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Their presence in Rashis on Parshath BeHaaLoTheChA Volume 16, Number 15 This weeks Weekly Rashi with Hebrew/English source tables Is accessible at http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rule1615.htm (c) RashiYomi Incorporated, Dr. Hendel, President, Jun 10th, 2011 Visit the Rashi website http://www.Rashiyomi.com 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. Although I frequently use my own English translations of biblical verses and Rashi comments, the Hebrew and English translations in the source tables are derived from online parshah files at chabad.org who in turn acknowledges the Judaica Press Complete Tanach, copyright by Judaica Press.
Verse Nu10-02f discussing the commandment to make trumpets states Make two trumpets of silver; make them hard; you may use them for calling the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. Rashi clarifies the underlined words hard by referencing verse(s) Ex25-36, discussing the construction of the Temple Candellabrah, which states Their bulbs and their branches shall be made from it; it shall all be one hard work of pure gold. Hence the Rashi comment: A hard work means sculptored vs. soldered That is all parts of the work are From it; the entire work forms one hard piece.
Using the above principles we can explain the varied meanings of Aleph-Tzade-Lamed. Aleph-Tzade-Lamed means near. This uses the metonomy prinicple. An objects shade is a good example of nearness. Here we have identified Aleph-Tzade-Lamed with Tzade-Lamed, shade, and have not given special emphasis to the aleph (though it is easy to work it in). Aleph-Tzade-Lamed means protective people, leaders. Here we can use both meaning principles explained above. A good example of a protective person is a person (Aleph) who provides shade (Tzade-Lamed.) Aleph-Tzade-Lamed also means big-armed. Here again we use metonomy.Big armed people are good examples of protective people. In Nu11-17c God promises to take some, but not all, of Moses' prophetic spirit and give it to the 70 chosen elders. We can metaphorically refer to this partial giving as shading. This is a coined term - the shade/shadow resembles the original object but is only a partial replica of it. Here too we have metonomy. We would therefore translate Nu11-16:17c as follows: Select 70 people...and I will come down and speak to you and shade from your prophetic capacity on them so that they can help out with running the nation. Such a translation, although coined, has a nice ring even in English.
This Rashi is continued from above in rule #1, references. 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.
Today we cover the rule of euphemism which allows change of person and plurality in pronouns for reasons of social discretin. Verse Nu11-15b, discussing Moses' reaction to God's anger on the behavior of the Jewish people's complaints states If you [God] do this to me [to make me alone deal with all national complaints] then please kill me if I find grace in your eyes so that I don't see my suffering. We have shown above in rule #1, references, based on analogy with similar statements in other verses, that the Bible really intended please kill me if I find grace in your eyes so that I don't see their suffering. Here Rashi uses the universal rule of euphemism. Euphemism allows substitution of different persons in pronouns to place distance from a bad thought. Here their suffering a first-person-plural phrase is replaced with my suffering a first-person-singular phrase. By not uttering the word their Moses places distance from the expected punishment that will befall the Jews. Euphemism is a universal grammatical rule. A simple well known example in English is use of the plural they for the singular his/her. Similarly in speaking about personal problems one might use the third person. Advanced Rashi: Rashi notes that there are 18 uses of euphemism in the Bible. The Hebrew idiom for euphemism literally means the fix of the scribes. This literal translation has suggested to some people that the original biblical text was different but the Rabbis changed it. But euphemism is not a biblical midrashic category! It is a universal grammatical rule used in all languages. To assume that the original biblical text did not use it is to assume God is coarse but the Talmudic sages fixed God's coarseness. This is rediculous. The truth of the matter is that God in the Bible uses all rules of grammar including euphemisms. Here is another way of looking at this. There are several rules governing use of person - I, you, he. One rule deals with who is using it. But another rule deals with deliberate deviations to avoid emotionally painful statements. Both these approaches are valid! Therefore we need not see any problem in God using euphemism. On a very deep philosophical level this use by God of euphemism points to a controversy between Judaism and Kant. Judaism believes that Peace is God's name while truth is only God's seal. Kant however believed that truth is paramount. But then we immediately see that the Jewish world view sees nothing wrong, on the contrary, sees something right, in God deviating from the rules of pronouns for the sake of peace. By contrast Kant, to whom truth was paramount, doesn't understand how a perfect God could chose peace over Truth. Thus our affirmation that the original Bible was written with these euphemism's is simply an affirmation that Judaism sees peace as taking precedence over truth.
This example uses two Rashi methods, the alignment method and the meaning method. The special word method deals with the few dozen special words that exist in all languages. Familiar examples are also, when, that, because, only, this,.... Rashi's job, when he comments on a special connective words, is to list the varied nuances and usages of the word. The most famous example is the Hebrew word Kaph Yud which can mean because, that, when, perhaps, rather, if. Sometimes Rashi explicitly gives all meanings of a connective word as happens with Kaph Yud while at other times Rashi does not give all meanings at once. In such a case the student must gather all the meanings together from various places. Today we deal with the special connective word this, Zayin-Aleph-Tauv. The word this always indicates an unspecified emphasis. This unspecified emphasis will clarify the application of the alignment discussed immediately below. The table below presents an aligned extract of verses or verselets in Nu08-24a, Lv21-17 Both verses/verselets discuss requirements of people - priests, levites - serving in the Temple. The alignment justifies the Rashi assertion that One verse says that blemished priests may not serve. One verse says that young/old levites may not serve. There are 3 approaches to interpreting this alignment. Approach 1 - Shared: Both priests and levites are prohibited from serving if they are either blemished or young/old. Approach 2 - Additive: Priests may not serve if blemished. Levites may not serve if blemished or young/old. Approach 3 - Contrastive: Priests may not serve if blemished. Levites may not serve if young/old. The true approach: The true approach is given by the special connective word, this, introducing the Levite law. In other words This law only applies to the Levites but not to the priests. Hence the alignment is interpreted contrastively - blemishes only invalidate Priests while age only invalidates Levites.
