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Their presence in Rashis on Parshat VaYeChi Volume 13, Number 21 Rashi is Simple - Volume 36 Number 21 Used in the weekly Rashi-is-Simple and the Daily Rashi. Visit the RashiYomi website: http://www.Rashiyomi.com/ (c) RashiYomi Incorporated, Dr. Hendel, President, Dec 31th 2009 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 Gn49-27c discussing Benjamin's blessing states Benjamin raveneth a wolf; in the morning he devoureth the prey, and at evening he divideth the spoil.' Rashi notes that the underlined words, at evening he divideth the spoil references the book of Ester discussing Mordechai's conquest of the Jewish enemies. Hence the Rashi comment The biblical statement Gn49-27c that Benjamin will divide spoil at evening refers to conquests of Mordechai, the Benjamenite (Es02-05,) while under Pesian rule (Es01-01,) who attained the honor sought by Haman (Es06-06:11)
Advanced Rashi: Rashi of course is not exhausting the verses meaning in the Mordechai-Haman incident but rather Rashi sees the Mordechai-Haman incident as one good example of the verse that Benjamin divides booty even at evening. Here evening refers to subservience and lack of power.
Students of Rashi must bear in mind that Rashi could sometimes use universal principles applicable in all languages. This particularly applies to the meaning methods.
Hence Rashi translates Cheth-Nun-Teth flower sprouting as also meaning enbalming, an activity leading to pleasing odors since flower-sprouting and enbalming are both good examples (Synechdoche) of activities creating pleasant odors/aromas. As shown by the underlined words, Rashi uses this translation in the following verse Gn50-02a And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm [with sprouts of flowers used by embalmists] his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel [with sprouts of flowers used by embalmists] Advanced Rashi: Several other meaning rules are possible here. For example the triple FFF rule states that meaning is determined by Form, Function, and Feel. In fact the function/purpose of both flowers sprouting and of embalming are the emission of pleasant aromas. Such use of multiple rules reinforces the understanding of the meaning.
Most people know that the Biblical meaning of a word is determined by its underlying three-letter root. The Biblical root can be conjugated in different a) persons, b) tenses, c) pluralities, d) genders, e) constructions and f) modalities. For example I watched has a different conjugation then I will be watched even though both phrases will use the same 3 letter Hebrew root. Additionally, a three letter root can take on new meaning based on the connective preposition used with it. For example the Hebrew root Tzade-Vav-Hey can mean to command someone, or, to delegate someone to speak to others. How does one tell which meaning applies in a given verse? Rashi explains when this root is used with the Hebrew connective, Aleph-Lamed, El which means to the verb-connective pair of words means to delegate someone else to speak to the target person Hence the Rashi-suggested translation of verse Ex50-16a which states And delegated [someone] to Joseph, saying, Your father did command before he died, saying, Advanced Rashi: Actually Rashi simply cites other verses where Tzivah el means delegate. The idea of explicitly associating every verb-preposition pair with a distinct meaning is made explicit by the Malbim in his Morning hind.
The table below presents an aligned extract of verses or verselets in Gn27-29a Gn49-08c. Both verses/verselets discuss blessings of rulership over siblings. The alignment justifies the Rashi comment that: Jacob had many wives. So he blessed Judah that his father's children would bow to him since father's children includes more than mother's children. By contrast Isaac had one wife. So he could use the term mother's children since it was as inclusive as father's children.
The table below presents two contradictory verses/verselets. Both verses speak about the conquest of Schem The underlined words highlight the contradiction. One verse/verselet says Shimon and Levi came on the city by sword, killed the people and saved Dinah while the other verse/verselet says Jacob acquired Schem with his sword and bow. We see the contradiction Which is it? Did Jacob acquire the city or did Shimon and Levi acquire the city. Rashi simply resolves this using the 2 Aspects, 2 Stages method: 1st, the entire family, Jacob and his children, conspired to weaken the city by requiring circumcision (Gn34-05:18). 2nd, the city being weakened, Shimon and Levi came and saved Dinah from the city which couldn't fight back because they were helpless 3rd, Additionally, (not part of the original plan to weaken the city and save Dinah) Shimon and Levi without family consent decided to take revenge and kill the city where there sister was raped.(Gn34-25:26) 4th, although Jacob cursed Shimon and Levi for destroying the city (Gn34-30,Gn49-06), he did approve of weakening the city and presumably the city would have died out (at the hands of God) without Shimon and Levi taking the law into their own hands.
Advanced Rashi: Notice that both methods of resolving contradictions - two stages as well as two aspects - are used here. (1)Jacob's delegating authority to his (2) children who implemented the actions represents two aspects of the decision to make the Schemites circumcise. On the other hand (1)Jacob's approval of weakening the city by circumcision in order to be able to save Dinah, and (2) Shimon and Levi's taking revenge on the whole city are two stages, - the first stage was approved (weakening and saving) while the second stage (revenge) was not approved. It is interesting that the contradictions we have been citing are brought in a gloss addition to Rashi by the Raam. The Raam's comments form the basis for classifying this Rashi as contradiction. Rashi literally says With my sword and bow: With my wisdom and prayer. This has erroneously led people to think that Rashi is interpreting sword, bow as wisdom, prayer. By contrast I have interpreted Rashi as meaning: With my wisdom and prayer I waited for the whole family and organized the family so that we required circumcision for Dinah's marriage; the original plan was to weaken the city so that we could save Dinah and leave. Undoubtedly God would have killed off the city because of their weakened state. I however never authorized the slaying of innocent helpless people in an act of vengenance. So it follows that Jacob's sword refers to the ruse of weakening the city. We can even pun and note that sword is a male symbol and therefore my sword could refer to the requirement of circumcision by which the city was weakened. In summary: The main point is that Jacob did participate in initial discussions and had plans to weaken the city and save Dinah. Shimon and Levi went further and killed off the city. Jacob disapproved of this but did not disapprove of the initial plan. Since Jacob approved of the initial plan he can take credit for acquiring Schem.
