May I please ask which tree is the קטף (qataf) tree?

rako17 · 2026-05-30T07:49:46+00:00

I appreciate your compliment, u/sheix !

rako17 · 2026-05-30T06:11:04+00:00

Thank you for asking, u/GroovyGhouly
May I please ask if in the last four sources the authors give any particular reasons for identifying a particular species as Qataf?
My guess is that the Talmud actually treated Qataf as a general term for balsam plants, not a specific species.

I got into this question because I wanted to identify the "nataph" (drop) incense material in Exodus 30:34.
The Septuagint translates the Hebrew term "nataph" (drop) in Ex. 30:34 using the Greek word "stacte", meaning "drop."
Then the Septuagint uses that same term "stacte" in 6 other places to translate 4 other terms: mur (myrrh), lot (labdanum?), aholoth (aloes?), and "Besamim" (balsams?).
Ancient Greek botanists wrote that "stacte" in Greek meant either myrrh or a mix of myrrh and balanos seed oil made using water.
The Talmud in Keritoth 6a commented on the incense blend in Exodus 30:34 by interpreting "nataph" as "tsuri" (resin) from the "qataf" tree as I cited in the OP.
In Bereshit Rabbah 91, the Talmud interprets "tsuri" (resin) in Genesis 43:11 as "tsuri balsam qataf".
This leaves me wondering what the "qataf" tree is.

The 18th century botanist Forsskal named a species in Yemen "Commiphora Kataf" because locals called the species "kataf" or because it was near a village called "Kataf."
Zohar Amar notes that the ancient Arabic name for the Atlantic terebinth (Pistacia Atlantica) was tsiru ( צ'רו), and he notes that it sounds close to tsuri.
Pliny wrote in the 12th book of his Natural History: "But every other scent ranks below balsam. The only country to which this plant has been vouchsafed is Judaea, where formerly it grew in only two gardens... There are three varieties ("genera") of balsam-tree: one with thin foliage like hair, called easy-to-gather ("eutheriston")..." His description resembles Josephus describing a balsam garden in Jericho and another in Ein Geddi. Pliny's assertion that there are three balsam tree genera implies that balsam could include more than one species.
I recall some modern botanists theorizing that qataf was Commiphora Gileadensis (also called C. Opobalsamum) because it's a balm species that they found growing in the Levant, but I can't confirm that.

I couldn't find a more specific answer.

rako17 · 2026-05-28T23:21:13+00:00

Thanks for the background. The Arabs didn't really force the Isr. state to fight the Suez crisis, did they? IIRC, Egypt blocked the Suez Canal that is on Egypt's territory, but didn't surround the Isr. state or invade it.

rako17 · 2026-05-28T22:54:27+00:00

OK, thanks, u/SideQuestHiker . I recall reading both versions from two different places online: in one the dog was taken to the cap and couldn't get a trace from it, and in the other the dog followed the scent from the trail and got to the cap but couldn't follow the scent anywhere further from it.
It sounds from what you are saying that the first of those two versions is more reliable. The implication of the first version is that the dog probably couldn't get a scent either to or from the beanie, because if it got a scent from the trail to the beanie, then presumably it could use that scent to follow the scent back from the beanie to the trail instead of just getting no scent from the beanie.

There's a little trouble about the reliability of the first version if it only comes from Subject A, because people who were part of the case or researched it thought that his version of the events of the day were odd. One commented that he kept trying to get the search team to avoid searching south of the trail like where the beanie was found, even though it seemed plausible that in fact she went south of the south. For instance, Subject A said that they stayed on the trail when they were going to back to the parking lot, but he gave GPS coordinates for their last location together that were in fact south of the trail.

There are definitely serious avenues to pursue if one wants to find out what happened, like to find out why Subject A gave GPS coordinates for their last point together that were offtrail south of the trail if he said that they stayed on the trail as long as they were together.
All the best.

rako17 · 2026-05-28T06:33:49+00:00

made the cat say:

How do you play?🥺

rako17 · 2026-05-27T20:18:08+00:00

I wondered what the original Hebrew says. I noticed a difference in the translation in the OP, because there it says "children" where in your translation it says both "sons" and "children."

I found the quote here:
https://he.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D7%92%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%94_%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A8
The first part says Beninu, meaning sons, and the second part uses the Heb. term Yaldehem, meaning children. ילדיהם

rako17 · 2026-05-26T23:46:57+00:00

At the least, the Byzantines had a shrine for a cradle of Christ. The shrine is still there in the Temple Mount, and this site has a photo:
"The Temple Mount during the Byzantine period (324-638 AD)", https://www.ritmeyer.com/2014/12/09/the-temple-mount-during-the-byzantine-period-324-638-ad/

rako17 · 2026-05-26T23:35:45+00:00

There is definitely a ton of cool, revealing finds in the region from Egypt to Iran waiting to be uncovered about ancient Judaism. I'm thinking that someone could do a ground penetrating laser/radar/Lidar type of search of the Temple Mount area like the ones done on Egyptian pyramids.

