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.

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Russell http://www.RashiYomi.com/
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Biblical verse, Dt33-08:09 discussing the greatness of the Levite tribe, states And of Levi he said, Let your Thummim and your Urim be with your pious one, whom you did test at Massah, and with whom you fought at the waters of Meribah;
1. Who said to his father and to his mother, I have not seen him;
2. nor did he acknowledge his brothers,
3. nor knew his own children;
4. for they have observed your word,
5. and kept your covenant.

Rashi explains the bulleted phrases by citing Other Verses which provide further details. For example bullet #2, Nor did he acknowledge his brothers echoes Levi's execution of relatives during the idolatrous sin of the Golden calf. This is explicitly indicated in Biblical verse Ex32-26:28 which states Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come to me. And all the Levites gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them, Thus said the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the Levites did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

Similarly bullets #4 or #5, they observed your word, cross references the ten commandments where the Jews were prohibited from worshipping idols. Thus Ex20-01:03 states And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

In the above cases Rashi enriched the meaning of a target verse by providing Other Details from Other Verses.

One of Rashi's 10 major commentary methods is the word meaning method. Here Rashi functions like a dictionary providing meanings of words. Rashi had 10 submethods of word meaning one of which allowed usage of literary methods common to all languages.

The metonomy principle is one such method common to all languages. Metonomy allows naming an item by a related item. For example the statement Israel is defeating Lebanon really means that The people residing in Israel are defeating the people residing in Lebanon. In fact an even more precise statement is that The people residing in Israel are defeating the people belonging to terrorist organizations operating out of Lebanon. Here we have identified location --Israel and people--Israelites. Some purists don't expect metonomy in the Bible because the Bible is Divine and metonomy is vague and ambiguous. But metonomy is a powerful word meaning method that is frequently used.

Dt33-23a states And of Naphtali he said, O Naphtali, satiated with pleasantness, and full with the blessing of the Lord; possess you the west and the south. Rashi interprets the term Naftali as metonymically meaning the people residing in the land of the Naftali tribe. Here is the same verse translated with the metonomy inserted: And of Naphtali he said, O you people in the land of the Naphtali Tribe,, satiated with pleasantness, and full with the blessing of the Lord; possess you the west and the south.

Other common examples of metonomy include
• naming sexual passion and anger heat Gn30-38d
• naming concealing murder covering blood Gn37-26b;
• naming Temple coins holy coins Ex30-13c
• naming a person with numerous assets heavy Ex13-02
• naming the arm the hand Gn24-18a
• naming the nations of the word, one end of heaven to the other end of heaven Dt04-32b

The area of grammar is very broad covering many domains. A well known area of grammar are the rules governing verb conjugation.

Compare the use of the root Caph-Samech/Sin-Hey which means to cover, in the following two verses
• Dt32-15 states But Jeshurun became fat, and kicked; you have become fat, you have become thick, you are covered with fatness; then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
• Gn38-15 states When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a prostitute; because she had covered her face.

To fully understand these verses it is best to combine Rashi with the Radack, the great grammarian who finalized our understanding of Biblical grammar as we presently understand it.
• First Rashi explains that the Hebrew letters Samech and Sin interchange since they sound alike. In practice this means that the Biblical roots Kaph Samech Hey and Kaph Sin Hey both mean the same thing.
• The Radack makes explicit the difference between the Active-Qal tense, KaThiSah and the Intensive-Piel tense, KiThiSah. The Intensive-Piel tense for this particular verb is transitive while the active-qal tense is intransitive. Here the term transitive refers to the verb acting on something while the term intransitive refers to an attribute. Hence we translate
  • The active KaThiSah as meaning, you are covered with fat
  • The intensive KiThiSah as meaning, she covered her face

Rashi makes some further comments explaining what it means to be covered with fat. But the important point is that covered with fat is an attribute, an intransitive use of the verb, while covered her face is a transitive use, a covering of something, in this case, her face.

In passing many beginners translate the Piel tense as meaning intense. However the Piel can also indicate transitive usage.

Note the alignment of the underlined words in the following verses
• Verse Dt32-21:22 discussing God's anger states states They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities;
• and I will incite them to jealousy with those who are not a people;
• I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
• For a fire is kindled on them in my anger, ....

Rashi's contribution is to insert the bold underlined phrase on them to clarify the meaning of the text. Rashi inserts this phrase because of the alignment which shows a similar phrase them in the other aligned clauses.

As can be seen from this example the alignment rule very often has a certain forceful simplicity to it. This is particularly true in the poetic passages.

Verse Dt31-02b states And he said to them, I am one hundred and twenty years old this day;
• I can no more go out and come in;
• the Lord has said to me, You shall not go over this Jordan.

Rashi interprets the above verse using the Rabbi Ishmael Style rules. Rashi sees the first clause I can no more go out and come in; as general while the second clause-- the Lord has said to me, You shall not go over this Jordan-- Rashi sees as detailed and particular. In accordance with the Rabbi Ishmael style rules Rashi sees the detailed clause as restricting the meaning of the general clause. Consequently Rashi interprets the verse as follows And he said to them, I am one hundred and twenty years old this day;
• I can no more go out and come in;
• because the Lord has said to me, You shall not go over this Jordan.

In other words: Moses, despite his age of 120, was in good health and could still lead a war. The reason why he didn't lead the Jews into Israel was because he was prohibited from going in.

The last two Biblical Parshahs, Haazinu and Zoth HaBeRaChah have many poetic passages. We have advocated interpreting poetic passages using the formatting technique. More specifically we advocate reviewing the totally of poetic verselets as describing a climactic evolution of a theme.

