Mount Sinai, and I told thee of the jubilee years in the sabbaths of years: but the year thereof have I not told thee till ye enter the land which ye are to possess.

Presumably from Moses' perspective the Jubilee years are dated from the entry to the land, and since the Israelites have not entered the land, they are not to know when they start counting towards a jubilee year. (From the perspective of the Angel of the Presence, the jubilee years are dated from Creation, and the Israelites will presumably not be permitted to enter the land until the right point...?) Though that said, the angel then goes on to give Moses enough information to work it out:

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This is surprising, because it gives Moses access to knowledge of the future (i.e. that forty years will pass, not two, until the people enters the Land of Israel).

Jubilees posts                     Jewish learning notes index

How long I've lived in various places

I made a graph of how long I've lived in all the places I've lived in in my life, on the eve of my move to Berlin. (It shows cumulative time, and I've counted all the places I was at for long enough for it to feel like living there rather than just visiting: even for my three and a half weeks in Jerusalem, I was paying rent on a flatshare and cooking my dinners at home like normal.)

Note the graph has a log scale: the bars all extend infinitely to the left, so the significance is in the position of their right hand ends, not their areas.

FWIW, Hasolelim, Ashkelon and Ugmar 80 (an Israeli army base) were all on my year off; Jerusalem, however, was in the summer of 2007 when I was studying at the Conservative Yeshiva.