Tanach Thoughts

This past Shabbat is called "Shabbat Chevron" because in this week's parsha portion, Avraham buys the Machpela Cave and buries Sarah (and at the end, he himself is buried there as well). Tens of thousands of Jews come to Chevron and Kiryat Arba on this Shabbat. My yeshiva goes there every year as well (except for last year, because of Corona, of course). I didn't go with them; decided to rest with at home. I wanted to share a thought I had shortly before Shabbat. Rashi on Beresheet 37:14 writes : "FROM THE VALE OF HEBRON — But was not Hebron situated on a hill, as it is said ( Numbers 13:22 ) “And they went up into the South and they came unto Hebron” why then does it state that Jacob sent him from the עמק, (the vale, the deep part) of Hebron? But the meaning is that Jacob sent him in consequence of the necessity of bringing into operation the profound (עמוקה) thought of the righteous man who was buried in Hebron ( Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 22 ) — in order that th...

One quick idea I heard yesterday. I started university earlier this week. Things are really hectic right now as I'm trying to find my bearings. but I wanted to share a fascinating thought I heard from one of my lecturers yesterday. His name is Prof. Eyal Regev , and although he seems to hold some Biblical Criticism views which I do not like, his class was very interesting. We began by studying the early Second Temple period, and he noted something about Chaggai 2:1-9 . In those verses, Chaggai, speaking for Hashem, tells the people in Yerushalayim not to be upset that the new Temple isn't as nice as the old one (for those that could remember it). He promised them in the name of Hashem that eventually, the Temple will be the glory of the whole world. Regev pointed out this promise was never fulfilled in the Second Temple era. It's true that during Herod's time, the Temple received a serious facelift, but still two things were missing from Hashem's promise: a. The She...

 Sometimes I wonder why we read through David's sins in smooth fashion, accepting and moving on, while when certain rabbis - or even non-rabbis - nowadays sin in similar ways, their lives are basically over. Is it because the media causes great hype? Is it because of (somewhat radical) movements such as MeToo? Many believe there was hype over the David and Bat Sheva story way back when it happened, too. But it seemed that people managed to move past that. And there were other sins as well - but ultimately, David came out alright, for the most part. By the way, I'm reminded of a story I heard from one of the rabbis in my yeshiva: One of his sons once went out on a date with a girl from a certain " kavnik " midrasha  and somehow they got to talking about this particular story. The girl announced that of course there was no way that David sinned. That's a very popular view that appears in the gemara, but it's actually the minority view in the gemara. The guy poin...

Sometimes I'll start a post, and for several days/weeks/months will not be able to finish it. By the time I do get around to it, new info will have come to my attention and a re-write will be needed (sometimes that's the cause of the laziness of not finishing the post). That's the case with this post. Original beginning: Spoiler warning: There will not be a satisfying chiddush at the end of this post. Just some head-scratchers, at best. New beginning:  Please partially disregard the previous beginning. Yeshurun! So majestic, so inspiring, so...actually, this one isn't so bizarrely-named . Yeshurun is one of the names of the People of Yisrael. Surprisingly, this is one of the few points that just about every commentator, both Jewish and otherwise, agree on. Take that, whoever invented "two Jews, three opinions"! *ahem* Anyway, "Yeshurun" appears a total of four times in Tanach: "So Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—You grew fat and gross and coarse. ...

 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 ...