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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.
Verse
Gn39-09
discussing
Joseph's refusal to commit adultery
states
There is none greater in this house than I;
nor has he kept back any thing from me but you,
because you are his wife;
how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
Rashi notes
The underlined words,
how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
references
verses
Gn12-17:18, Gn26-11
which explicitly indicate general awareness among non-Jews
that adultery leads to Gods killing people.
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Text of Target Verse Gn39-09
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Text of Reference Verse Gn12-17:18, Gn26-11
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There is none greater in this house than I;
nor has he kept back any thing from me but you,
because you are his wife;
how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
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And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife.
And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?...
And Abimelech charged all his people, saying,
He who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death
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Rashi comments:
The underlined words-plagues...put to death - show that the non-Jewish world was aware
that the prohibition of adultery was not something religious and abstract but rather real-world
and perceived,
consistent with Gods punishment and bringing plagues on people here and now
in this world.
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Verse
Gn39-14a
discussing how Potifar ranks out Joseph for allegedly making advances on her
states
That she called to the men of her house, and spoke to them, saying, See, he has brought in a
Hebrew to us to mock us; he came in to me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice;
This is the first time in the Bible that Jews are called Hebrews from the Hebrew
Eyver.
Rashi derives the meaning of the word Hebrew from its root Eyver. Rashi
presents a variety of reasons for the etymology. Very often words will
have multiple explanations.
- The Jews are descendants of Abraham who are descendants of Eyver
the person who fathered the split of the world into factions(Gn11-16, Gn10-21, Gn10-25.)
- Eyver literally means side. So to speak, the world is on one
side while we (the Jews) are on the other side (So here Potifar's wife was poking
fun on Joseph who came from the other side, that is, was an outsider.)
- Chazal however state that
Abraham stood on one side of the world against everybody. Here side is seen
as referring to standing up for oneself.
Notice how the side in the name Eyver who fathered the split of the world
mirrors Abraham's further split of the world by also standing on the side of monotheism. Such multiple meanings and echoing nuances are common in etymologies.
Verse Gn37-31
states
And they took coat of Joseph, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the
coat in the blood;
Rashi comments:
The phrase coat of Joseph uses the construct ( coat of) and
hence is punctuated in Hebrew, Kuh-To-Neth while the second underlined phrase
coat occurs absolutely without a construct and is punctuated
Koo-To-Neth.
In other words while English uses the word of to distinguish between the construct
and non-construct, Hebrew uses two different punctuations for the
construct vs. non-construct.
Advanced Rashi: The reader may wonder why Rashi explains this. After
all, schoolchildren routinely learn the difference between construct and non-construct.
However grammar was just beginning in Rashi's time and one of his major functions
was to communicate grammatical rules to his readers who had no other way of
finding them out.
Today's example uses both the Formatting-Climaxrule #7
as well as the alignment rule #4. The Climax rule
states that a sequence of phrases describing some event or activity
should be interpreted in climactic order.
Verse Gn37-34:35
discussing
Jacob's severe reaction to the news of Joseph's death
states
- And Jacob tore his clothes,
- and put sackcloth upon his loins,
- and mourned for his son many days.
- And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted;
- and he said, For I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.
- Thus his father wept for him.
Note the anti-climax in the sequence of underlined words:
tore, sackcloth, mourned, comfort-refusal,mourn, cry.
Cry should not be the climax of the list; it should
preferably be in the middle. Hence, based solely on this
anti-climax Rashi suggests that
The first part of the list
tore, sackcloth, mourned, comfort-refusal,mourn.
applies to Jacob, but the second part of the list
cry applies to his father that is, Jacob's father, Isaac.
Rashi now must explain the aligned verselets:
Jacob mourns while Isaac cries:
Jacob mourned but Isaac only cried. Apparently Isaac
knew Joseph was alive. This is reasonably possible since Isaac's daughter
in law was Arab and it was Arabs to which Joseph was sold and transported to Egypt.
Hence Isaac could have known the whole story from his Arab contacts since the presence
of a Hebrew slave in Egypt would arouse a buzz and Isaac would eventually find out.
