Why is the Torah so simplistic about the avos/emahos?

Mommyg8

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 1:00 pm

etky wrote:

I think it's important to distinguish between midrash halacha - halachot that chazal learned by applying coherent, systematic methods through which Torah is interpreted, and midrash aggada, which are expansions on the narrative portions of the Torah that do not produce halachot or authoritative conclusions. Moreover, more often than not, in midrash itself there are conflicting accounts of events that can't possibly be reconciled.

Yes, but sometimes Rashi does come to explain the plain pshat, even in the narratives (not halacha). Like the story of Reuven and Bilhah - it does seem as if the pshat is that he moved Yaakovs bed. It's almost impossible to understand it any other way.

zaq

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 1:27 pm

I doubt that Ruchie Freier ever studied Gemara, but I have NO doubt that if she did, she would excel.

Many things that are technically permissible to women are denied to women because of “k’vod hatzibbur”—the honor of the group as a whole. As the reasoning goes, if we had a woman doing certain ritual functions, the assumption would be that we have no men capable of performing those functions.

Of course that reasoning reflects a mindset contemptuous of women. The unspoken message is “why would you want a (clearly inferior) woman unless all your men were incompetent?”

Why not be proud of accomplished women? Why not admire a tzibbur that is so educated that even the women know how to learn Gemara, or lein, , or make kiddish, or whatever?

etky

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 1:30 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

Rashi usually brings pshat - this was, after all, his self-professed intention, but he often brings midrash too when he deems it necessary for the interpretation of the passuk.
I don't agree that moving the beds is the literal pshat of the pasuk but I do understand why chazal would find it difficult - from a logical perspective -to assume that Reuven literally had relations with Bilhah, especially given the fact that Reuven wasn't cast out of the family(ויהיו בני ישראל שנים עשר) or deprived of a nachalah, as were Shimon and Levi, for a seemingly lesser wrongdoing. Logically, it would seem that Reuven's sin was not as grave as what the literal meaning of וישכב את בלהה implies.

Ravenclaw

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 2:06 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

I asked my husband about this shabbos, and this was his exact answer.

Mommyg8

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 2:20 pm

etky wrote:

Just asked dh. He said it's a Gemarah (which is not at all the same as a medrash). Mesechtas Shabbos, נה, עמוד ב.

So it's pshat. You can't argue with pshat.

etky

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 3:05 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

Just asked dh. He said it's a Gemarah (which is not at all the same as a medrash). Mesechtas Shabbos, נה, עמוד ב.

So it's pshat. You can't argue with pshat.

I think the distinction that I made in my previous post is relevent here too.
This is not a halachic matter where we can establish - employing the interpretive tools of the midrashic method - that the meaning of the Torah is unequivocally X and thus regarded as the equivalent of pshat (even against the literal meaning of the pasuk,as is sometimes the case).*
This is a non-halachic area and therefore you have competing interpretations and no one, exclusive, authoritative reading. In this sugiya too there are dissenting opinions that favor the literal interpretaton of the pasuk (that Reuven had relations with Bilhah) as well as later, medieval commentators who took this approach.

*ETA - to clarify, a good example of this would be עין תחת עין. It is accepted among chazal that the pshat for this is monetary compensation although this is not the literal meaning of the phrase, which merely states ' an eye for an eye'. Chazal arrived at this halachic conclusion using several of the accepted tools -מידות through which Torah is interpreted.

Last edited by etky on Mon, Nov 26 2018, 4:11 am; edited 1 time in total

Mommyg8

Sun, Nov 25 2018, 3:13 pm

etky wrote:

I'm not sure what you are saying.

Isn't the gemarah Torah shebaal peh? Not medrash? Which came down on har Sinai together with Torah shebal peh?

I'm going to ask the talmudists in my house.

imasoftov

Mon, Nov 26 2018, 2:59 am

Mommyg8 wrote:

Just asked dh. He said it's a Gemarah (which is not at all the same as a medrash). Mesechtas Shabbos, נה, עמוד ב.

So it's pshat. You can't argue with pshat.

If the Gemara had said "it is forbidden to say that Reuven slept with Bilha" (and that statement made it into Shulchan Aruch) it would be not at all the same as a Midrash. But "whoever says ... is mistaken" is aggadic language. Gemara includes both halachic and aggadic materal, and this is the latter.

Midrash is divided into two varieties, halachic and aggadic although generally what people mean by Midrash is aggadic. Collections of midrash are as well, for example the Mechilta is a halachic midrash while Shmot Rabba is aggadic, although there are exceptions, one will find some halachic midrash in an aggadic collection and the other way around.

The Gemara too contains both sorts of midrash as well as material that is not either sort of midrash.

Pshat is not absolute. Rashbam writes on Bereshit 37:2 that Rashi said to him that new pshat interpretations can come to be - והודה לי שאילו היה לו פנאי היה צריך לעשות פירושים אחרים לפי הפשטות המתחדשים בכל יום

amother

Mustard

Sat, Dec 01 2018, 7:47 pm

Learning wrote:

The Tora is not meant to be understood mainly as it is. The stories are all symbols of higher things and the Tora shepealpeh is the explanation. Also the avos are considered malachim compare to us. we have to learn deeply each and every incident and look at all the sources sometimes the explanation is completely different than what is written and understood by the first simple reading.

