Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 49

Tue, 29 Jan 2008

• 1. Fwd (newsletterserver@aish.com): What's Bothering Rashi - Mishpatim (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Diberah Torah (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: "Borei nefashos rabbos VECHESRONAM" (Michael Makovi)
• 4. Re: "Borei nefashos rabbos VECHESRONAM" (Michael Makovi)
• 5. Re: Fwd (newsletterserver@aish.com): What's Bothering Rashi - Mishpatim (Michael Makovi)
• 6. Re: What would a Torah government look like (Michael Makovi)
• 7. torah government (Eli Turkel)
• 8. Re: Lo Bashamayim Hee (Michael Makovi)
• 9. Re: [Areivim] Binfol oyvekha al tismach? (chana@kolsassoon.org.uk)
• 10. Re: Beautiful Messianic Insight and Hope Excerpted from Rabbi D. Siegel & torah.org (Michael Makovi)
• 11. Re: cave or desert island (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Torah government - kim li (Micha Berger)
• 13. Re: assisted suicide (Micha Berger)
• 14. critique of mussar (David Riceman)
• 15. becha yaaminu (Saul.Z.Newman@kp.org)

I think RAB misses an important and more general issue.

To the Rashbam and IE, "peshat" would mean avoiding the halachic pretense
that the ba bamachteres is already dead. To Rashi, resolving word oddities
by pointing to deeper layers of meaning /are/ part of "peshat". If the
subject of the sentence is the thief, then Rashi finds it better to assume
the word still means thief and go deeper than take his grandson's route.

To my mind, this is but one example of their deeper stylistic difference.

-Micha

----- Forwarded message from "Aish.com" <newsletterserver@aish.com> -----
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:59:00 -- 0600
From: "Aish.com" <newsletterserver@aish.com>
Subject: What's Bothering Rashi -- Mishpatim
To: micha@aishdas.org
Reply-To: Rashi@aish.com

Mishpatim (Exodus 21-24)
What's Bothering Rashi: Mishpatim 5768 
by Dr. Avigdor Bonchek 

This week's parsha comes right after the Giving of the Torah at Sinai,
and contains numerous mitzvot -- 53 to be exact. These are mostly mitzvot
between man and man, though there are some that are between man and
God. An array of civil laws are recorded. Following is one relating to
an intruder who is killed while secretly entering someone's home.

Exodus 22:1

If while breaking in, the thief is discovered and he is struck and dies
he has no blood.

RASHI

He has no blood -- RASHI: This is not murder, for he (the intruder) is as
if dead already. From this the Torah teaches us that if one comes to kill
you, you should rise early to kill him. And in this case (our verse),
he (the intruder) has come with intent to kill you, for he knows that
no one will stand by and see someone run off with his money and remain
silent. Therefore on this understanding he entered -- that if the owner
will stand up against him he will have to kill him.

WHAT IS RASHI SAYING?

Rashi is telling us that the words he has no blood refer to the intruder
and mean he is a dead man -- just as a dead man has no vital fluids,
so this man is as good as dead. Therefore if the householder kills him,
he is innocent, for it is as if he has killed a dead man.

The point of Rashi's comment is to interpret the strange phrase he has
no blood.

RASHBAM AND IBN EZRA

The Rashbam and the Ibn Ezra (they were contemporaries and both lived
during Rashi's lifetime) interpret this phrase differently. They say
it means the householder who killed the intruder has no blood guilt
-- that is, he is innocent. So all three commentaries agree the verse
is telling us that the killing is not punishable since the man killed
in self-defense.

But they disagree on the object of the pronoun he in he has no
blood. Rashi says it refers to the intruder. Rashbam and Ibn Ezra say
it refers to the householder.

Can you justify Rashi's choice? Why does Rashi think the word refers to
the intruder?

Hint: Look at the whole verse.

Your Answer:

UNDERSTANDING RASHI

An Answer: In our verse the only person mentioned is the intruder. There
is no direct mention of the householder. So Rashi assumes that the
pronoun refers back to the intruder.

Perhaps the Rashbam and Ibn Ezra interpret he has no blood as referring
to the householder because the alternative, saying that he has no blood --
refering to the thief -- is a strange way to refer to a guilty man.

A CLOSER LOOK

Rashi adds an additional point when he says: From this the Torah teaches
us that if one comes to kill you, you should rise early to kill him. This
is the concept of self-defense.

But why do you think he used the words rise up early? He could just
have said, From this the Torah teaches us that if one comes to kill you,
you should kill him.

What do think these words teach us?

Your Answer:

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING

A person might deliberate when approached by a suspicious and dangerous
looking person How do I know he REALLY intends to kill me? Maybe I should
wait until I'm absolutely positive of his murderous intentions. Therefore
Rashi says rise up early -- be proactive. You cannot wait until the last
minute, because by then it may be too late. Of course, one must always
use his judgement and not be trigger-happy. But when it comes down to
my life or his -- my life comes first!