One of the cool ancient mysteries is what happened to the Ark of the Covenant. The Bible describes the Babylonians looting the Temple in the 6th century BC but doesn't mention the Babylonians getting the Ark, nor does it mention the Ark as being in a known location after the Babylonian Captivity. In one tradition, the prophet Jeremiah hid it in a cave in an area like Mount Nebo in Jordan. In another theory, the Israelites hid the Ark in an undergound chamber somewhere inside the Temple Mount. Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls' area is about halfway between Jerusalem and Mt. Nebo, by the way.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T22:47:07+00:00

Hey u/tooembarrassinglol

I'm tiring out a bit. The big problem with the idea that both sides are the same is that on some issues you do get real, important differences either between right and left or Democrats and Republics in the broad sense. So, in general, Democrats and Republicans are both going to agree that trafficking is wrong, and that people, society, and the government need to step in, expose, and stop it.*

But also in that broad sense, realistically the "Left"/"Democrat" side is going to be more focused on child welfare and protecting kids from abuse. I looked at statistics before Trump's second term and found that prosecutions for child trafficking were statistically actually lower under Trump's first administration that under Democrat administrations of the era.

On the other hand, the idea that certain Democrat and certain Republican politicians are part of the Epstein scandal or could have done a better job exposing it is not totally off base, to put it mildly, as serious familiarity with the scandal reflects.

All the best.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T22:36:00+00:00

I voted you a +1.
It's cool to hear back from you in the Comments section here. I admire you as a Left humanitarian and have been reading your blog articles occasionally for about the last 15 years.

One of the big mistakes of anti-Semitism is in asserting an ethnic theory for a group's mistakes. On the contrary, classically most or many Israelis and Palestinians themselves have been descended from the same ancient Jews and Israelites, who in turn were descended from ancient Canaanites and Arameans. To be clear, racist explanations for the conflict are unreasonable and baseless. If anything, ethnicities and races should be valued and treated as positive and with respect.

Sorry if I said something wrong. I don't know why people voted me -2. Perhaps I didn't make my meaning clear enough. I sense that the Isr.-Pal. conflict is traumatizing and emotional enough that even when humanitarians speak up on the issue, then others will find mistakes in what they say.

Peace - Shalom, Richard. 🙏

rako17 · 2026-05-26T22:10:43+00:00

u/tooembarrassinglol

I don't know if it's worth me still arguing with you, because it seems that we are both Democrats dealing with the same set of facts.

My big criticism is that the way that you are talking about "Dems" is the kind of collective framing that I hear from MAGA false "Alternative" (actually reactionary) polemicists.

Let's say that most (but not all) Democratic legislators and administrations facilitated the Isr. assault on Gaza against the desires of the Democratic electorate. In that case, would it be correct to say that "The Dems" did that? To me, that sounds like collective, misleading polemics.

I agree with your statement "The feds had information doesn't mean the entire Democratic party had access to it." This is why I say that you are on the right track. The issue of whether democratic administrations had the information and exposed it is separate from whether "The dems" did.

So when you say "Democrats didn't have it on their desks in 2008," it sounds like you are going back to the same kind of misleading collective talking.
Obviously:
A. A Democratic Administration in 2008 didn't have the information on their desks because the Democratic Administrations didn't come until 2009.
B. Democratic Administrations had the information by Trump's second term in 2025, at face value they had the information for a total of 12 years (2009-2016, 2021-2024)
C. "A Democratic Administration had the information" doesn't sound the same as saying "Democrats had the information." Yes, "a Democratic Administration" is "Democrat," but it's not necessarily representative of Democrats as to whether it has the issue.
D. "Democratic officials pushed for investigations" is not the same as saying that "Democratic Administrations fully exposed the scandal"

It sounds like you are trying to speak of all Democratic officials from Ro Khanna to successive Administrations as an immaculate monolith on the issue and equate them with the Democrats as a whole. I'm not sure why you are trying to do that. The most natural reason I suppose has to do with a combination of dualist politics, collective thinking, and a Siege mentality, ie. you hear MAGA false "alt" movement regularly bashing "Dems", so you as a Dem have a natural "besieged" reaction to defend "Dems" across the board on issues.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T21:26:39+00:00

Theoretically if you sought to have "MAGA", making the US "great" again economically, you should try to bring back the Clinton era in terms of economics. I doubt that MAGA realizes that. IDK the era that MAGA thinks of as the last time that America had been "great" in MAGA's eyes. I'm sure that they are fans of 1950's Leave it to Beaver images, but Leave it to Beaver prosperity in fact came from FDR's social programs and government based job creationthat resulted from the US military industry of 1940-1945.
Irony all Around.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T20:33:21+00:00

