Tanach Thoughts

 "Pride Rock! So majestic, so mysterious, so...bizarrely named. Pumbaa, how can a rock be proud?" "Well, actually, I think it's a metaphor--" These words come to mind with the twin names Reuel and Deuel. Reuel is actually a name that belongs to multiple people in Tanach: There's of course Yitro, AKA Reuel, and then there's Esav's son Reuel, and Reuel ben Yevanyah of the Tribe of Binyamin, and of course, Reuel, father of Elyasaf, the Nasi of Gad in the desert. That's quite a quartet: Two Israelites, a Midianite and an Edomite. All descendants of Avraham, of course. Then there's Deuel, father of Elyasaf, the Nasi of Gad in the desert. Wait, what? Yup. Elyasaf's father is at time called Reuel and at time Deuel. What's going on? Well, people with double names aren't that rare in Tanach. In fact, I think that a great many mysteries in Tanach could be solved with properly identifying certain people with other people. But that's of c...

 ...is not something you'll find in this post. In recent months I've discovered a few commentators that I wasn't aware of or was aware of but not really familiar with, and I thought I'd write a little bit about my impressions of them here. This certainly does not do justice to their character or commentaries. Philo of Alexandria  - Everyone's probably heard of Philo. Though not everyone really knows who he was. Many of Philo's views on Judaism are still shrouded in mystery, but here's a short summary of what we know: He was a religious, observant, Jewish philosopher living in Alexandria in Egypt in the decades prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. His birth-name probably was Philon (Philo in Latin languages) which means "friend". Rabbi Azaryah de Rossi translated his name into the Hebrew "Yedidyah", but there were even tannaim at the time who had non-Jewish names, such as Antignos of Socho, so more likely that Philon really was h...

 Just a couple of additions to what I wrote here  on the connection between Egypt and Yehudah: Zerach, son of Yehudah - Similarly named: Zerach the Cushite, who Rabbi Ahron Marcus says was the son-in-law of Pharaoh Shishak. In my opinion, Zerach and Shishak led armies of a unified Egypt - Egyptians, Libyans and Cushites. Achan son of Carmi, a descendant of Zerach, in Aramaic means "snake", so we've got another "snake name" to add to Nachash, Nachshon and Saraf.

I thought I would do something a bit different this time, and perhaps I'll do this again from time to time, which is give my thoughts on a Tanach-related book I've read. Earlier this week, I finished chipping my way through Shaul and Binyamin by Ben Tzion Luria. I thought it was an interesting book, however, it's got one major downside that I'll address shortly. First of all, the upsides: Luria had a fascinating way of breaking down Tanach verses and reading between the lines. He has many fantastic chiddushim in the book and I think it's well-worth reading, even if one - such as myself - doesn't agree 100% with all of his ideas. One of the things I liked best is right in the first chapter: He explains why logically researchers should accept Chazalic traditions about Tanachic events and uses for evidence the Talmudic traditions of the genealogies of certain famous figures from the time. This was an issue that had bothered me since I read Malchut Beit David by Yaa...

Note: The following is a translation of a dvar Torah I wrote earlier for my yeshiva's weekly newsletter. In our upcoming parsha, Shemot, we start reading about the harsh slavery of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt. These events are quite puzzling, considering the verse in the beginning of the parsha: "But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them." This puzzlement grows even more when we discover what it meant, exactly, that Bnei Yisrael were "prolific" and "increased very greatly", as described in Seder Hadorot: "And the sons of Esav prepared to do battle with the sons of Yaakov...and of the sons of Esav 80 men were killed and of the sons of Yaakov not one...and Yosef and his brothers the heroes of Egypt set out to confront them..and they killed from them about 600 men all of the heroes of Se'ir the Khorite...and Yosef fought with all of the neighboring enemies and he caus...