User talk:Bookworm415

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Your information on the Spanish expulsion date is simply wrong. The footnote on Jewfaq says

...the Gregorian Reformation, which skipped 11 days on the calendar. If you add the 11 missing days and convert August 11 instead of July 31, you will see that "August 11" is 9 Av.

Do I even need to point the obvious flaw? (I have emailed webmaster@jewfaq.org about this, and expect to see it corrected soon.)

As for Anne Boelyn, the existence of a (false) legend that she had an extra finger is sourced. Your claim that there is also an equally false legend about a mole is not. If you have a source for it, feel free to add it.

The letter shin can stand for all sorts of things, but you have provided no basis for supposing that the one on the Rashi monument might stand for Shadai, any more than sheleg, sumsum, or champagna, all of which begin with shin. Absent any such basis, it seems obvious that it stands for Shlomo.

Zsero 21:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

We know when the Alhambra decree took effect - we've got its text, and it very clearly says the 31st of July. And there can be no doubt at all what the Hebrew date was on the 31st of July - it was the 7th of Av. Not the 9th, not even the 8th. The closest we can get to Tish'a be'av is to suppose that the decree didn't take effect until midnight, which was already the 8th. Still not the 9th, but close.

As for the shin, your point would be relevant if we were talking about a mezuzah. But we're not. And if we were talking about a children's cartoon, the shin might stand for (Rechov) Sumsum, but we're not. We're talking about a monument for a man named Shlomo; why on earth would a shin for Shadai be on it?

Zsero 22:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tish'a B'av

Actually, you should only take off nine days for the Gregorian conversion, because it was the 15th century, not the 16th or 17th. Tisha B'av was on the 2nd of August, not the 1st. Which makes midnight on the 31st of July the night before Tish'a B'av. Zsero 01:39, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to take my word for it, it's perfectly obvious. Why did you take 10 days off? Presumably because that was the original Gregorian conversion, which took place in the 1580s. Jewfaq made the same mistake in taking off 11 days, which was the English Gregorian conversion factor, because the English-speaking world didn't change over until 1752. And when the Russians changed over the factor was 13 days. It's simple arithmetic - you can do it on your fingers.

As for Columbus, I don't think it's possible to say whether he was Jewish, but I'm absolutely certain that if he was then Ferdinand & Isabella didn't know it. By 2-Aug the unconverted Jews were already to have been two days gone, so what sort of mercy would it have been to send him then? And in any case, 1) if he was a Jew, he was a converso, which means he wasn't covered by the expulsion order, but was subject to the Inquisition; and 2) He didn't escape Spanish jurisdiction by leaving on his journey - he was on a Spanish ship, and returned to Spain! So what his trip could possibly have to do with the expulsion I cannot fathom. But it remains possible that he was a secret Jew, and nobody knew it. Zsero 18:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] December 2007

Please do not delete content from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Wikipedia:Sandbox, without explaining the reason for the removal in the edit summary. Unexplained removal of content does not appear constructive, and your edit has been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox for test edits. Thank you. It says not to remove that template, you keep removing it. Soxred93 has a boring sig 19:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)