Rashi continues:
Isaac was crying for Jacob who was unnecessarily mourning. He wasn't crying for Joseph
since he knew Joseph was alive.
This is indeed possible. But it is equally likely that Isaac was crying for Joseph
who had been transformed into a slave by his brothers. Perhaps then Rashi's point is
that Isaac was crying for the entire situation where a brother was sold into
slavery and his father thought him dead. This is the most appealing explanation.
The table below summarizes this analysis of Rashi.
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Verse
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Text of Verse
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Rashi comment
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Gn37-34:35
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- And Jacob tore his clothes,
- and put sackcloth upon his loins,
- and mourned for his son many days.
- And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted;
- and he said, For I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.
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Climax see Jacob as tearing, sackcloth, mourning, no-comfort,
mourning to grave.. (The crying does not fit in here and belongs
to another person as shown in the rest of the table).
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Gn37-34:35
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- Thus his father wept for him.
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His father, that is, Jacob's father, Isaac cried
since he knew the entire story (Probably because his daughter-in-law
was Arab and the Arabs rescued Joseph) He knew the brothers sold him
into slavery, framed his death, and Jacob was mourning a live person.
He couldn't intefer (because the brothers would go down to Egypt and kill
him).
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The table below presents presents
two contradictory verses.
Both verses speak about
travelling to Timnah.
The underlined words highlight the contradiction.
One verse says
...Judah went up to Timnah
while the other verse states
....Shimshon went down to Timnah
Which is it?
Was Timnah at the top or bottom of a mountainous region?
Rashi simply resolves this using the 2 Aspects method:
Timnah was in the middle of a mountain range. Hence you went up
to it from the bottom while you went down from the top.
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Summary
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Verse / Source
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Text of verse / Source
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You go up to Timnah
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Gn38-13
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And in process of time the daughter of Shuah, Judah’s wife died; and Judah was comforted, and went up to his sheep shearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.
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You go down to Timnah.
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Ju14-01
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And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines.
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Resolution:
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2 Aspects
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Timnah was in the middle of a mountain range. Hence you went up
to it from the bottom while you went down from the top.
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We have explained in our article
Biblical Formatting located on the world wide web at
http://www.Rashiyomi.com/biblicalformatting.pdf,
that the Biblical Author indicates bold, italics, underline by using
repetition. In other words if a modern author wanted to emphasize
a word they would either underline, bold or italicize it. However when the Biblical
author wishes to emphasize a word He repeats it. The effect - whether
thru repetition or using underline - is the same. It is only the
means of conveying this emphasis that is different.
Verse Gn37-07c
discussing
Joseph's dream of the standing sheafs
states
for, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo,
my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves came round about, and bowed down to my sheaf.'
Note the repetition indicated by the underlined words.
This repetition creates an unspecified emphasis. Rashi
comments
The phrase arose and also stood upright connotes a permanant standing
in which the sheaf remains standing. (An ordinary object, stood up, would
fall if its center of gravity was high enough...so the dream showed a standing
that remained without subsequent falling).
Advanced Rashi: Undoubtedly, the permanant standing connotes
the non-transient reign of Joseph.
We ask the following database query:
If one person excels in a group how much space does the Bible devote to discussions of the group vs. the individual?
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:
The answer to the question,"
When one person excels in a group how does the Bible record the history of group/person?" is
- The Bible token mentions everyone in the group--typically for a verse or 2
- The Bible devotes a lot of text to the person who excels
The list below presents the results of the database query.
Rashi brings the first 3 examples in the list below. We have supplemented this list with two further examples. In each example in this list the excelling person has a great deal of Biblical text devoted to him while the surrounding group has minimal text devoted (2-3 verses per person).
| Verses
| Group
| Who excels
| Many verses to whom
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| Gn05, Gn06
| 10 Generations-Adam-Noach
| Noach
| Noach
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| Gn11, Gn12
| 10 Generations from Noach to Abraham
| Abraham
| Abraham
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| Gn36, Gn37
| History of Isaac's children: Esauv, Jacob
| Joseph, Jacob's son
| Joseph
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| Nu07, Nu08
| Gifts of tribes at Consecration of Temple
| Aaron's gift
| Aaron
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| 1C01, 1C12, 1C13, 1C17
| Human history - Adam-David
| King David
| King David
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With regard to the last example, Chronicles is giving a political
history and hence someone like David is more important (politically)
than say Abraham and Moses (Who were more important prophetically).