Advanced Rashi: Special note should be made of the possible three approaches to interpreting the alignment. Indeed we do find alignments whose interpretation uses the shared approach, the additive approach or the contrastive approach. There is no reason, a priori, to chose one over the other. A position of this email group is that interpretations are not politically motivated but rather grammatically motivated. That is the Bible indicated through special words, phrases and styles which approach should be emphasized. In this case the introductory word this is what applies to the Levites emphasizes a contrastive approach - this law only applies to the Levites, not to the Priests. We believe that this observation is one of the most important contributions of this email newsletter.
The table below presents presents two contradictory verses. Both verses talk about the number of Jews that left Egypt. The underlined words highlight the contradiction. One verse says 600,000 Jews left while the other verse says 603,550 Which is it? Did 600,000 people leave or did 603,550 leave? Rashi simply resolves this in two ways: One using the 2 Aspects method and one using the broad-literal method. We present two solutions. Solution 1: 600,000 is a legitimate approximation for 603,550 [Support for this solution may be found in Ex12-37 which explicitly says that the 600,000 is approximate!]. Solution 2: The 600,000 men who left Egypt complained. The 3,550 people who became adults (reached age 20) since leaving Egypt did not complain.
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 form creates a unified paragraph and consequently the law or narrative statement only applies to the enumerated details but not to other cases. Today's example illustrates this as shown below.
When a modern author wishes to deemphasize a concept they will strike it out. When the Biblical author wishes to deemphasize a concept He places dots over it. The dots in the Biblical version, or the strikeout in the modern version, indicate deemphasis.
We ask the following database query: How long - how many words - are in each of Moses' prayers. 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: Of all Moses' prayers, his prayer for his sister's recovery was the smallest - 5 words. It is reasonable to conjecture that Moses, as a public figure, did not want to create a situation where the public could point a finger at him and argue that he was spending excessive time on personal matters (prayers for his sister) and less time on communal matters. The list below presents the results of the database query and shows examples
Advanced Rashi: We have emphasized several times in this email newsletter that frequently Rashi will indicate only one conclusion of application of a Rashi method and the student must complement Rashi by applying the method fully and making further conclusions. As can be seen from the above table, prayers for Jewish welfare were significantly long. We also see Rashi's point that the prayer for his sister's recovery was short. But we find additional commentary. We find that Moses' prayer complaints were also short. Such discoveries are fully consistent with the reading and learning of Rashi and enhance the Rashi learning experience. In fairness to Rashi we note that there is one complaint (prayer for death) that took 64 words - perhaps Moses was unusually upset there! We also point out that our count was not an absolute count of all words but a count of hyphenated words (So each hyphenated word has a count of 1 even if several words were involved in the hyphenated pair). Finally we note that this Rashi has a modern flavor. Modern journal studies frequently study a domain of discoure - such as Moses' prayers - by computing attributes of forms such as word length. Because word length is objective such studies frequently uncover meaningful commentary. It is interesting that Rashi was aware of this very modern technique.
Verse Ex19-01 describing the Jews arrival at Sinai, where they received the Torah, states: In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. Verse Nu10-11a describing the departure of the Jews from Sinai, states: And it came to pass in the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth day of the month, that the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle of the testimony. Based on these two verses Rashi infers The Jews stayed at Sinai for a little under a year. [The table below shows they stayed for 11 months 3 weeks)] The spreadsheet below shows the computations that led to Rashi's conclusion.
Sermonic Points: There is an absolutely delicious explanation of the above Rashi. The Torah was received at Sinai. But you can't learn a whole new law code in one day. Most probably Moses lectured at the rate of one biblical paragraph per day thereby ensuring mastery of biblical content. There are in fact 293 paragraphs in the Torah. It is reasonable that Saturdays were used for review. Hence the whole Torah was reviewed in 293 days (one for each paragraph) + 49 Saturdays (293/6 = 49) = 344 days = 11 months x 29.5 days per month + 19 days. In other words this Rashi The Jews camped at Sinai for 344 days is not a numerical curiosity but rather a profound method of biblical pedagogy. Here the Torah and Moses show us the proper way to absorb new learning material thru small digestable daily learning. This Rashi is the basis of the Page-a-day (DafYomi) Talmud learning project. Praise be Him Who chose them and their learning. Acknowledgement: This 293 calculation (with modifications) is based on modern biblical research. The interested reader can find a detailed reference in the introduction to the Israeli Korain Tanach.
The example below combines two Rashi methods: The symbolism method and the database method.
The table below presents the 3 commandments as well as their symbolic interpretation. We also include a non-commandment example of leaning. It follows that this Rashi combines the database and symbolism methods.
Sermonic points: The idea of symbolically affirming a serious moment such as transfer of responsibility occurs in many cultures with many diverse symbols. All cultures recognize the need to symbolically affirm serious moments and values. The symbolism here identifes support in the physical realm with moral support in the social realm. It is a symbol based on function.
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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||