[Mesorah] All that glitters may not be...

[Mandel, Seth via Mesorah]

But it cannot mean tame.  All the k'lei sharet are broght to the miqva when they become tame' if they are from metal.  So they could just bring the gold to the miqva before making the keli.


Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org


________________________________
From: Mandel, Seth
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2017 6:18 PM
To: mesorah at aishdas.org; Akiva Miller
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] All that glitters may not be...


An excellent question.

I wish I knew what the problems of counterfeiting gold were in Antiquity, and then I woudl have more on which to venture an answer.


Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel



________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Akiva Miller via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2017 3:58 PM
To: mesorah at aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] All that glitters may not be...

R' Seth Mandel asks what "nechoshes" means. I would ask a
possibly-related question: What does "tahor" mean in these contexts?

How do we understand the common phrase "zahav tahor"? (I counted about
7 occurrences in Shemos 25, and elsewhere too.) The translation is
simple enough - "pure gold" - but what sort of impurities are we
warned about? Must the gold be free of tumah, or must it be free of
alloys? I've never noticed any clue as to which meaning is intended.

Connecting this to RSM's query, I looked in my concordance, and was
surprised to find zero occurrences of "kesef tahor" or "nechoshes
tahor". Gold was the exception. There were plenty examples of "zahav
tahor", but still, they were outnumbered by the cases of just plain
"zahav". (I did not attempt to look for patterns of when the pasuk
uses "zahav" vs "zahav tahor". It is probably a good idea to try
that.)

I'm tempted to guess that "tahor" means "unalloyed", and that while
alloys of silver and copper were acceptable, the gold had to be 24K.
That's a bit surprising, because gold is the softest of the three, and
therefore it is the most needy of being alloyed when used in
construction. Then again, maybe the miraculous nature of the Mishkan
is precisely why the softest metal was the one to remain so.

Or, maybe "tahor" relates to tumah. In which case I have to wonder why
they could use tamei silver and tamei copper, but not tamei gold.

Akiva Miller


On Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Richard Wolpoe via Mesorah
<mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
>
> Fwiw
> Olympic medals are made of Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
> No doubt in my mind that they saw Nechoshes as Bronze, at least in the
> general‎ sense
>
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