Verses Gn38-27:30
discussing the birth of Tamar's twins
states
And it came to pass in the time of her labor, that, behold, twins were in her womb.
And it came to pass, when she labored, that one put out his hand; and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first.
And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out; and she said, What a breach you have made for yourself. Therefore his name was called Perez.
And afterward came out his brother, who had the scarlet thread upon his hand; and his name was called Zarah.
Rashi provides clarification by so-to-speak diagramming what happened. Rashi
accomplishes this by adding the bracketed words.
- Twins were in her womb
- Twin A put his hand out and the midwife tied a band saying twin A is first
- But twin A then withdrew his hand [back into the womb]
- Then Twin B came out [first]
- Then Twin A (with the band) came out [second]
Diagram Rashi's are not always considered profound - rather they simply illustrate
sequences of events.
Verses
Gn37-13:18
describing Jacob's request to Joseph to check up on his brothers who were sheparding the fields
states
- And Israel said to Joseph, Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Shechem? Come, and I will send you to them. And he said to him, Here am I.
And he said to him, Go, I beg you, see whether it is well with your brothers, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out from the valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.
- And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field; and the
man asked him, saying, What do you seek?
And he said, I seek my brothers; tell me, I beg you, where they feed their flocks.
And the man said, They have departed from here; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan.
- And Joseph went after his brothers, and found them in Dothan.
And when they saw him from far away, even before he came near to them, they conspired against him to slay him.
In a separate Rashi we have explained that the double underlined word man indicates emphasis - the word for man(Ish) in Hebrew comes from the word for
fire (Aysh) and indicates (originally) a prophetic man who sees visions of fire or is seen in visions of fire. This inference uses the Format rule #7 which interprets repetition as an indication of unspecified emphasis. Rashi is more specific and identifies man with the ArchAngel Gavriel.
This is true but we need not defend the detail.
The important point is that Joseph had a vision of fire, a prophetic dream. The dream is indicated above in the second bullet which is typeset.We now interpret this passage symbolically: The justification
for this symbolic interpretation is the context that it happened in a dream.
- And a certain man found him,[He had a dream vision]
- and, behold, he was wandering in the field; [Joseph was wandering - he
was unclear on his direction.]
- and the man asked him, saying, What do you seek? [In the dream he was
asked to formulate goals and what is sought.]
- And he said, I seek my brothers; [Joseph wanted his family and brotherhood]
- tell me, I beg you, where they shepard [Joseph already had dreams where he offered
his brothers leadership; but this resulted in increased hatred. So Joseph was seeking what his
brothers really wanted - where they shepard and hang out. He wanted to please them]
- And the man said, They have departed from here; [You don't have a family anymore]
- for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan [The Hebrew word Dothan comes
from the root Doth which means religion.
The brothers were setting up a new religion; not a religion based on kindness, giving chances, and prophecy, but rather a religion based on paranoic mistrust, not forgiving and belittlement of dreams.]
Let me recap. As shown by the underlined words the above is the simple symbolic interpretation of the dream. This symbolic interpretation is based on the repeated
word man connoting emphasis and indicating a vision of fire.
Advanced Rashi: But wait a minute. Rashi literally states:There is symbolic
meaning to Dothan but a text never leaves the simple meaning (Dothan is a place!!!).
Doesn't this contradict what we said above as the simple meaning of the text?
No!> For that is exactly how dreams are interpreted. They took something in the real world
which triggers symbolic associations. True Joseph was going to Dothan; but the name of the place
appeared in the dream and triggered symbolic associations with a new way of life. A good dream
interpretation focuses both on the real world and sybmolic together as Rashi just illustrated.
This week's parshah contains no examples of
the style Rashi methods.
Visit the RashiYomi website at
http://www.Rashiyomi.com
for further details and examples.
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