One Hundred Words on the Parshah
Sign up to receive a weekly email
One Hundred Words on the Parshah
Sign up to receive a weekly email
After Shimon and Levi killed out the city of Shechem, Yaakov rebuked them for making the locals angry at him. Many years ago, I read an article about Israeli politics where the author was refuting Yaakov’s attitude to argue that Jews shouldn’t be fearful. He pointed out that nothing happened to Yaakov as a result of what Shimon and Levi did. The fallacy of this argument is that the Torah tells us that the יושבי הארץ didn’t run after Yaakov because Hashem put a special fear in them. In other words, Yaakov was correct in his assessment.
Bonus – Halacha Words
The Yidden don’t eat the גיד הנשה
תפילין can only be made out of kosher animals. Part of תפילין is the strings made out of animal veins. Is it permitted to use the vein called גיד הנשה? On the one hand, it is from a kosher animal, however, it itself is not kosher. This is actually a dispute among the Poskim.
After Shimon and Levi killed out the city of Shechem, Yaakov rebuked them for making the locals angry at him. Many years ago, I read an article about Israeli politics where the author was refuting Yaakov’s attitude to argue that Jews shouldn’t be fearful. He pointed out that nothing happened to Yaakov as a result of what Shimon and Levi did. The fallacy of this argument is that the Torah tells us that the יושבי הארץ didn’t run after Yaakov because Hashem put a special fear in them. In other words, Yaakov was correct in his assessment.
Bonus – Halacha Words
The Yidden don’t eat the גיד הנשה
תפילין can only be made out of kosher animals. Part of תפילין is the strings made out of animal veins. Is it permitted to use the vein called גיד הנשה? On the one hand, it is from a kosher animal, however, it itself is not kosher. This is actually a dispute among the Poskim.
If a tree is growing partially in ארץ ישראל and partially in חוץ לארץ and the trunk is in ארץ ישראל, then there is a requirement to give תרומות ומעשרות, even if the majority of the branches are outside of ארץ ישראל. Interestingly, the הלכה is different for taking ביכורים. It is not enough for the tree to be primarily in ארץ ישראל, rather, it must be completely in ארץ ישראל in order to require ביכורים. The difference would seem to be because of the word אדמתך that the תורה uses when talking about the requirement of ביכורים. “אדמתך” would seem to indicate land that is entirely yours.
“אז ישיר” is written in the future tense since this שירה includes all the שירות that כלל ישראל will sing in the future on upcoming miracles. חז"ל mention that by קריאת ים סוף, even the עוברות (embryos) were saying שירה in the womb. Just as an ,עובר who is not fully developed, said שירה, so too, the future generations of כלל ישראל that were not yet developed, sang שירה at קריאת ים סוף; meaning that their שירה was included in אז ישיר.
Additionally, at קריאת ים סוף, Hashem gave נבואה to the Yidden. Normally, it would take a tremendous amount of preparation to reach the high level to be worthy of נבואה. But Hashem gave it to the Yidden. This necessitated a special creation, comparable to the creation of the world which was done יש מעין. Why? Hashem was catapulting כלל ישראל onto a level they did not reach in order to prepare them for מתן תורה. In the same manner, the שירה was catapulted onto a level to incorporate all future שירות.
May we have the ultimate song of the future with the coming of משיח, which will have נפלאות double of what we had when we leftמצרים .
The text of the הגדה that the Rambam wrote (which the Yemenites still use today) begins with מגיד. Right before הא לכמא עניא, he writes the words “בבהלו יצאנו ממצרים”, we left Egypt in confusion. The תרגום in his translation of “כי בחפזון יצאתם ממצרים” likewise, translates these words to mean we left מצרים in a state of confusion.
R’ Yisroel Neuman, ראש ישיבה of BMG in a שמווס right before Yeshiva closed down, mentioned that בהלה, confusion, is part of the תוכחה, the curses in the תורה which will be fulfilled if Jews do not behave properly. He pointed out that we are currently suffering tremendous בהלה from the coronavirus and all the related situations.
May פסח herald the exiting of our generation’s בהלה.
All learning should be a zechus for a refuah shelaimah for Yosef Ezriel Ben Chaya Michal