Re: Proverbs?

[Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@JUNO.COM>]

On Sat, 23 May 1998 18:34:14 -0500 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@UFL.EDU> writes:
>Thanks!  These are precisely what I was looking for (well, most of
>them)
>- culture-specific proverbs.
>
>> Proverb:  Taliet awlu an le
>> Trans:    A million wolves and one sheep
>> Meaning:  Commentary on the position of the Anta in the world

I'd just like to mention that the idea of few sheep and many wolves is
actually used in Hebrew....i'm not sure exactly what the source of the
expression "keves bein (shiv`im) ze'eivim" [a sheep among (seventy)
wolves] comes from, but i think it's from a midrash about the execution
of one of the rabbis who was a leader in one of the Judean revolts
against Rome.....if i remember it correctly, (i've only heard it once,
and in english - i'm attempting to back-translate), after seeing the
courage with which the Judeans faced death, someone (maybe Caeser, it is
only a midrash, after all) said "blessed is the sheep which stands among
seventy wolves", in hebrew something like "barukh hakeves ha`omeid bein
shiv`im ze'eivim".  The metaphor is used to refer to the fate of Jews in
exile.....the poet Hh. N. Bialik used a variation on it in his poem "`Al
Saf Beit-Hamidrash", "On the Threshold of the House of Study", replacing
the "wolves" with "young lions".

-Stephen (Steg)

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