Wednesday, February 11, 2009

NOW Lebanon borrowing from Talmud

One of the recent blogs/online publication I've added to the 'Blog Roll' section on the right is NOW Lebanon. I have only looked at this newspaper a couple time and I just noticed that their slogan in the title is "If not now, when?" which is attributed to Talmud or Hillel. Mossad?

2 comments:

Khaled said...

"If not now, when?" a Talmudic tradition???
'cmmon Michael. Do you really think that an arrangement of 4 very common words has never appeared in the collective work of humanity until Hillel said it?
Please give the rest of Mankind some credit.
That is like Fox trying to claim copyright over the words "Fair and Balanced".

Michael W. said...

Well, if you can prove to me that those words were ever written like that before Hillel, I am wrong. Those words might be common, but in that arrangement they are uncommon.

Perhaps I should have provided the whole thing -
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

I thought that it is common knowledge that when someone uses that phrase, he is referring to Hillel. I don't think that the Lebanese newspaper used those words with the knowledge that it is from Hillel and that American Jews familiar with Hillel's quote see it as that.