Tanach Thoughts

In memory of Gavriel ben David Blum z"l, killed in Gaza last week. Yesterday I paid a shiva call to the Blum family whose son Gavriel, whom I knew in high school, was sadly killed last week in Gaza. They recounted a story that I think his friends told them when they visited the night before. It's the sort of story that makes me uncomfortable (and his father did hesitate for a moment before telling it to the crowd, but his mother okayed it). Today I thought about it again and found a kernel of connection to Torah, with an emphasis on the story of the Exodus, now being read in shuls around the world, so I think it's worth getting over the uncomfortable bit. As our sages taught: תורה היא, וללמוד אני צריך! (This is Torah, and I must learn!) One day, a group of higher-ups visited the area in Gaza where Gavriel's unit was staying. The soldiers were tending to various military assignments, and the higher-ups, including several very high-ranking officers and a member of the so...

Yes, the title is a misnomer. The question was originally asked by the Mechilta on the verse . And that question is as follows: ""And he took six hundred choice chariots" ( 14:7 ): Whence came the horses required for the chariots? If you would say, from Egypt, is it not written (Ibid. 9:6) "and all the cattle of Egypt died"? And if you would say, from Pharaoh, is it not written (Ibid. 3) "Behold, the hand of the Lord is in your cattle in the field, in the horses, etc."? And if you say, from Israel, is it not written (Ibid. 10:26) "And our cattle, too, will go with us; not a hoof will remain"? Whence, then, did they come?" Now, the Mechilta goes on to explain that the horses belonged to those Egyptians who feared Hashem and listened to Moshe's warnings during the plagues that killed the domesticated animals. But earlier this evening I thought of two other possibilities: 1. The midrash in Shemot Rabbah 10:2 says (loose translation): ...

 According to Wikipedia , the Egyptian name for Egypt was not Mitzrayim (*gasp*) nor even Egypt (which is Greek *double gasp*) but Kemet , which is apparently Egyptian (or Kemetian?) for "black land" (something about the richness of Nile soil). One could sort of twist that to form the name Cham - חם, who was of course the father of Mitzrayim. With that said, I noticed something interesting today in the Book of Yehoshua: It is well-known that until not long before Am Yisrael came to Eretz Yisrael, the Egyptian maintained here a strong presence. Many Egyptian artifacts have been found in digs all around Israel. However, to my knowledge and understandings, their presence here was hardly ever reflected in place-names. Rabbi Ahron Marcus in his essay "Of The Jewish Chronology" mentions in a footnote Citri's (not sure who he was) view that the name Ma'ayan Mei Nafto'ach - מעין מי נפתוח ( Yehoshua 15:9 and 18:15 ) comes from Merneptah and that his real name wa...

Earlier this week I heard a class  by Rabbi Yoel Elitzur, where he demonstrated why the popular view of the Exodus - for those that believe it happened - happened in the 13th century BCE. Later that day, or the next, I heard a class  by Dr. Aryeh Borenstein where he explained why - when accepting the p'shat or simple understanding of the Tanachic text - the Exodus must be dated to 1442 BCE. Both classes were given during the same Charedi archeological convention - Mitachat Lifnei Hashetach 3 - and both lecturers brought mountains of archeological evidence to strengthen their views. I found it interesting that the Exodus is viewed as a practically timeless event, and it seems that this even extends backwards, to the Exodus itself and even before that, it seems. It appears that the Exodus could, in fact, have happened in many different generations; several different Egyptian dynasties seem to fit. In the infamous words of Ollivander: "Curious! Very curious." Or as they say,...

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...