Shabbat Shalom, Avigdor Bonchek

"What's Bothering Rashi?" is a production of "The Institute for the
Study of Rashi."

--


go to www.feldheim.com

"What's Bothering Rashi?" is a production of "The Institute for the Study
of Rashi." The Institute is in the process of preparing a new volume. If
you would like to sponsor a volume or part of one, please contact us.

On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 07:51:50PM -0500, hlampel@koshernet.com wrote:
:> But still it doesn't make it broad enough to include many of the
:> things the phrase has been used to justify both here
:> and in print in the last few decades.

: Sorry, I must have missed the use you're
: referring to and discounting. Can you give some examples?
...
: RMB: And nothing about going beyond that
: meaning to hidden meanings. (If anything, it might
: imply the reverse!)
: 
: ZL: I've lost you, both reverse and forward.

I am simply saying that DTBBA doesn't open up the concept of "peshat"
to a free for all. Turning a narrative into an ahistorical allegory has
nothing to do with speaking as people do. In fact, it's quite the reverse:
atypical for daily speech.

Skipping back to the other half of the point (the "reverse"?):
: RMB: The idea is still to look at the meaning of
: a phrase, not the mechanics of the words used.

: ZL: "Mechanics of the words used"? I don't know what
: you mean. Sorry again if I entered the discussion out
: of context.

I opened this fork of the thread with the observation that in Chazal's
usage, DTBBA is used by R' Yishma'el to explain why his 13 middos are
based upon the meaning of clauses in the sentence. In contrast to R'
Aqiva, whose 19 middos are based on the words themselves. A critical
difference between ribui umi'ut (RA) and kelal uperat (RY) is that a ribui
would be something like the use of the word "es", a mi'ut -- "akh veraq".
Kelal uperate would compare the general category "beheimasekha" with
the following subcategories "tzon uvaqar".

Dibera Torah -- since HQBH wrote in biblical Hebrew, one should assume
He used the language the way people do. "Aseir ta'aseir" is a normal
turn of phrase; don't pare it down as a redundancy.

I originally stated that DTBBA only meant a rule about how to do
derashah. You/RZL proved that the Rambam felt even in Chazal's usage, it
was a principle than ran further that Rabbi Yishma'el was just showing
one consequence of. I concede that point, but it doesn't deminish my
rant against those who used it in the "mabul is allegory" thread.

RMM writes on motza"sh, Jan 26, 2008 at 07:23:23PM +0200:
: For one of the pesukim, Tosafot says we can simply say the Torah
: speaks in the language of man, and the pasuk isn't there to be
: drashed, but instead it is there for an ordinary literary purpose.

: Evidently, then, Tosafot understands this dictum to mean that the
: Torah sometimes includes a pasuk or parsha for the same reason as any
: human would.

However, this /is/ my original context of DTBBA being about the scope
of derashah. It doesn't prove how far Tosafos take the notion beyond
that topic. They could argue with the Rambam, or not. Either would fit
your memory. (Please get back to me if you find that Tosafos.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is harder to eat the day before Yom Kippur
micha@aishdas.org        with the proper intent than to fast on Yom
http://www.aishdas.org   Kippur with that intent.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rabbi Israel Salanter

> This brings to mind Isaiah 45:7  "I form the light, and create darkness: I
> make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord Who does all these things."
> Actually, the term evil (ra) here denotes calamity and suffering. These
> serve as means of punishment for the sins of man. Moral evil, on the other
> hand, does not proceed from God, but is the result of man's actions. Moral
> evil is an absence of God's morality. In most Siddurim, the phrase is
> changed to 'create all things.'

Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits in God Man and History makes an interesting
interpretation on how Hashem created moral evil too: He created the
possibility for it when He gave us free will. He ties this into Hashem
creating all the creatures we see today via evolution - He didn't
actually create them, but He creatured their possibility.

Mikha'el Makovi

> >
This brings to mind Isaiah 45:7  "I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord Who does all
these things."
Actually, the term evil (ra) here denotes calamity and suffering. These
serve as means of punishment for the sins of man. Moral evil, on the
other hand, does not proceed from God, but is the result of man's
actions. Moral evil is an absence of God's morality.

> Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits in God Man and History makes an interesting
> interpretation on how Hashem created moral evil too: He created the
> possibility for it when He gave us free will. He ties this into Hashem
> creating all the creatures we see today via evolution - He didn't
> actually create them, but He creatured their possibility.
>
> Mikha'el Makovi

Some may say this is banal, peshita. However, I don't think it is
quite so clear that Hashem created moral evil by giving us free will.

