Truth and Peace

Moses assures his people they will be freed from slavery, extracted from Egypt with God's outstretched arm, and brought to the land of their ancestral inheritance. The people balk: וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה "...but they did not listen to Moses, out of shortness of spirit and hard labor." (Ex 6:9) Rashi understands the phrase "they didn't listen to Moses" to mean: לא קבלו תנחומין "They did not accept [his] words of consolation." But is what Moses says really "consolation?" He essentially tells the people that everything is going to be okay. Which pretty much flies in the face of all conventional wisdom about how to offer consolation. When you go to a shiva house, you don't pronounce that everything is going to be okay. Because it's not "okay." Far better to simply be there with the mourner, listen to them. Something more along the lines of what God tells Moses just a few ver...

In his zeal to counter the perceived threat from the Hebrews, Pharaoh issues a decree to kill the newborn boys: "And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying: Every newborn boy you must throw into the Nile, and every girl keep alive." (Ex 1:22) He commands "all" his people, and doesn't specify "Hebrew" boys. The Talmud ( T.B. Sotah 12a ) picks up on this and suggests that Pharaoh's astrologers told him that the savior of the Hebrews was just born, but they didn't know if he was an Egyptian or a Hebrew. So Pharaoh imposed his decree to drown every boy on Egyptians and Hebrews alike. In this interpretation, Pharaoh is so determined to stop the Hebrews that he's willing to kill his own people if that's what it takes. The plain meaning however is that "Hebrew boys" is implied by the context. The phrase "all his people" then means that all Egyptians were commanded to carry out the decree against the Hebrews. Whi...

Jacob finishes blessing (and admonishing) his children, and dies. Or does he? Yes, of course he does . Here's the verse: Egyptian wooden sarcophagus, circa 14th century BCE "And Jacob concluded commanding his sons, and he gathered his legs into the bed, and expired and was gathered to his people." (Gen 49:33) Rashi cites the Talmud here, where Rabbi Yitzchak is invited to speak some words of Torah at Rabbi Nachman's table and says the following in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: "Jacob our patriarch did not die." (B.T. Ta'anit 5b) The scriptural basis for the idea, says Rashi, is that Jacob is the only person whose death is described in the Torah merely as "he expired" - as opposed to "he expired and died," as it says for Abraham (25:8), Ishmael (25:17), Isaac (35:29), and Aaron (Num 20:26). Rashi doesn't quote the rest of the conversation from the Talmud. When Rabbi Yitzchak suggests that Jacob didn't die, Rabbi Nac...

Joseph dispatches his brothers to Canaan to bring the entire family to Egypt, and offers some parting advice. "And he sent his brothers, and they went, and he said to them: Don't become agitated along the way." (Gen 45:24) "Become agitated" is a translation for " tirgezu " (from rogez ), which in Biblical Hebrew implies emotional volatility, even shaking, in anger or distress. Rashi offers three explanations of the agitation Joseph warns against: 1. "Do not engage in a halakhic discussion, so the road does not agitate against you" (i.e. so that it is not unsafe for you, or alternatively, so you don't lose the way). 2. "Do not take large steps" (i.e. travel inordinately fast), "and enter the city in the sunlight " (i.e. travel during daylight hours). 3. "[Joseph] was worried that they might quarrel along the way about the matter of selling him [into slavery in Egypt], to argue with one another....