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      3. RASHI METHOD: GRAMMAR
      BRIEF EXPLANATION: Rashi explains verses using grammar principles, that is, rules which relate reproducable word form to word meaning. Grammatical rules neatly fall into 3 categories
      • (a) the rules governing conjugation of individual words,Biblical roots,
      • (b) the rules governing collections of words,clauses, sentences
      • (c) miscellaneous grammatical, or form-meaning, rules.
      This examples applies to Rashis Dt29-20a
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rule1308.htm
      Brief Summary: WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF this TORAH vs WRITTEN IN this BOOK OF THE TORAH

Today Hebrew grammar is well understood and there are many books on it. Rashi, however, lived before the age of grammar books. A major Rashi method is therefore the teaching of basic grammar.

Many students belittle this aspect of Rashi. They erroneously think that because of modern methods we know more. However Rashi will frequently focus on rare grammatical points not covered in conventional textbooks.

    There are many classical aspects to grammar whether in Hebrew or other languages. They include
  • The rules for conjugating verbs. These rules govern how you differentiate person, plurality, tense, mode, gender, mood, and designation of the objects and indirect objects of the verb. For example how do you conjugate, in any language, I sang, we will sing, we wish to sing, she sang it.
  • Rules of agreement. For example agreement of subject and verb, of noun and adjective; whether agreement in gender or plurality.
  • Rules of Pronoun reference.
  • Rules of word sequence. This is a beautiful topic which is not always covered in classical grammatical textbooks.

    Today we review the very straightforward rule of pronoun gender agreement. In fact Rashi contrasts Dt29-20a, Dt28-61 which have identical words but differ in the gender of the pronoun this:
    • ....written in this book of Torah
    • ....written in the book of this torah
    Rashi explains his grammatical point:
    • The word book is masculine in Hebrew
    • The word Torah is feminine in Hebrew
    Hence when the word this is masculine it is paired with book while when the word this is feminine it is paired with torah.

Advanced Rashi: This is an exciting Rashi since in addition to the grammar Rashi also gives comments on cantillation. Of the 7800 Rashi's on Chumash there are only a handful which address the Biblical musical grammatical marks. Rashi shows how the gender of the word this influences the groupings this book of Torah vs. the book of this Torah. Rashi does not explain why the different genders and groupings are used in the two different passages. I have not been able to find a reason or commentary for this reason.


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