What do we learn from the story of the brothers trying to kill yosef, their 17 year old brother who had just lost his mother? After that, they dip his coat into blood so they can trick their father. This is followed by the story of yehuda having relations with what he thought was a harlot. When he finds out his unmarried daughter in law is pregnant, he says the man who did this should be put to death. Until he realizes it was him.
Why can't we just read the pesukim and take the story as is and at face value? Why can't the origins of klal yisroel be from regular people who succumbed to many of the vices (affairs, jealousy, deceit) that we experience today?

etky

Sun, Dec 02 2018, 5:15 am

amother wrote:

We CAN do this without midrash and still elicit deeper, inner meaning from a close reading of the pshat and from a literary analysis of the narrative - each story as a stand-alone unit and as part of a larger narrative structure (like the segments of the Joseph story) and even as a vehicle for conveying themes that run through the entire Tanach.
For example - the Yehuda and Tamar narrative receives much greater meaning when viewed as a build up to the beginning of parshat Vayigash, when Yehuda confronts Yosef over his desire to retain Binyamin in Egypt as a slave. The death of Yehuda's two sons and his admission of guilt in the Tamar episode, can be seen as sparking a process of self-reflection and repentance in Yehuda for his role in the sale of Yosef and the sorrow it caused his father Ya'acov. This backstory is indispensible to our understanding of his persona as revealed in his plea to Yosef. Moreover, the Yehuda and Tamar story is key to our understanding of Yehuda's most famous descendent, David Hamelech, and his own capacity for self-reflection and repentence - qualities that merited him and his line eternal kingship.

PinkFridge

Sun, Dec 02 2018, 8:57 am

amother wrote:

I could say, because the shevatim, while human and subject to human weakness (the mefarshim say that Yosef was this close to giving into eishes Potiphar) were still greater.

But I'll ask this.
Why don't we just do mezuzah or shechita according to pshat? Why don't we just not eat baby goats cooked in their mother's milk?
So one's halacha and one's not?
Ok, but I still look to the same mefarshim to help me process pshat.

imasoftov

Mon, Dec 03 2018, 1:39 am

PinkFridge wrote:

But I'll ask this.
Why don't we just do mezuzah or shechita according to pshat? Why don't we just not eat baby goats cooked in their mother's milk?
So one's halacha and one's not?
Ok, but I still look to the same mefarshim to help me process pshat.

It happens more than once that Ramban critcizes Rashi for giving a perush on a halachic part of the Torah that does not match the halacha as we follow it ...

amother

Mustard

Mon, Dec 03 2018, 8:05 am

PinkFridge wrote:

I've always wondered why in the Torah some things are stated very clearly, don't kill, don't steal, don't eat chametz on pesach, and other things are written in ways that are not possible to understand without a ruach hakodesh explanation. Like instead of the Torah telling us we can't benefit from chametz, it repeats don't eat it and we learn out that we can't benefit from chametz. Why couldn't the Torah just say what it meant? It is our guide for life. Why be cryptic and mysterious about it?

amother

Brown

Mon, Dec 03 2018, 8:15 am

If you like intellectual reading, read rabbi Pinchas Friedman'w writing on the parsha

https://shvilei.wordpress.com/

you will see pshat in the Torah in a whole new light. Everything is simplistic but at the same

time the depth is beyond describable.

If you stick to one parsha and read through several years worth of parshas your mind will just expand and expand......

amother

Mustard

Sun, Dec 23 2018, 2:40 pm

Any thoughts on Yackov loving Yosef more than his other children? And seemingly not hiding this as we see that he only gave yosef the coat. Doesn't this fly in the face of parenting 101? Openly showing favoritism and love for one child more than another? How did Yackov not realize this wouldn't end well? And it didn't. The torah goes on to say that indeed the brothers were jealous and tried to kill him. Can we apply this message to our own children? Is it ok to show love for one over another even if it is creating animosity?

PinkFridge

Sun, Dec 23 2018, 2:56 pm

amother wrote:

You have a good question. We should learn from this.
But when we study the brachos in last week's parasha we might wonder, what brachos? What favoritism or seeds of discontent were being sown? But that's with a different understanding of bracha than the brachos the greats gave (avos, Moshe Rabbeinu). The greatest bracha is self-knowledge on how to serve Hashem, not being granted gifts that might not be used properly.

While there's a lot to learn from the avos re parenting - Rav Hirsch says on the words, vayigdelu hane'arim that Yitzchok erred in giving his sons the exact same chinuch because there would come a point where that would backfire - we also can't develop any sort of Parenting 101 course from sefer Bereishis. When Yaakov gave the coat, they were young adults, and while they lived longer they also might have been more mature in their late teens/early 20s and Yaakov might have understandably presumed that they would process it appropriately.

etky

Sun, Dec 23 2018, 3:19 pm

Aside from Binyamin, Yosef was the בן זקונים - the youngest of the brothers. He was the child of Rachel - Ya'acov's beloved wife and he was motherless. I think that in view of all these factors, it was not that unreasonable for Ya'acov to favor him and even to indulge him more than his older siblings. It also would not have been unreasonable for the brothers to understand this special bond between father and son and to tolerate it even if it rankled.
Unfortunately, Yosef himself complicated matters and provoked his brothers' animosity by his immature behavior, culminating in the recounting of his boastful dreams that upset even Ya'acov who rebuked him. Soon after that Ya'acov sends Yosef to join his brothers in Shechem. I heard a shiur last summer that suggested that Ya'acov was sending Yosef on a mission to make amends with his brothers after the dream incident startled him by revealing the depth of their animosity towards him. Unfortunately this mission failed since the brothers had already 'moved on' - נסעו מזה as the איש who Yosef encountered on the way to Shechem told him. They had moved beyond the point of making amends. It was too little too late in the game for any sort of reconciliation.