In general poetic passages can be understood using 4 principles:
1. Format the passage so that each stanza/verselet is identified
2. identify the unifying theme of the entire passage
3. identify the stages of this theme
4. associate / read each stage into each verselet. This reading in can often be aided by
   • other verses
   • rarely occurring keywords in the verselet
   • idiomatic usages

The reader should note that
• In prose we read the words first and then determine the unifying meaning of the whole passage
• In poetry we identify the unifying meaning of the whole passage first and then determine the meaning of words and phrases.

Step #1-each stanza: The above approach may raise philosophical problems since it allows poetry to be ambiguous. Indeed, Rashi frequently presents multiple interpretations of a given verse. Instead of further defending the theory let us apply the above principles to Dt33-02:05 which states
• And he said, The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir to them; he shone forth from Mount Paran, and he came with holy tens of thousands; from his right hand went a fiery law for them.
• He truly loves the people; all his holy ones are in your hand; and they sat down at your feet; every one shall receive of your words.
• Moses commanded us a Torah, the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.
• And He was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together.

Step #2-unifying theme: Because of the underlined words -- Sinai, Torah, King---Rashi identifies the unifying theme of the passage as Recognition of the sovereignty / Kingship of God by accepting his Torah.

Step #3 - Stages: The stages of Recognition of God's Kingship are
• Divine revelation - the Decalogue
• Acceptance of the revelation
• Permanantizing the acceptance
• God is King

Step #4 - Association: We can now associate / read each of the four stages into the actual text of verses by associating the stages with the underlined words:
• Divine Revelation: - Sinai
• Accepting Revelation: - they sat down at your feet
• Permanant acceptance: - inheritance
• Kingship: - He is King

As we review the above associations we notice that one of them is weak -- Rashi associates they sat down at your feet with the verse Ex19-17 which says And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the lower part of the mount. This seems a bit stretched.

However the driving force behind this association is not a play on words. Rather the driving force is the overall structure of the totality of verses. And it is this overall structure which requires a stage of acceptance. The play on words--your feet vs. lower part of the mountain is then supportive.

I believe this approach to the poetic passages makes them more understandable.

In todays database query we inquire how many times each tribe is mentioned during Moses' blessings. The following table summarizes relevant data.

The Rashi comment is now obvious The last 5 of the tribes have their names repeated while the first few tribes do not have their names repeated. The first few tribes involve Levi, Benjamin, Joseph the tribes involved in temple service, temple land and the conquest of the land, respectively. These tribes are well known. However the last 5 tribes -- Gad, Asher, Naftali...-- are not well known for anything national. We therefore see the repetition as creating an emphasis indicating Mosaic emotional support for the nationally weaker tribes. One possible objection to this interpretation is that the tribe of Judah has its name repeated twice even though the kingship belonged to Judah. However Judah because he was king was weak and vulnerable since he led all wars. We see this in the verse which states God, hear the Voice of Judah, bring him [home safely from war] to his nation.

Although it is possible to derive this Rashi simply using the repetition principle, the database method, as illustrated by the above table is punchier.

Suppose the meaning of a verse is completely understood, that is,
• the words and
• grammar of the verse are clear and
• other verses don't shed further light, but Rashi adds consequences or necessary assumptions to the verse.

  In such a case we say that Rashi is using the spreadsheet method.

If the additional consequences indicated by Rashi can be
• inferred from a spreadsheet of numbers then Rashi is using the algebraic methodof spreadsheets.
• If the additional clarification is a diagram then Rashi is using the geometric method of spreadsheets.
• If the consequence is verbal-logical (neither numeric nor geometric) then Rashi is using the consequence method of spreadsheets.

In numerous verses journey to Israel is termed going up while journey away from Israel is termed going down. We present six such verses below (Rashi makes an almost identical comment on 5 of these 6 verses). These verses simply indicate a Hebrew idiomatic usage. However Rashi infers an additional geometric consequence from this usage The Hebrew language geographically perceives Israel as being at the center and top.

Rashi could have further justified this geographic inference using the other verse method. Verse Ez38-12 describes a nation intending to attack Israel as intending To take booty, and to plunder; to turn your hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and goods, who dwell on the belly of the land. The underlined description belly is consistent with Rashi's inference that Israel is geographically situated at the center and top of the world.

The six verses using language whose underlined words indicate that Israel is at the top and center are as follows:
• Verse Dt01-25a states And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down to us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God does give us.
• Verse Gn45-09a states Hurry back to my father, and say to him, Thus said your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, delay not;
• Verse Ex33-01a states And the Lord said to Moses, Depart, and go up, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, To your seed will I give it;
• Verse Dt32-13b states He drove us on the high places of the earth, [ Israel ] so that we ate he ate the produce of the fields; and he made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;
• Verse Gn46-03:04 states And He said, I am God, the God of your father; fear not to go down to Egypt; for I will there make of you a great nation; I will go down with you to Egypt; and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph shall put his hand upon your eyes.
• Verse Dt17-08f states If there arises a matter too hard for you in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between plague and plague, being matters of controversy inside your gates; then shall you arise, and go up to the place which the Lord your God shall choose; Note that in this verse going up refers to Jerusalem and the Temple. But again the idea is the same--the Jewish viewpoint as indicated by the Hebrew language sees the Temple, Jerusalem and Israel as sitting on top and at the center of the world.

This week's parshah contains no examples of the contradiction, style, and symbolism, method. This concludes this weeks edition. Visit the RashiYomi website at http://www.Rashiyomi.com for further details and examples.