"Drop a hard _J_"

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 7, 2012, at 4:06 PM, James A. Landau wrote:

> On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 16:05:22 zone minus 0500 George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
>
> "Speaking of _Major_, Major Lance was hardly the first black male to
> bear that as a first name. During my childhood, I had a couple of
> schoolmates by that name. And I really envied them for their cool
> name. And when I discovered that "Frank" Willis was officially
> "Franklin Delano Roosevelt" Willis, OMG!
> "But that was then."
>
> Probabbly totally irrelevant, but I have a first cousin named Major Landau.  Yes, "Major" is his given name.  It was an Anglicization of "Meir", originally the name given to a rabbi of the post-Bar Kochba period and one of the, well, major contributors to the Mishnah.  The name means "briner of light" or "illuminator".
>
I like that "briner of light", not only an excellent Mishnaic concept, but a plausible source for the view that under the right circumstances *anything* can be pickled.

LH

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