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. The style rule requires that we interpret the general theme with special focus on the attributes of the illustrative detail selected. Today's example illustrates this as shown below.
Rashi comments: The two sentences form one paragraph. That is the statement in the theme sentence and his sons did to him according as he commanded them refers to the details mentioned in the second sentence his sons carried himm to Canaan and buried him. The Davka English translation facilitates this Rashi interpretation by inserting the underlined, subordinating conjunction, for which explicitly connects the two sentences. The use of such punchy textual interpolations hi-lighting Rashi translations was first advocated in my article Peshat and Derash.
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 indicated bullets by using repeating keywords. That is, if a modern author wanted to get a point across using bullets - a list of similar but contrastive items - then the Biblical Author would use repeating keywords. Today's verse illustrates this principle. Bullets whether indicated through modern notation or through the Biblical method of repeating keywords always indicate contrastive emphasis - that is, each bullet is presumed to be a distinct item contrasted to the other items on the list. Very often the bullets are also used to indicate that the entire list is exhaustive of some spectrum.
Advanced Rashi: I should give some explanatory comments to castrating an ox. Recall that Joseph had a dream of upright sheaves. Also recall that upright objects are male symbols. Joseph was a 17-year old teenager with many immaturities (Gn37-02). A natural way to interpret his dream was a quest for adult masculinity and power. Joseph however interpreted the dream in terms of a desire to help his family. In Dotan in the wilderness the older brothers, Shimon and Levi decided to teach Joseph a lesson. Rashi, rather startingly, explains Gn37-23 to mean that Shimon and Levi stripped Joseph totally naked. This is consistent with scaring Joseph into admitting the simple physical meaning of his dream and to cure him of his ambitions. Such scare tactics very often involve threats and bluffs and Jacob referred to this episode as an attempt to castrate him. Notice that this explanation (that Shimon and Levi insisted that his dream was not spiritual but physical) is an excellent explanation of why Joseph never wrote to his father during his stay in Egypt and why Isaac who knew of the kidnapping never told Jacob about it - there was no point - Joseph had a real legitimate fear that if he was discovered Shimon and Levi would repeat their actions.
We ask the following database query: How is death, as indicated by the Hebrew, Gavah, Gimel-Vav-Ayin referred to. 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: Every place the Bible uses the Hebrew GVA, Gimel-Vav-Ayin it also uses the word death except by Jacob where it uses GVA, Gimel-Vav-Ayin but not death. We conclude that Jacob never died. The list below presents the results of the database query.
Advanced Rashi: The above 6 verses are the only Biblical verses where the root GVA, Gimel-Vav-Ayin occur. This Biblical root roughly means expired. In all but one of the verses the phrase GVA, MT roughly he expired and died occurs except by the patriarch Jacob where it states GVA without MT. So the obvious linguistic conclusion is that Jacob did not die. However, already the Talmud, Taanith 5b, asks If he didn't die then why did they embalm him and why did they mourn him. We can even ask further If GVA does not mean death what does it mean? Furthermore if Jacob didn't die where is he? Why have we not heard from him. The Talmud doesn't really answer completely these questions. It says They mourned and embalmed him because they thought he was dead. But if he wasn't dead why did they think him dead? We can also point out that although the Bible doesn't say that Jacob died, he himself says I am about to die and uses the Hebrew MEM TAUV (Gn48-21). I have elaborated on this to show that Rashi does not always answer questions. Rashi's job was to preserve the Masoretic text. If there was a linguistic anomaly he cited an appropriate Midrash to preserve the text. Frequently the linguistic anomaly nicely corresponds to a punchy philosophic point. But sometimes, as in this case, we can only ask the question: It appears from the linguistic anomaly that Jacob did not die. This is a question with many unanswered ramifications. Rashi does not supply an answer to them. Nor do other books supply answers. So the proper attitude is that Rashi used linguistic tools to uncover intended nuances of the Biblical Authors. Rashi uncovered these nuances even if they didn't fully make sense. His job was complete when he pointed us to a source and showed what it implied. Those sources he didn't explain should be the subject of study of future generations.
Verse Gn48-17a discussing Joseph's removal of his father's hand from his son's head states And when Joseph saw that his father was laying his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him, and he supported his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head.
Since this Rashi carries a geometric or diagramatic clarification we have classified it as non-verse.
Verse Gn49-27a states Benjamin, is a wolf about to prey, .... Before citing Rashi we note that wolves are animals that are symbolic of a strong socially structured group that protects its young. In other words, while other animals are better at preying, wolves are noted for their strong protection of their young and for their very strong social hierarchy. Hence the Rashi: King Saul was a Benjamenite. He was a prototype wolf. He was the head of the hierarchy, the King. He also protected his children the children of Israel by winning many wars for them (1S14-47.)
Conclusion
This week's special issue contains examples of all Rashi methods. Visit the RashiYomi website at http://www.Rashiyomi.com for further details and examples. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||