Hey, anybody know where the following comes from? It’s a quote I think I copied from something in the JTS library nine million years ago (when I didn’t know anything, and didn’t even have the basic sense to note the source) for a short story I was working on at the time. (The short story was eventually pubbed in Lilith mag, you can probably still find it somewhere).

I’ve always been under the impression that it was gemara from the first few pages of Brachot, but it doesn’t seem to be–unless in my skimming the perek just now I totally missed it, which is possible; nothing was certainly coming up in the various CD-ROM searches (in various languages) that I’ve thought to run.

Anyway, anybody know this?

“’What is twilight?’ Said R. Tanchuma, ‘it is a drop of blood balanced on the edge of a sword.’”

It’s somewhere in the textual universe close to this: , “it has been taught in the name of R. Joshua: The thickness of the sky is about two finger-breaths.”

Lovely, no? Those Rabbis sure did have a way with words. But where’s it from????