Avodah Zara 10a and Jesus

This week in Daf Yomi we learned a lot about Romans. One of the things that Rashi cites on daf 10a is that the Romans have no language or script of their own. For anyone, like me, who spent years studying Latin and learning Virgil, Cattallus, or any of the other Latin authors it is hard to understand this Rashi.

Luckily there is a wonderful shiur online from Rav Shnayer Leiman which explains what Rashi means. The answer is very surprising (and involves Jesus and Peter - sorry to give that away from the beginning).

Here is the shiur Jewish Perspectives on Early Christianity.

Rav Leiman also refers to a little known text "Toldos Yeshu HaNotzri" which can be found online here as a pdf.

Near Miss

Phew! That was a close thing! Cyber pirates tried to hack into an Israeli website, but accidentally hijached the website of a stately home in Israel, according to the Daily Telegraph. I hope this is another encouraging sign for the peace process. If the Palestinians (or Algerians in this case) are happy with stately homes instead of Israeli land I'm sure we can reach some kind of deal with the British. They were the ones who gave land to the Palestinians (though they weren't called that back in '47) in the first place. Surely they could spare a few grand homes, fortresses and castles for Hamas and Fatah. That isn't asking too much is it?

One of Britain’s best-known castles fell victim to a band of hapless Middle-Eastern “cyber-pirates” last week after they mistook it for a Crusader fortress of the same name more than 2,000 miles away.

Belvoir Castle, the family seat of the 11th Duke of Rutland, was mistakenly targeted by a subversive group of Algerian hackers who confused its website with that of Belvoir Fortress in Israel.

The hackers hijacked the castle’s homepage and replaced images of the stately home nestled in rolling Leicestershire countryside with a black page displaying the Algerian flag and a tirade against the Jewish state in Arabic.