"O, sir, you are old; nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine." (King Lear)

Last night, the first night of Passover we were part of a group of 16 who went to TooJays for their version of a Seder. The tables were nicely furnished with white tablecloths (paper), glasses filled with red wine, water, plates and setups. Half of the group were people who live in our building; the other half were their friends or relations. But it was a lively group. Bill Berger carried in a mysterious package, we shortly discovered it was filled with haggadahs. I imagine he had the notion that he would pass one out to everyone at the table, but that didn't happen. However, he did stand up and read the kiddish in Hebrew. I'm used to just hearing "...b'ray pree hagaffin" (sp?). But, Bill went on for about a half hour before he got to those words, a blessing over the wine. He just blew me away with his ability to read Hebrew! And his standing with me went up a full point. I can't read it a lick.

Before we even went into the restaurant, Bill asked if we knew the mother of Jesus, and everyone said, "Mary". (Of course, according to my understanding, Jesus only had a father, and it certainly wasn't Joseph). Then Bill asked if we knew the mother of Moses, and we all drew a blank. (I knew, naturally, but I didn't want to spoil Bill's fun). His mother was Jochebed, wife of Aram. Jochebed is identified by some rabbis in the Talmud with Shiphrah, one of the midwives described by the book of Exodus as being ordered by Pharaoh to kill the new-born male children. The Exodus scholars argue that when the Pharoah instructed midwives to throw male children into the Nile, Amram divorced Jochebed, who was three months pregnant with Moses at the time, but Miriam soon persuaded him to marry Jochebed again; they go on to argue that the Egyptians estimated the date that Moses would be due to be born by counting nine months from the start of this marriage, hence allowing Jochebed to hide him for the three months that were overestimated.

Jochebed's name identifies her as the person whose name should be interpreted as meaning the Jewess, in reference to her founding the Jewish nation by disobeying the Pharaoh's order to dispose of the firstborn males.
According to traditional rabbinic biblical chronology, Moses was 80 years old when the Exodus occurred, the Israelites had been in Egypt for 210 years in total, and thus in combination with the rabbinical claim that Jochebed was born on the border of Egypt, as her parents had entered it, this would require Jochebed to have been 130 years old when she gave birth to Moses. This is contradicted by a passage in Genesis saying that no future humans would live to be more than 120 years old. I recalled this juicy item as I read in the newspaper yesterday about a woman, noted as the current oldest person in the world; she just celebrated her 115th birthday! So, biblically, she only has 5 more years. I imagine she doesn't drink or smoke, and her diet is healthy, and she probably does aerobics in her condo, and enters triathlons on Sundays

What makes me nervous is that in order to reach her age, I will have to live another 31 years, and I simply will not continue to write blogs...or anything else for that long. And no doubt I will have to ask my doctor for a prescription of 500mg Viagras.