coffee addict – fascinating! Thanks for the post. I looked into it to see what this looks like and it definitely looks a lot more like a worm than a clam. Though I thought the gemara writes the Shamir was the size of a barley and these are much larger -so that’s problematic. However they do eat through stone so I don’t see why they couldn’t be used for the bies hamikdash or for the future bies hamikdash. (Though it doesn’t seem like you can control how they cut – they just go as deep into the center of the stone and live there.) It’s also interesting that they are only found in a 3-5km area of an obscure river in the Philippines. Very well hidden.
Menu