Tanach Thoughts

 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 ...

Well, it has definitely been too long. I started the draft of this post a month ago but haven't gotten around to finishing it and posting it. My bad. My head hasn't been in the game. If you were checking back every now and then, waiting - I apologize. So, the moment you have all been waiting for: Why is Devorah a Levite? This is part two of the two-part series presenting my theory on the true tribal identity of the judges Barak and Devorah. Part one may be viewed here . I'll note that I've added another point on Barak about the etymology of his name. That was one of the points I'd thought of over a year ago, but forgot to put it in the post. It's there now. Though many of the proofs used for Barak cover also Devorah, she also has some unique points in her own right: Point A:  The midrash ( Yalkut Shimoni on Nach 42:7 ;  Tanna Devei Eliyahu Rabbah 9:1 ) says that Barak was also known as Lapidot, and that his real name was Michael. He was the husband of Devorah an...

 A quick thought I had last night, before getting on to part 2 of the Barak/Devorah posts: I've been troubled in recent months as I realized that I was moving away from my old comfort zone of favoring both P'shat and Drash in understanding Tanach, and moving towards almost an entirely P'shat mentality, grounded in archeological findings and word etymologies, among other things. I was bothered by this because it felt like I was beginning to see the aRDeS part of PaRDeS (P'shat, Remez, Drash and Sod) as meaningless, which I know it's not. But in a sense, it felt like I no longer saw any point in these aspects. Well, I'm still making my through this forest, but I wanted to share a thought I had last night: I was listening to a class on the story of Palti ben Laish and Michal. The question is an oldy: How could Palti marry a married woman (it doesn't say that David divorced Michal) and how could David take back Michal, after all, a man cannot take back his wife ...

 This'll be a two-part series on a theory I had about two and a half years ago. While gathering info on the minor judges (the ones we know little about from p'shat Tanach), it occurred to me that we also know little about Barak's background as well, even though he's one of the better-known judges. After that, it occurred to me that we know little about Devorah as well. As you may have realized from the title, I eventually came up with the hypothesis that both of them may have been Levites. In this post I'll I'll talk about Barak, and Devorah will be the subject of the second part. I will also do my best to explain why this is totally different from when Ben Tzion Luria claimed Shmuel was from the tribe of Binyamin . Barak: Master Warrior of the Galilean Levites Point A: The midrash ( Yalkut Shimoni on Nach 42:7 ; Tanna Devei Eliyahu Rabbah 9:1 ) says that Barak was also known as Lapidot, and that his real name was Michael. He was the husband of Devorah and an A...

 I always planned to make this post but never got around to it. What's the deal with the blog's banner? (image taken from my files. Copyright me) Well, first of all, what are we seeing here, and what does that have to do with Tanach? Okay, so this image as related to Tanach is a bit of a cheat because it's based on a midrash. The midrash, which exists in a few versions ( here 's one from Otzar Hamidrashim), describes Yoav ben Tz'ruyah, King David's general, going off with an army to battle the Amalekites in their state (or city-state?) of Kinsli. After six months of siege, the men get tired and want to leave. Yoav decides to launch himself over the city walls and figure out a way to unlock the gates and let his men in. He does this, and eventually manages to get his men in and they defeat the Amalekites. Fast-forward a few thousand years later, and it's Inktober of Elul-Tishrei 5779-5780 and I decided I would try the challenge (after not having done it sinc...

 No, not that kind of Ham. In Parashat Derachim, pg. 338-339, Dr. Yitzchak Meitlis brings a view that the word "chavoteihem" (חותיהם), a group of settlements captured by Yair ben Menashe ( Bamidbar 32:41 ), is a combination of the words "Chavot" and "Ham"; Ham being a place mentioned in the conquest of the Four Kings ( Beresheet 14:5 ), or in other words, "chavoteihem" means "the villages of Ham". I thought that was a fascinating idea, particularly because that area was in Amorite territory. Why is that important? Because in Canaan there was an Amorite king named Hoham (הוהם) ( Yehoshua 10:3-5 ). As far as I know, not much is known about the Amorite language, but I'm guessing there's a connection between Hoham and Ham. Perhaps his name means something along the lines of "man of Ham" or "son of Ham", or something like that. Meanwhile, Obelix has discovered he enjoys gefilte fish. (images taken from Asterix an...

In Daniel 8, Daniel sees Persia falling at the hands of the Greek Empire. Persia is symbolized by a ram (the two horns representing Persia and Medea) and Greece by a "tzfir-izzim", which apparently means a "he-goat" (se'ir). Turns out, certainly the last part about the tzfir, is a fascinating bit of symbolism. In Efraim Tzoref's book "Yosef, Viceroy to the King of Egypt", Vol. 1, pg. 177, while discussing symbolism in dreams, he writes (translation from Hebrew): "Plutarch (Hadrian's teacher from the 2nd century CE) recounted: When Alexander the Great (from the 4th century BCE) laid siege upon the walls of Tyre and was not able to conquer them for a long time, he lost hope and decided to withdraw. That night he saw in his dream a satyr dancing before him victoriously. In the morning, Aristander, his dream-interpreter, interpreted the dream for him, that he would indeed manage to defeat Tyre, as the word satyr is comprised of Sa - yours and ...