Adventures with a rabbit

[lethargic_man]

curious_reader has recently taken up crocheting as a hobby. She has been making various things and selling them on eBay, including this amigurumi rabbit:

aviva_m likes rabbits, so I thought I'd get the rabbit for her. Little did I know what the rabbit was letting itself in for... although perhaps I should have guessed. She'd already had a teddy bear who'd gone frum, and announced his name was now Dov Bear, so it shouldn't really have surprised me that the rabbit went frum too:

aviva_m was pleased with it, though:

Since Mr Rabbit had no ציצית yet, he had to share mine when davening:

Mr Rabbit claims to be spending all day whilst we're out studying Talmud, but I think really rabbits can't read, and he's just looking at the pictures. (There are (to a first approximation) no pictures in the Talmud.)

Mr Rabbit has also been exploring his Jewish heritage:

But he is secure in his Judaism and is not unafraid to learn about other religions too:

(Can you guess where we went on holiday?)

One question which remained unsettled for quite a while was Mr Rabbit's name. Eventually he encountered a hare named Barny, decided בַּר־נָבִיא, "son of a prophet", was a good name for a Jewish rabbit, and adopted that as his name. [ETA: Wikipedia says that Barnabas actually derives from Aramaic בַּר־נַבְיָא rather than Hebrew בַּר־נָבִיא, but it's close enough, and they mean the same thing.]

It was appropriate that he took this name in Spain, because one of the many theories about where the name Hispania comes from is from Punic אִי שְׁפַנִיָא I Shfania, "Coast of Hyraxes" (the Phoenicians not having a word for rabbits, which they had not encountered in their homeland). This is based on the evidence of a coin of Galba, on which Hispania is represented with a rabbit at her feet, and on Strabo, who calls Hispania 'the land of rabbits'.

(So says the Net of a Thousand Lies, and I can't find a picture of such a coin of Galba anywhere, but here's one from the reign of Hadrian.)

בַּר־נָבִיא was not very impressed with the discrimination against lapines in this bookshop:

Finally, which is mightier, the rabbit or the lion?

Looks like it's the rabbit!

Comments

[lavendersparkle]

Amusingly, after reading this I went to Rabbi Wittenberg's to study Talmud and his copy does have pictures.

[lethargic_man]

Well, the Vilna edition doesn't (aside from the frontispiece), and that's what I meant. I'm aware copies of the Mishna sometimes have pictures, showing the layout of the Israelites' camp, or the Mishna, or the High Priest's clothing, etc, and the Mishna is of course part of the Talmud; but when the word "Talmud" is used free of other context, mostly what people will think of is the Vilna edition of the Mishna + Gemara + commentaries.