An interesting and very thorough post. The connection to "dram" is interesting -- it is still used in chemistry / pharmacy in some limited contexts (glass vials are often sold in dram-unit sizes) -- but a dram is small, 1/8th of an ounce (a little under 4 mL) -- hardly a handful!
Wow but they're getting complicated, these posts. :o)
It's funny - when I start a post like this, I usually say, this one should be short and sweet. And then my wife rolls her eyes and says, "You say that every time..."
I think perhaps a post like this one would benefit from a table of contents, footnotes and a summary. But I'm nervous that a format like that could scare off some readers (although I guess the same could be said about the length.)
I do think that part of the post could be summarized like this:
It's hard to say whether omer in Vayikra means a sheaf or a measure.
Some (Hoffman) say it means neither, but rather something else.
Some (Abarbanel, Bechor Shor, Shadal) say that the two terms are synonymous - the measure holds the yield of a sheaf.
I say (in the spirit of Rav Breuer z"l perhaps) that the two meanings are distinct, but the verses in Vayikra refer to both at the same time. The halacha needed to come and resolve which one was done practically - and that is the measure.
Dave, you write plenty of short, accessible posts. If you want to write an essay every once in a while, go ahead! But only expect a few of us to read it =) I introduced footnotes to my blog at one point, also to make things shorter. It does help, although I got lazy about both the blog and the footnotes.
You have mentioned the ambiguities relating to the omer offering, and that of the term ספירת העומר, but one should note that it has another popular use: to refer to mourning rites associated with the period. This neither has anything to do with the offering, nor really withthe counting. And yet I get asked "Is that an Omer beard?". No, it's a PhD student beard.
Chag sameach!
Joel -
I agree that some of the posts have gotten longer than I expected. I think footnotes would help, but there would need to be an easy way to do them in Blogger without a lot of HTML coding.
Any ideas?
Ah yes. The hosted platform problem.
Unfortunately I have no idea, and a quick search gets me nothing but WordPress, which is what I use.
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