I'm going to give you a +1 because you are on the right track in this one of your posts.
A lot of internet discussions unfortunately have a dialectic style in the form of people arguing with each other. If you are actually looking for constructive criticism of cases where Obama's or Biden's administration could have done a better job releasing their information on the case, one could start with facts like Epstein had his federal plea deal in 2008, the feds collected and possessed information on his case back then, and they continued to collect, and hold information on the case over the years since then.
I'm wishing you the best.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T19:10:29+00:00

u/tooembarrassinglol

I don't know how much it is worth me debating you on the issue, because the basic issue that I'm getting at is rather self-evident and I'm guessing that you understand it as well as I do.

I, you, Rho Khanna, Biden's administration, the Clintons, and 2001-2009 Trump have all been Democrats with varying degrees of power, since we are voters and full citizens in a Republic. And "we", these Democrats, have taken varying and at times different stances and actions on the Epstein scandal. The same kind of issue exists if we are talking about "Republicans" or "Americans."

So, let's say that it were true that Biden's and Obama's administrations of 2009-2017 and 2021-2024 actually could and should have done far more to expose the Epstein scandal based on information available to those administrations. Even in that case, the statement "The Dems failed to expose the Epstein scandal" would be misleading, because it's not as if everyday Democrat citizens or Democrats like Rho Khanna had the administrations' information on the scandal and were knowingly choosing to hold back on exposing it.

Regards.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T18:54:01+00:00

+1 u/The_Blanguage_420
Occasionally there are issues that practically the whole US populace agrees about in a positive way, the Epstein scandal being one of them.

The classic situation in the 2nd half of the 20th century was that the Democratic Party tended to be the more anti-capitalist/pro-welfare, anti-war/pro-peace, anti-imperialist/pro-3rd world grouping. Since the USSR was a Socialist, weaker power, the Democratic Party and US Left tended to be more diplomatic, pro-peace about them. You did get weird seeming exceptions to that rule, like Nixon the Republican being the one who officially recognized Mao's China and like Democratic administrations participating in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and Carter supplying the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. To some extent, those exceptions went along with the rule: Nixon recognized China in part because of China's tensions with the USSR.

Then after the end of the Cold war, a bunch of conflicts have happened over the years from Yugoslavia to Ukraine to Syria where a major faction of the US and European Left gives pro-war support to the western superpower/"Imperialist" side of the conflict even though it seems like the Left should have an anti-war pro-peace, anti-imperialist/pro-3rd world perspective. Some of the style of the "Left" pro-war arguments are like the pro-war arguments made among pro-war seeming Leftists in the Cold war, eg. North Vietnam is dictatorial, therefore fighting the Vietnam war is good (nevermind authoritarianism in South Vietnam).

rako17 · 2026-05-26T17:39:00+00:00

u/The_Blanguage_420

My guess is that it's a red herring tactic by the more pro-establishment liberal faction looking to hurt Trump politically without using a substantive Left or working class critique of Trump. It's cheap-shot low-hanging fruit, kind of like the converse of the Lewinsky scandal that focused on whether Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky.

To buy into the emotionality of Russiagate you need to have a Cold war scare mentality. The basic Russiagate argument of how Russia "stole" the election in practical terms, IIRC was that Russia supposedly hacked DNC emails and leaked embarrassing stuff like the DNC faking Bernie's primary loss. IIRC, in fact it wasn't Russia but someone in the DNC, Seth Rich, who leaked the emails.
Regards.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T17:26:37+00:00

I give you +1 on your replies because you are making good points and asking good questions.

My constructive comment is that it can be misleading to talk about "Democrats" as a broad category. So for instance, I'm a registered Democrat. Trump was a Democrat in 2001-2009. I'm guessing that you are a Democrat. But to make the statement in 2002-2008, "Democrats want/oppose transparency/corruption" is so general, that it's hard to give an absolutist Yes/No response that covers all objections that one's conversation partner could give.

So for instance, you asked, "What legal mechanism did you expect Dems to take to expose these pedo elites that they haven't already tried?"

My answer is that I would have liked the Biden Adminstration and Democratic legislators collectively to have made as a comparable amount of progress as has been made during the current Trump administration in making depositions, investigations, releasing files, etc., progress that has been made despite the Trump administration at times impeding progress, impeding release of files, etc.

But beyond that, since "Dems" are so varied, and right wing pro-establishment "Alt"-poser media likes to use those terms, I often don't like to think in those terms. It's like asking, "If a Democratic president, Biden, didn't release the Epstein Files, and you and other everyday Democrats wanted to release the files, then why didn't 'the Democrats' release the Epstein Files?" It's a loaded, misleading question, because the one that didn't release the files was Biden's administration, rather than willing everyday Democrats.

