M&D star trek reference

[joshua levithan]

The hand gesture is an old Jewish ritual, the fingers
forming the shin for "shaddai," one of the names of
God-- that's all true.  Originally, I'm pretty sure,
the gesture was associated with the priestly
benediction (birkat haCohanim,) that is to say a
blessing by the priests of the Jerusalem temple cult. 
There are still some vestigal priestly roles in the
Jewish service, more in Jerusalem than elsewhere, but
they're not very important.  Many Jews trace their
lineage to the priests, either by family tradition or
by name-- "Cohen" is the hebrew word for priest-- and
perform these roles, most usually being called for the
first blessing in the Torah service. I don't know
whether the young Nimoy would have seen Cohanim
brought up to perform the blessing or whether a rabbi
assumed the function, but is not a part of the regular
service.  I could look in to when it comes up.  Thing
is, the MaHaRal, the Rabbi of Prague, was not a cohen,
as far as I could tell from online genealogy sites,
although he did trace his lineage to king david!  I've
also heard that the hand symbol was used because
certain people can't form their hand into that shape;
presumably the gesture was a special capability of the
Cohanim.  That is probably just speculation, though.
In any event-- good cute allusion and learned/pop joke
their, big Tom.

Josh 


--- David Gentle <Gentle_Family at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > You know, Leonard Nimoy (not to mention William
> > Shatner) is actually Jewish, and somewhere in ...
> > 
> > Whitfield, Stephen E. and Gene Roddenberry.
> >    The Making of Star Trek.  NY: Ballantine, 1968.
> > 
> > ... it's mentioned that he had seen rabbis perform
> > that very gesture (a blessing) by peeking
> precisely at
> > a point where the congregation was not supposed to
> > have been looking
> 
> While nosing around on google i found this, near
> psychotic, article:
>
http://www.promotionsandnotions.com/users/hova/Spock.html
> 
> Whether any of that stuff is even slightly related
> to the truth i don't know.
> 


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