[Avodah] [Areivim] 40 Years Ago

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, June 4, 2008 6:32 am, Zev Sero wrote:
: Thank you.  So which one produced the sound that was heard in Yericho?
: And how does one learn Rashi, who seems to say there was only one
: magreifah?  It was a tool *and* a musical instrument?  I can't imagine
: scooping up ash with the sort of water organ you pointed to at
: Wikipedia, or with anything that has holes and reeds stuck through
them,
: and holes in the reeds, as Rashi goes on to describe.  Is there
: something missing from Rashi that resolves this?

The Tosefta (Eirachin 1:13) explicitly says the hydraulis wasn't
pleasant sounding enough for Shabbos in the BhM. That rules out
identifying the magreifah with it.

Eirechin 10b-11a, the rishonim, and the Tif'eres Yisrael combine to
give quite a bit of detail. You'll see why I thought there was
similarity to a bagpipe. It has 10 tubes, a handle with holes in it
and can make 100 or 100 sounds, although R' Nachman bar Yitzchaq tells
us that's an exaggeration. It had reeds. The body of the instrument is
an amah by an amah. Maybe a cross between a bagpipe and an accordion
(which has a box pump instead of a bag, but no tubes behind the
reeds)? And were those 1000 sounds simultaneous, or it had a span of
1000 different possible sounds? Could it do chords?

The keli used for cleaning the mizbeiach was a shovel or a rake. The
Tosafos YT (on Tamid 33a), that the magreifah was a musical instrument
that is shovel or rake shaped.

Maybe Rashi similarly meant to say that the gemara is talking about a
magreifah (as shovel, not rake, he is maqpid) shaped musical
instrument disabusing you of the notion that it's a homonym that might
mean a musical instrument else-where.

There is a shitah (lost the mar'eh maqom) that the instrument "threw"
music like a shovel throws ashes, and that's how it got its name.

A musical instrument shaped like a rake? Again, sounds related to the
bagpipe. The fact that it could be heard "all the way to Yericho" fits
(as guzmah) the distance bagpipe music can travel. Although being an
ancestor of the bagpipe doesn't necessarily mean it had that "nasal"
bagpipe or oboe sound. The sax is also a reed instrument. I'm not
saying they're the same instrument, that the magreifah had drones
(tubes that always produce the same sound, droning on while the melody
is played). Just an ancestry. After all, Jewish traders got everywhere
else on the planet, why not Scotland?

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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