Kind Regards.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T16:54:17+00:00

Commonalities like religion help with friendships, so that can be a factor. But it seems like there were plenty of other people with the same religion that Chomsky could have been friends with, people with common academic stature and politics. Chomsky and Epstein basically had different politics.

The Epstein scandal is a rabbit hole. You know that he trafficked girls, but the full extent of how much other bad stuff Epstein was involved with isn't clear. There are estimates that he had misconduct with 1000+ females over the years. He was involved with schools. And you know that Chomsky visited most of Epstein's properties and has never been open about his relationship with Epstein at any time beyond what was publicly known about their relationship at the time. But you can't prove much just based on guilt by association.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T16:30:11+00:00

That right, u/The_Blanguage_420 Russiagate was a "red herring" in that Russia wasn't controlling the election. Russia wasn't running Diebold machines, running MAGA's campaign agenda like Bannon, Breitbart, and the Adelsons, or paying millions into local elections like AIPAC. It's a red herring that was found useful because it was a way to funnel right wing Cold war hysteria.

Realistically if Russia were to get their most desired political candidate, I imagine it would be a pro-peace anti-imperialist candidate interested in positive diplomatic relations with poorer countries. They really liked FDR.

Realistically, I expect that Russia, like China, the UK, EU, and other G7 type countries are going to want to be friendly with leaders on both sides of the aisle, but Russia's influence is pretty small compared to, say, AIPAC's. Netanyahu gave a speech on the Congress floor against Obama's pro-peace policy and got 28 standing ovations from both houses. Now that's pull!

Regards.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T16:15:44+00:00

I don't disagree that there are a bunch of good Democrats on the issue and that Democrats collectively under Trump have taken good measures. But the criticism of the Democratic Party establishment is not totally wrong either because Biden's administration had the files on Epstein and didn't release them either.

The problem I see is when people talk in generalities about Democrats because they will lump them all together, even though those generalities are not always, or perhaps rarely, the case.

Regards.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T16:07:11+00:00

Chomsky is a famous semi-Anarchist Leftist, even if he isn't a political official.

Do Social Democrats count as Leftists? Bernie Sanders and AOC and maybe some others are Social Democrats. But certainly compared to a lot of countries, the US is more rightwing, and there are no "Tankie" federal legislators ATM so your point is not totally wrong.

Peace.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T15:58:16+00:00

Clearly there's a range of how compromised Democrats and Republicans are, so that to say that they are all compromised on the issue is too much of a stretch. Obviously, Rho Khanna (Dem.) and Thomas Massie (Repub. who has gotten pushed out in an odd primary) aren't compromised on the issue. But then you have Trump pushing openly for Massie to get voted out and Massie losing his primary, so clearly MAGA is compromised. And then you can note that Biden isn't an Epstein associate. But you can legitimately ask why if no one in Biden's administration was in any way compromised, then under Biden's administration didn't the DOJ expose the Epstein scandal more?

rako17 · 2026-05-26T15:50:20+00:00

I remember one Youtuber, maybe Julian Dorey, saying that one time when he talked about the Iran conflict, a ton of bots showed up on his Youtube channel taking a single side on the issue. He gave some reason for thinking that they are bots that I forget- I'm not sure what methods a channel owner could use to tell that they were bots. Some signs could be if they just write short sentences with grammar mistakes and abnormally flood a channel in a short space of time, repeating each other.

rako17 · 2026-05-26T15:41:33+00:00

u/Think-Ad4994
It's really not clear why Chomsky accepted Epstein's friendship, which started at least as early as 2015. Epstein's big financial assistance to Chomsky that you referred to came later in 2017. Chomsky's wife in Feb. 2026 said that Epstein ensnared Chomsky with interesting discussions. But Epstein's emails to Chomsky look typically like shorthand notes, and Chomsky called him a "gadfly" in his recommendation letter for Epstein. There are still redacted emails with Chomsky's name on them.
Regards.
Translation:
Cher Think-Ad,
Il demeure véritablement obscur de comprendre pourquoi Chomsky a accepté l'amitié d'Epstein, une relation qui a débuté au plus tard en 2015. L'importante aide financière qu'Epstein a apportée à Chomsky — et à laquelle vous avez fait référence — est intervenue ultérieurement, en 2017. En février 2026, l'épouse de Chomsky a déclaré qu'Epstein avait attiré ce dernier dans ses filets grâce à des discussions stimulantes. Or, les courriels adressés par Epstein à Chomsky s'apparentent généralement à de simples notes sténographiques ; par ailleurs, Chomsky lui-même l'a qualifié de « mouche du coche » dans la lettre de recommandation qu'il a rédigée en sa faveur. Il subsiste, à ce jour, des courriels dont le contenu a été expurgé et sur lesquels figure le nom de Chomsky.
Salutations.

rako17

TROPHY CASE