
PARSHA-PIX - Parshat Shlach

ParshaPix
Back from last year's PP, with a change, are Mad Magazine's two spies. From here, it gets a bit complicated. These spies are carrying a bomb. Short jump to granade and from there to RIMON, one of the fruits that the Meraglim brought back. If we take the Mad feature to its name, we have spy vs. spy, so the one in black can represent one of the 10 and the white one can be Yehoshua or Kalev. But only the other 10 brought fruit back with them, so either this picture is not accurate, or Kalev was trying to take it away from the other. The author in Mad always signed his name in Morse code, so to retain that image, we have a very important quote from Kalev depicted in Morse - ALO
NA'ALEH.
The compass represents the directions that Moshe sent the Meraglim to explore. The grapes refer to the timing: And the days were the days of the ripening of the grapes.
The tree with the eye is a play on words: See if the Land has trees or not. Switch the initial ALEFs of IM AYIN to AYINs and the question becomes: Is there a tree with an eye?
The Davka Graphics image of the spies with the grapes is on the left, towards the bottom. Towards the upper-right are the spies with the grapes as they appear in the emblem of the Ministry of Tourism (probably not the best choice for a logo) and that of Carmel-Mizrachi Wines.
12 Meraglim plus fathers' names makes 24 names. Three of them are related to animal names: Gadi b. Susi and (Amiel b.)
G'mali.
The Challa stands for the mitzva of CHALLA. The Tzitzit for that mitzva. The snail at the bottom right is Murex Trunculus, suspected source of T'cheilet dye and used by many people today for that aspect of the mitzva.
The heart with the eyes combine the two warnings of not to follow the evil temptations of your heart and your eyes.
Lower-left is the wood gathered on Shabbat and the stone used to execute the Shabbat desecrater.
TTriddles
TTriddles are Torah Tidbits-style riddles on Parshat HaShavua (sometimes on the calendar events of the week). The best solution set submitted each week (there isn’t always a best) wins a double prize — a CD from...Noam Productions 8 Malchei Yisrael, Geula & the Rav Shefa mall CDs, tapes, equipment - broad selection, good prices, personal attention and a gift (game, puzzle, book, etc.) from...Big Deal•15 Malchei Yisrael in Geula• Rechov Lunz right off the Ben Yehuda Midrachov in the center of town• Rabbi Akiva Street in Bnei Braq. You never really know what you’ll find there A fun place to shop.
Even if you can’t solve any, they are fun (and sometimes informative) to read about in the weekly TTriddles report (which is what you’re reading now).
Last week's (B’HA’A’LO’T’CHA) TTriddles:
[1] How much for the bookends for the Travel & Leisure section?
[2] How is the height of the Menora hinted at in the text?
[3] Same rule for a u and a g, different senses
[4] Napoleon, yes - Bonaparte, no
The envelope please...
Many solvers got this one (except for the tricky part). Travel is V’Y’HI B’N’SO’A HA’ARON... and Leisure is U’V’NUCHO YOMAR... These are the two p’sukim we borrow for opening and closing the Aron Kodesh in shul. Actually, it better matches the Torah being taken out and “traveling” to the Bima, and then being returned to the Aron to “rest”. These two p’sukim make up the parsha that is flanked by the backwards NUNs. (In Chumashim, they always were upside-down NUNs, because a printer just took an existing piece of type with a NUN and turned it upside down. He would have had to produce a backwards NUN from scratch. Not worth it. But in a Sefer Torah, the NUNs are written backwards.) How much for them? Well, most solvers took their combined G’matriya and answered 100. A fine answer, but not perfect. For those who remember playing “Chumash” in their childhood, the “upside-down NUNs” earned their finder 500 points. Of course, there were probably different scorings in different shuls. And there are probably plenty of readers that do not know anything about playing “Chumash”, but (almost) anything is fair in love, war, and TTriddles.
[2] This question is not a true TTriddle. There is nothing deceptive, no puns, play on words, no warped minds created it or are needed to solve it. And solve it people did. The Baal HaTurim points to the word V’ZEH (MAASEI HAMENORH...) whose G’matriya is 18, the height of the Menora in T’fachim. That puts the Menora somewhere from 144-172.8 centimeters tall. (For metrics-phobes, that’s 57-68 inches - but whose counting?)
[3] Same rule for Au and Ag means same rule for gold and silver, referring to the gold Menora and the silver Chatzo’tz’rot (trumpets). They both had to be made MIKSHA ACHAT, formed from a single piece of metal. Each worked for different senses - The Menora for sight and the Chatzo’tz’rot for hearing. Several solvers got this one, but most missed the a u & a g (purposely done that way to mislead people).
[4] This one was a give-away for careful readers of Torah Tidbits with very good memories for minutiae. It happens to be a nice TTriddle because of what you can learn or teach with the answer. Several weeks ago, Napoleon Bonaparte was the answer to whose quote appeared on another page. It wasn’t a TTriddle, but it could have been for Parshat Bo, as I explained in the following week’s TTriddles report. With slight modification, it worked nicely as a TTriddle for B’ha’a’lo’t’cha. Napoleon, the pastry, is chametz, yet permitted on Pesach Sheni when one may keep Chametz in his possession. But breaking a bone (resulting in Bonaparte) is forbidden in Pesach Sheni, as it was in Pesach
Rishon.
This week's TTriddles:
[1] Did Haman have a drawl?
[2] X and Y have the same consistency, Z is looser. Solve for X, Y, and Z
[3] You shall offer the first fruits of his kingdom, your reaping, your grain, your produce, your dough. Oh, no! Nations to him.
[4] Make sure to add the truth when you daven.
[5] 4 each: longer, shorter, and the same
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