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September 8, 2005 We will begin with a pasuk in the beginning of parshat Vayeshev. [37:2] The preliminary question is to look for an obvious pshat problem. Assuming that we know the simple meaning of all of the words, we must be on the lookout for problems that will impede our understanding of the passage. The first problem, or the only problem that really gets us stuck is the following ambiguity. “Vayavei Yosef et dibatam ra’ah el avihem” To whom does this dibah belong?  All of the brothers, i.e. “echav” (broad scope)  B’nei Bilhah, etc. (narrow scope) We assume that we always take narrow scope unless there is a good reason not to. When speaking of oral conversation, people often jump around in this way, without always being clear of the subject, and the listener usually can figure it out. In the Torah as well, there are certain rishonim who prefer simplicity, and certain rishonim who do not care.  

It could be that this issue may not even matter It could be that at times the pasuk intends both implications.

Overall, the rishonim prefer to have one side of the issue correct, not to have reconciliation. So what is the answer? Is Yosef complaining about all of his brothers or just about bnei Bilha and Zilpa? I could say that the scope is broad, but it’s referring to a subset of the broader scope. These are the possibilities that we have. The next step is a question that nobody has yet raised, primarily because we gave the correct answer earlier. Usually people eventually get to another question: Why did Yosef do it in the first place? What is behind this story?  It is possible that the Torah didn’t intend for us to find the answers to such questions.  Sometimes Chazal solve these problems for us in the form of the Midrash. It’s not pshat, but it’s important. Let’s look in Bereishit Raba: o Yosef complained that they ate ever min hachai

o They were interested in the local women o They were making fun of the bnei hashfachot Rebbi Simon: They sinned in all 3 issues. And Yosef was punished for all 3 things.  His brothers told Yaakov that Yosef was eaten up alive  Yosef was accused of having an affair with Potiphar’s wife  Yosef was sold as a slave We see immediately that R’ Simon (an amora) is already synthesizing the 3 versions of the story. Here we see a prime example of the general trend as time goes on to synthesize Torah. It could be, theoretically, that the tanna’im did not say their own versions to the exclusion of the others. Now, was Yosef right or wrong? It seems from R’ Simon that Yosef is subject to criticism, if only from the fact that he was punished. This is not so clear from the pshat of the pasuk. From the idea that the versions could be synthesized, it is possible that all versions were directed at the brothers to the exclusion of the bnei hashfachot (because they wouldn’t be mezalzel themselves). It could be that the medrash is giving us a clue as to what is going on in the pasuk, even though it’s not explicit in the pasuk.  Maybe if we are only studying pshat, we can ignore the medrash.  Or maybe the medrash is also crucial to our understanding of pshat. We would like to think that it’s the latter. If we want to find a basis in the pasuk for what the medrash is saying, we can always find something upon which to build.  He worked with the sheep, so that led him to describe the brothers’ behavior with sheep.  He was a “na’ar” thus immature and viewed his older brothers’ actions with women critically.  He hung out with the bnei hashfachos so he became more sensitive to their issues. Now we need to turn to Rashi. We already know that he draws the entire accusation to b’nei Leah. But let’s look a bit more carefully at Rashi. Rashi, supposedly, is writing pshat. He is not quoting Midrashim for the sake of quoting them. Thus, if Rashi is quoting a medrash, he presumably held that they have basis in pshat, which means that Rashi understood the psukim in ways at least similar to those that we used earlier.

So what do we make of this? How much can we be medayek in Rashi? We could say that if Rashi quotes a medrash which is relevant to pshat, he is very stingy with words. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was very into reading into Rashi. His approach was really to read every letter and word as relevant to pshat. This means that even every word of the medrash that Rashi quotes is significant to pshat. Whether you like his answers or not, you have to like his method, which sharpens ones ability to read Rashi carefully. Now let’s move to something completely different in the same inyan. Let’s talk about failures of our biblical heroes. Do they have shortcomings? There is a tendency that has developed in achronish literature that there has been a misunderstanding. They were both right – neither Yosef nor the shvatim did anything really wrong.  Mishneh LaMelech (in Parshat D’rachim): Yosef thought they ate ever min hachai, but really it was just a case of mefarkeset. Yosef held that they were comparable to bnei Noach, so they don’t have the din of mefarkeset as a heter. The brothers held that they have a din of Yisrael, so they are allowed to eat an animal that is still alive after shchitah.   Yosef heard the bnei Leah make some sort of comment about the bnei hashfachot and Yosef misinterpreted it… This brings us to the debate between contemporary right-wingers and modernists. The former claim that the avot were 100% perfect in every way, but Chazal found teeny tiny deficiencies in their actions. The modernists go to the other extreme. It’s an issue. We can look at the Pseudopigrapha for help on this issue, historically – irrespective of how much validity the pseudopigrapha get – in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Gad said they killed the lamb because it was looking sick. Yosef told Yaakov that Gad was embezzling from the flock. But wait a second! That’s not ever min hachai at all! But either way, each story has something to do with flock misdemeanors. The point is, by looking at an outside source, it can shed light on what is going on in Bereishit Raba. How should we treat pseudopigrapha? Is it Torah? Where does it fit?  One might say that if this view was of any value, then the medrash should have quoted it.  There is a late source of medrash known as the Lekach Tov. There, in the opening of Vayeshev, it says that Yosef had three

