Tanach Thoughts

 A few days ago, we reached in the Daf Yomi two mishnas that deal with customs of heretics and sectarians in terms of prayer. One of these mishnas says the following: "One who constructs his phylacteries in a round shape exposes himself to danger and he does not fulfill the commandment to don phylacteries If one placed the phylacteries worn on the head on his forehead, or if he placed the phylacteries worn on the arm on his palm, and not on his bicep, this is the way of the heretics. If one plated his phylacteries with gold or placed the phylacteries worn on the arm on the outside of his sleeve [ unkeli ], this is the way of the outsiders, i.e., those who do not take part in the traditions of the Jewish people." (translation based on Sefaria's for Megillah 4:8 ) This is a very curious mishna for those, such as myself, who take interest in understanding the customs and views of ancient Jewish sects and what our sages thought of them. One of the issues with ...

 I was originally planning for the post title to be "Zecher Leyetziat Mitzrayim or Zecher Leyetziat Mitzrayim?" but you can't emphasize words in post titles, so I nixed that. This post is a callback to one of my very first posts, almost a year ago, here . I was troubled then by the implications of claims made by various people that basically the whole Torah was based on the culture and religion of other ancient nations, Egypt in particular. Well, actually, I wasn't really troubled by the implications. B"H my faith is strong. I was more troubled about the fact that more and more people were coming to accept this notion as though it was the simple, clear truth. The main problem I see is that not only it makes out Hashem to be a copyist and unoriginal, but it also seems to remove from the Torah its eternal aspect: How could it be eternal if everything in it came to reflect some such civilization that the Israelites had happened to come into contact with and decided ...