In the Apocrypha, for example, IV Ezra, quoted by Rabbi Leo Adler in
The Biblical View of Man (Urim Publications), it is argued that man is
doomed by Adam to sin, without hope of rising from sin. Different
sections of Enoch argue that fallen angels or other extra-human means
brought evil. Another part of Enoch swears that evil is due to man's
free will - Rabbi Adler notes that if an oath is necessary to affirm
this, it was apparently a hotly debated question.

So it is not at all clear that we don't need to be told that moral
evil is in our hands.

However, the pasuk from Yishayahu would, if anything, make the
confusion worse. People would misunderstand this to mean that davka
man does NOT have free will, but rather he is doomed to sin, for
Hashem creates (moral) evil. This is a kashya on the proposal that the
pasuk refers to moral evil.

Even if we are wrong about the pasuk speaking of moral evil, we have
learned more about the Apocryphal origins of Christianity however - it
didn't grow out of a vacuum, not by a long shot.

Mikha'el Makovi

> I think RAB misses an important and more general issue.
>
> To the Rashbam and IE, "peshat" would mean avoiding the halachic pretense
> that the ba bamachteres is already dead. To Rashi, resolving word oddities
> by pointing to deeper layers of meaning /are/ part of "peshat". If the
> subject of the sentence is the thief, then Rashi finds it better to assume
> the word still means thief and go deeper than take his grandson's route.
>
> To my mind, this is but one example of their deeper stylistic difference.
>
> -Micha

I'll agree that Rashi and ibn Ezra/Rashbam disagree on what is p'shat.

I recall an essay on R' Student's blog, that Rashi seems to hold that
any midrash that fits into the p'shat, is p'shat; but Ohr haChayim
instead holds that only a midrash that has some concrete basis in the
text is p'shat. According to the former, a p'shat-ish midrash can fill
in the gaps and have no relation to what is in the text, as long as it
doesn't contradict the text. The latter disagrees.

But in this specific instance of blood on the thief, it seems a purely
grammatical question: he has no blood, but who is "he"? I don't see
any marked difference in methodology. To be sure, one's mindset will
affect which p'shat one chooses, but there's no nafka mina and it
seems to be 100% grammar-only.

Mikha'el Makovi

> > As for the topic of enforcing mitzvos bein adam laMaqom or mitzvos
> > shim'iyos... I think the advisability and permissability is sorely
> > curtailed by tov sheyihyu shogegin.
>
> Though mutav sheyihyu shogegin doesn't apply to explicit d'oraitot.
>
> --
> Zev Sero

But maybe nowadays, when even an explicit d'oraita isn't so
clear...With all the secularism and off-the-derech-ism and
baal-teshuva-ism...

(I've got a mate here at BT yeshiva who still doesn't wash for bread
yet. I haven't said anything, because I know that there was the time
when I was saying brachot and keeping kosher but not washing yet.)

Mikha'el Makovi

> As for the topic of enforcing mitzvos bein adam laMaqom or mitzvos shim'iyos... I think the advisability and permissability is sorely curtailed by tov sheyihyu shogegin.

Though mutav sheyihyu shogegin doesn't apply to explicit d'oraitot.

This raises the  interesting question
Des bet din have any flexibility in applying these laws given the
social climate.
The gemara already states that the sanhedrin left lishkat hagazit 40
years before the churban to avoid giving out death punishments. R.
Akiva implies that death punishment basically never occurred.
Hence, I would guess that bet din could not enforce certain laws if
they felt that enforcement would create more harm then good in todays
society
-- 
Eli Turkel

> The Sages relate that the angels complained to Hashem when He chose to share
> His precious Torah  with His people.
> Hashem responded that the Torah could not remain amongst
> them because they are perfect spiritual beings with no mortality, impurity
> or illness. Hashem's true glory would
> ultimately come from man plagued by impurity and mortality.
>
> ri

Indeed. It's the same reason we have free will: if we didn't, what
would it mean for us to do mitzvot? For the angels to do mitzvot is
meaningless. Only for a human, for one who has the possibility of
failure, is the possibility of success meaningful.

Mikha'el Makovi

RMM writes:
>Well, we see that we definitely sang Shirat haYam. So apparently, we
>are allowed to sin over mamash enemies.

>But maybe it's not a matter of their being mamash enemies; maybe we
>can sing over *anyone* who isn't a Jew, whether he murdered or merely
>cut in line at the bank. As we see in the Midrash of Mordechai and
>Haman, Haman's being a gentile nullified this prohibition of dancing
>over the fall of your enemy.