complaints – and the third complaint was gezel, just like it said in the pseudopigrapha. o Is it that there was a mesorah that did not appear until later? o Or is it that he drew upon the Testaments? It could be, since it was probably written in the Balkans, where these documents may have been more available. September 15, 2005 Today we will make some general statements regarding pshat, and then we will look at a couple of examples in Rashi. Do the notions of pshat and drash go back to Chazal? On the one hand, going through chazal gives us a sense that there are different kinds of approaches to the Chumash. For example, the methodologies of R’ Akiva and R’ Yishmael. Sifra, Torat Kohanim, Sifrei are all from R”A. Others go to R”Y. These not only reflect different shitot, but also represent different methodologies. For instance, “hikaret tikaret” RA will say that it’s a drasha RY will say that the Torah talks like lashon bnei adam RY seems like the pshatist in this comparison! At least, that’s what a guy on the street would say. He is the tanna who would be more likely to get hired at Bar-Ilan. Shabbos 13: Ein mikra yotzei midei pshuto Sounds like the idea of pshat and drash goes back to Chazal. On the other hand, you don’t find Chazal describing what pshat and drash really are, and what we prefer. This is reflective of an age old discussion of machshava. Is an idea “new” or “old?”  

Decide that an idea is really new, and anyone who tries to fit this idea into older statements is not being factually honest. Decide that an idea is really old, and anything that seems new is really a different version of this prototype.

When we look at historical development, we can say that:  Rashi is doing something continuous with what Chazal were doing.  Rashi is unique because Chazal would never identify what is pshat and what is drash, which Rashi does.

Most probably in Chazal – if they didn’t write about pshat and drash, they probably didn’t have those categorizations or those careful definitions. If you don’t know a word, does that mean that you don’t know the concept? Probably not… When Chazal speak of how Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t know what was going on in R”A’s shiur, it seems incredulous! To know Torah, you can look at it and see it, but what R”A was doing was using terminology and definitions that Moshe simply had not heard of. It was not that he was intellectually inferior. What about Brisker Torah? Would the Rambam agree with R’ Chayim’s formulations? Maybe he would, but just wouldn’t put it that way. For Chazal, perhaps there was no need to distinguish between pshat and drash. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Chazal were any less sophisticated than we are. To sum up where we are, at some level Rashi is building on Chazal, even though when Rashi says “pshat” this may mean for Chazal that we cannot exclude the generally accepted meaning. Rashi understood that when Chazal said “70 panim laTorah” they were referring to distinctions that could possibly be made in the learning of Torah. So… what happens afterwards? Before Rashi even RaSa”G, in translating the Torah into Arabic, explains that he does not include midrashim, unless certain problems come up, like when the Torah contradicts logic, or something that we feel is axiomatic. Ex. Hashem is fire  Hashem’s anger burns like fire, but He is not fire Himself. Ex. Chava was “em kol chai”  Chava was the mother of humanity, not animals. He acted this way mainly because he dealt with the criticisms from Karaites and others. Plus, grammar started to become popular in his time. The fact that by Rasag’s time Arabic grammar started to develop, it enabled us to say things more clearly. Why did Rashi formulate this distinction? 1. It may simply be a natural development in Torah to make distinctions like pshat vs. drash. 2. It could be that Rashi was responding to Christian challenges. We will focus on how Ashkenazic rishonim were actually aware of Christianity at another date. 3. There is a theory developed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe which claimed that the purpose of pshat is purely educational.

