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Their presence in Rashis on Parshat Noach Vol 8, # 1 - Adapted from Rashi-is-Simple Visit the RashiYomi website: http://www.Rashiyomi.com/ (c) RashiYomi Incorporated, Dr. Hendel, President, Oct 11th, 2007 The goal of this Weekly Rashi Digest is to use the weekly Torah portion to expose students at all levels to the ten major methods of commentary used by Rashi. It is hoped that continual weekly exposure to these ten major methods will enable students of all levels to acquire a familiarity and facility with the major exegetical methods.
Advanced Rashi: We haven't actually proven that there was abstention. The fact that Shem did not have his first child till after the flood is consistent with abstention but does not prove it. A more thorough discussion will take place below in Rule #4, Alignment.
The FFF submethod states that words can be named by Form, Feel, and Function. Some examples of naming words by Form include (a) the leg of a chair, (b) the handle of a pot, (c) the branch of a family tree, (d) surfing the net or (e) brainstorming Some of these examples illustrate naming objects by form while other examples illustrate naming activities by form. The verse below is still another example. Verse Gn06-14c discussing the construction of Noah's ark states Make thee an ark of lavawood; with cabin-cubicles shalt thou make the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. The Hebrew root Kuph-Nun-Hey refers to the shoot of a tree. From context the above verse is speaking about making rooms in the ark. Hence we translate cubicle cabins, long slender cabins that look like, or have the form of tree shoots.
Verse Gn06-09d discussing the righteousness of Noah states These are the generations of Noah. Noah was in his generations a man righteous and wholehearted; Noah walked with G-d. The underlined sentence Noah walked with G-d. indicates the present progressive, that is, Noah continuously walked with God. To understand this, we contrast, for example, the simple present, for example, I am eating an apple with the present progressive, for example, I eat an apple every day which indicates a present activity that progressively continues. With this background we have the following Rashi: The simple present is indicated by the present conjugation. The present progressive can be indicated by the past conjugation.
The table below presents an aligned extract of verses in Gn06-18b, Gn07-07, Gn08-16. All verses discuss the entry/departure of Noah and his family from the ark. The alignment justifies the Rashi assertion that While in the ark there was abstention: Men (Noah-sons) and Women (Noah's wife and his daughter-in-laws) were separate. After leaving the ark normal relations resumed - families (Noah and his wife or Noah's sons and Noah's daughter-in-laws, were together). Rashi infers this from the different sequencing of Noah, his sons, his wife, and his daughter-in-law.
Advanced Rashi: The above explanation by alignment is the traditional explanation of this Rashi. However an advanced Rashi technique uses multiple methods to prove a point. In this case we can find further support for Rashi from verse Gn11-10 which states These are the generations of Shem; Shem was a hundred years old, and fathered Arphaxad two years after the flood; We see that Shem, Noah's eldest son, did not have any children till two years after the flood, supporting the idea that there was abstention in the ark. This example nicely illustrates the value of using multiple methods in explaining a single Rashi. Sermonic Points: The reason for the abstention is that it shows a symbolic affirmation of empathy with the suffering of the world. It is not right to enjoy oneself with one's spouse while the world is suffering. It is interesting that this symbolic affirmation is found in Jewish law which prohibits relations during fasts for tragedies that befall the Jewish community. Thus we see here how Noah contributed to Jewish law.
Background: Certain Biblical verses are written with one text but read with an alternate text. We call such verses read-written verses. The Masters of the Masoretic Text carefully preserved these written-read verses. We treat these written-read verses as two readings of the same Biblical text. The following Rashi shows how this is applied. The table below presents presents two contradictory verses (Actually two contradictory ways of reading the same verse). Both verses speak about leaving the Ark The underlined words highlight the contradiction. One reading of the verse says let the animals out of the Ark while the other verse states force them out of the Ark. Which is it? Were the animals let out of the Ark or were they forced out of the Ark. Rashi simply resolves this using the 2 Stages method: Noah first let the animals leave. But if they didn't voluntarily leave Noah forced them to leave.
Certain Biblical paragraphs are stated in a Theme-Development form. In other words a broad general idea is stated first followed by the development of this broad general theme in specific details. The Theme-detail-Theme form creates a unified paragraph. Today's example illustrates this as shown below.
Rashi comments on the Theme-Detail-Theme form which creates the illusion of an entire paragraph. Noah did go into the ark; but he went in because of the flood, not because God told him there would be a flood. Thus Noah himself lacked total faith in God and had to see proofs before he acted.
The climax principle asserts that a sequence of similar phrases should be interpreted climactically even if the words and grammatical constructs used do not directly suggest this. That is the fact of the sequence justifies reading into the Biblical text a climactic interpretation even if no other textual source justifies it. For this reason we consider the climax method a distinct and separate method.
Advanced Rashi: Notice how we have interspersed a Rambam comment in the Rashi comments. In fact there are five phrases and Rashi omits commentary on one of them which the Rambam supplies. Such complementation of Rabbinic authorities is exemplary of advanced Rashi. We again emphasize that the Rashi inferences are not inferred from the underlined words. Rather the fact of five similar phrases - this fact, in and of itself, creates a climax situation which is resolved by reading into the verse a reasonable climactic interpretation.
We ask the following database query: When God attacks sinners how does he call them? The reader is encouraged to perform the query using a standard Biblical Konnkordance or search engine. This database query yields the list below. The list justifies the following Rashi inference: God calls sinners by their city name. Or else, God calls them crowd, worthless, people. However the Residents of the Tower of Babel are called Sons of Adam to indicate that a) they rebelled against God like Adam and b) they lost their unified world the same way Adam lost Paradise. The list below presents the results of the database query.
Verse Gn06-16b states A light shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. Rashi explains the underlined phrase and to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward as meaning that The ark was built with a sloping tent-like roof with the top part, not a point, but a 2' x 2' square A diagram is presented below. We classify this Rashi as diagrammatic explanation. ' 1 cubit ' ---------- ' / \ ' / \ Sloping roof ' / \ ' / \
God will sometimes communicate sensitive emotional statements using puns. For example, the generation of the flood had many serious sexual and monetary crimes. Confronting them would evoke resistance because of the sensitive nature of the sins. God therefore commanded Noah to build the ark of lavawood to symbolically intimate to his generation that God would punish them with lava like explosions if they did not repent. Other examples of Biblical uses of puns are presented in the table below.
Sermonic Points: Many people consider puns childish and silly. The Bible however considered them useful. Puns are a powerful way of reinforcing and getting across a point.
Conclusion
This week's parshah contains examples of all Rashi methods. Visit the RashiYomi website at http://www.Rashiyomi.com for further details and examples. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||