As RMB has mentioned, we had a very long thread on this on Avodah - 
which you really should read.  Since RMB has, however, only pointed you 
in the direction of his blog, here is the reference to one of my 
postings on the subject on Avodah,  - in which I link the whole 
question, via at teshuva of ROY, to the modern question as to whether 
one should say full Hallel on Yom Hatzmaut and Yom Yershalayim with a 
bracha.  See:

http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol17/v17n039.shtml#17

>Mikha'el Makovi

Regards

Chana



__________________________________________________
Get up to ?150 by recycling your old mobile - visit www.tiscali.co.uk/recycle

> Chafetz Chaim raises the classic concern how the latest generations consider
> meriting the advent of Mashiach? If previous generations who were
> undoubtedly more pious than ours did not merit Mashiach how could our
> shameful generation merit him? Chafetz Chaim answers that, on the contrary,
> no generation ever qualified for Mashiach as much as ours. ...
> ri

I've wondered if perhaps the activities of many of the secular
Zionists qualified perhaps as a tikun for sinat chinam. People like
Hertzl, Jabotinsky, and Trumpeldor often were high in the rungs of
gentile society, and yet gave it up to further a Jewish people with
whom they had previously had almost no relationship. Hertzl, for
example, had been almost completely assimilated, and yet in the end
literally worked himself to death for am yisrael.

Mikha'el Makovi

On Sun, January 27, 2008 12:13 pm, T613K@aol.com wrote:
: Avraham Avinu is the paradigm of how Jews are supposed to be --
: somewhat isolated from society and somewhat engaged with society. He
: avoided living  in a city altogether... didn't even live in a house.
: He created his own society in a rural area, his compound of tents,
: family, employees... This balance of isolation and engagement is the
: ideal.

A beautiful tribute to RnTK's sister, Kiryat Nachliel in Migdal haEimeq.

(For those who don't know the reference, see
<http://www.tzemachdovid.org/gedolim/ravbulman.html> on RNB, RnTK's
father, and his other work.)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha@aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv

On Sat, January 26, 2008 5:23 pm, Eli Turkel wrote:
: another major impediment to implementing halacha in commerce is the
: concept of "kim li"
...
: Hence, if all poskim of our generation agree to some principal it
: cannot be enforced since (lets say) 2 poskim from the previous
: generation disagreed.

Actually, qim li only works if you can bring a shitah that was not yet
retired through halachic process. Someone need not give up property by
being forced to pasqen one way over the other; but both ways have to
be valid pesaq!

So, if "all" posqim of our generation agree, the opinions of earlier
acharonim would not come into play.

In terms of a Torah gov't... I would think that the governmental pesaq
would be forced to be accepted. Qim li also doesn't overrule hefqeir
beis din hefqeir, which our 7 tuvei ha'ir based gov't could invoke.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha@aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv

On Sat, January 26, 2008 10:27 pm, T613K@aol.com wrote:
: Wasn't there some story (someone please tell me where) about the city
: of Luz, a kind of Shangri-la where no one ever died, but when they got
: very old and tired of living, they would just leave the city?  Was that
: allowed?

I would assert that Luz as described didn't exist. Not only does it
fail the Rambam's test, but Luz is given in the Chumash as the
original name of Beis-El (Bereishis 28:19). Aside from Luz being the
"Home of G-d" in that sense, it's the bone that rests at the base of
the skull, the connection between brain and body. Luz (chestnut?) is
also the wood from which Yaaqov avinu made his spotted sticks. It is
the name of a bone that never decays, and is associated with techiyas
hameisim. And the name of a city never taken by Sancheirev or
Nevuchadnetzar.

And a city where no one lies.

The moral message is blatant. No lying, no death, Yaaqov's financial
success, the place where earth and heaven meet.

See <http://tinyurl.com/ysd4aj> for the above explained and elaborated
at more length in Aspaqlaria (my blog).

In either case, if Luz did exist, it would probably refer to
pre-Yaaqov Beis-El, and the people leaving it to die weren't
necessarily Jewish.

This raises a difference between here and Cantor Wolberg's derashah
about the ramp on the mizbeiach and accessibility -- despite the fact
that no person who would have needed a ramp would have been permitted
on the mizbeiach anyway. For a derashah to work, it has to fit
altogether. Chazal didn't repeat stories from which people can draw
false conclusions, or in which sins are invented and attributed to
pious people.

Thus, we can ask about the permissibility of leaving Luz without
addressing the historicity of the story.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha@aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv

A friend from Jerusalem stopped by last week, and we chatted for a few 
hours.  One of his remarks struck me as worth repeating here.  He told 
me that when he reads mussar sefarim he gets the impression of small 
mindedness; the concerns are very petty.  Whereas when he reads Rabbi 
Kook "ze mamash marhiv et hada'at."

Any comments (I'll reserve my own)?

David Riceman

http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2008/01/eternal-belief.html  on explaining 
the verse---Behold, I come to you in the thick cloud, that the people may 
hear when I speak with you, and believe you forever-   in a time when not 
all do...

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