a. By the statement “ben 5 l’mikra” from Pirkei Avos, that may not necessarily mean that you can’t teach a 5 year old mishna! b. But the Rebbe said that it actually means that a 5 year old should learn only Chumash – and not gemara. Thus, pshat means “Chumash, literally, without the influence of Torah sheb’al peh. So the Rebbe said that whenever Rashi says pshat, we need it to understand the pasuk. The question, “What’s Bothering Rashi” is a question that a 5 year old must be able to ask – even without seeing any gemaras. This is the kind of problem that always drives Rashi to comment. This theoretical 5 year old who knows nothing of Torah sheb’al Peh beyond what he needs to know; he knows Hebrew because his father has been speaking to him in lashon hakodesh; he knows basic halacha; but beyond that he knows nothing of it. So the need for commentary comes from the need for a standardized perush that a kid would be able to appreciate without requiring Torah sheb’al Peh. Let’s see some examples: Bereishit 3:8 "‫"וישמעו את קול ה' אלוקים מתהלך בגן לרוח היום‬ Who is walking? The voice or Hashem? Philosophically, we do not treat Hashem anthropomorphically, so it seems like the walking voice is preferable for our understanding. Intuitively this is so. Anyway, let’s look at the midrash. "‫"שמענו שיש הילוך לקול‬ The word "‫ "הלך‬seems to apply not only to people, but also to inanimate objects like fire or voices. The midrash is trying to say that it is the voice that is doing the expansion or resonation. Among the mefarshim, there are those who are more concerned and those who were less concerned. The Rambam was more concerned. When he comments on the term "‫ "הלך‬he says immediately that it applies to a lot of things. It seems that if we wanted to say pshat, there is a lot to push us to that direction. But Rashi is still kind of ambiguous.

"‫"קולו של הקב"ה שהיה מתהלך‬ The mefarshei Rashi are not unanimous on the issue. But before Rashi’s explanation, he gives his famous intro. He says that there are many ways of explaining different psukim, but he is merely coming to give ‫פשוטו של מקרא‬. It seems like he is coming to deviate from the perush of the midrash, and he is making this clear for us. Those who claim that Rashi really is not pshat-oriented may say that: 1. He intended write pshat, but failed 2. He meant that only by this pasuk he is saying pshat. We would like to say that he really is writing pshat all over. The mefarshim focus on the word "‫ "מתהלך‬itself. What does it mean? It seems to imply not just walking, but walking back and forth. A voice may do that – it may resonate and stuff like that. Second Problem The Torah lists 4 kings in Bereishit 14:1, one of which is ‫אמרפל‬. Later they are listed in different order. Finally they are just listed as ‫כדרלעומר‬ and his buddies. The midrash says that ‫ אמרפל‬was really the same as ‫נמרוד‬, since he told Avraham to throw himself into the ‫)כבשן האש )אמר פול‬. Alternatively, it could be because we describe ‫ נמרוד‬as "‫"אמירתו אפלה‬. This fits in with Chazal’s tendency to conserve personalities in Tanach. Is this pshat?  Maybe yes  Maybe no – it’s just a name! It involves too much “heavy lifting” If we have a choice in which name is “pshat,” we would favor ‫נמרוד‬, since it’s a simpler formulation of the remez. The weakness of this approach is that it assumes the midrash, so how can it be pshat? The standard view of mefarshei Rashi is the change of order in the list of kings. So they say that the real leader was ‫כדרלעומר‬, so the only way of explaining why ‫ אמרפל‬was listed first is by explaining that we know him already. However, if we really want to be medayek in Rashi, we have to make sure that the text is accurate. In an article in Tarbiz, Elazar Twito wrote that 20% of Rashi was not really written by him, but rather it was written by someone else in the margin, and somehow it got in. This is troubling. We’ll look into it.

September 22, 2005 The problem is that when you deal with narrative or poetry, there are always different kinds of readings. But when we deal with law, how can there be different readings? There must be some kind of conclusive psak! That is one of the big questions that people ask. When Rashi, for instance, learns against the accepted halacha, teachers generally skip it. Same goes for dikduk-related Rashis. [Reference to circumcision and people not reading things that they don’t have to]

Class #3 How does one approach this notion that drash and pshat are not identical even in halacha? Imagine a professor in a university teaches law as well as American history and philosophy. When you discuss history from a legal point of view, you probably would tend to focus a lot on the era of slavery, which was crucial in the development of the legal system. If you teach law from an historical perspective, you probably would not focus too much on traffic law. So, depending on your orientation – you will get different results from almost the same thing. This is so much so that within the works of the very same professor you will be able to find contradictions. He may explain that these contradictions are not really contradictions, but rather emphases that when taken to the extreme, appear as contradictions. The nimshal is that the 5 Chumshei Torah are not a Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. If you want to know the law, you turn to the Torah She’b’al Peh. The Torah is not a compendium of laws, and contains different emphases. The pshat and drash, for instance, may work in different directions. Let’s take two examples where Rashi quotes an unaccepted halakhic view. ‫ח‬:‫שמות כ‬ "‫"זכור את יום השבת לקדשו‬

Rashi suggests that the word "‫ "זכור‬should be jussive (‫ !)צווי‬So he explains it differently, that the Torah is commanding us to remember Shabbos the entire week. The Gemara in ‫טז‬-:‫ביצה טו‬. says that Shammai would eat very expensive fish even during the week, based on this very pasuk – since you have to remember Shabbos the whole week. But Hillel doesn’t hold of this! So if Hillel paskens against this view, why does Rashi quote Shammai who advocates it? The answer is that there are different levels in ‫חומש‬. However, the pshat has certain validity, and the message that the Torah is communicating that hashkafically one should prepare for Shabbos all week long. Even though we halakhically pasken like Hillel, Shammai is correct on a different plane. If you go through the literature about Hillel and Shammai, you will find the idea that Shammai and Beit Shammai are much more idealistic than their Hillel-oriented counterparts. You also find in the works of several mekubalim and darshanim that in Olam HaBa we will “pasken” like Beit Shammai. This may be able to clue us in to Rashi’s usage of Shammai’s view in his midrashesque view of ‫זכור‬. There is a controversial book by a fellow named Lorberbaum, called something like Tselem Elokim in Jewish Thought or something. He tries to claim that Chazal ascribe a body to G-d and that “Tselem Elokim” is really a body and a physical manifestation of G-d in the world. He’s wrong, but let’s not get into that. He tries to bring a proof from the fact that Hillel felt like he was performing a mitzvah by bathing, since he was cleaning the Tselem Elokim. Whatever. This is all assuming that Rashi is basing this upon the ‫גמרא ביצה‬. But that may not necessarily be. Shammai’s chumra is that you should keep doing it throughout the week. He didn’t use the phrase "‫"תמיד‬. Maybe Rashi is actually basing himself off of the ‫מכילתא דר' ישמעאל‬. From looking at the latter source, it is clear that Rashi quoted it word for word, and moreover – there is no ‫ מחלוקת‬in the ‫מכילתא‬. What do we learn from this:  If you want to understand Chazal, you have to look at all the sources.

 

If you want to understand Rashi you have to look at all the sources. You can’t always trust the printed text of Rashi. Many people will have printed editions with reference to the ‫גמרא ביצה‬, but now we know that that is not entirely correct.

There are midrashim other than the ones that we have. We know that: ‫ ספרי = ר' ישמעאל‬,‫מכילתא דר' ישמעל‬ [‫ ספרי = ר' עקיבא‬,[‫ ]ספרי זוטא‬,(‫ ספרא )תו"כ‬,[‫מכילתא דרשב"י‬ There is no question that the school of ‫ ר' עקיבא‬was dominant, at least in the heavy halakhic sections of ‫ שמות‬and ‫דברים‬. In any event, the ‫ מכילתא דר' ישמעל‬quotes our pasuk and comments on it. Next example: There is a pasuk in ‫ במדבר‬that speaks about ‫פסח שני‬. Who are these people who are put off to ‫?פסח שני‬ The pasuk says: "‫ או בדרך רחקה לכם או לדורותיכם‬,‫ה טמא לנפש‬-‫"איש כי יהי‬ There is a dot over the ‫ ה‬in the word "‫"רחקה‬. In greek manuscripts they put a dot on top of the letter to say that it is a mistake. In a sefrei Torah that really doesn’t make sense. If it was a mistake, fix it once and finish with it. In Torah doesn’t mean exactly the same thing. In Torah it means that the letter should be erased, treat the letter as if it is not there. Example: When Esav kissed Yackov, there are dots on top of the word. Chazal interpret this to mean that he kissed him but the goal was to see if he was wearing jewelery, not a sincere kiss. In the gemara there is a machloket how far is “‫"בדרך רחקה‬. Ibn Ezra is a pashtan so doesn’t get involved here. ‫ ר' עקיבא‬holds 15 mil.- 6 hours walk. ‫ ר' אליעזר‬holds that anyone who was outside of the ‫ עזרה‬at the time of the korban is eligible for ‫פסח שני‬. A person could theoretically be in Jerusalem and as long as he does not enter the ezara, he can say that he was far away and bring Pesach Sheni. The latter view seems very strange, intuitively. If you wanted to look at the rules of halakha, this view is also not very inviting. Normally paskin like R’ Akiva.

In the ‫ ירושלמי...