[Avodah] Moshe Rabeinu's stuttering

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, January 20, 2007 11:29 pm, R Marty Bluke wrote:
: How could the adon haneviim stutter? The Rambam (Mamrim 7:2) writes that a
: Navi has to be shalem b'gufu, if Moshe had a phsyical defect he should have
: been unable to become a Navi at all.

It would seem, therefore, that the Rambam could not possibly take the medrash
about Moshe Rabbeinu AH burning his lip as a toddler when Par'oh offered him a
choice of jewels or glowing coals as historical.

That medrash is also based on the idea that the speech defect was not a stutter.

: To answer this I heard the following from R' CY Goldvicht. The Targum
: translates the words vayehi adam l'nefesh chaya, that Adam was a ruach
: memal'la. What distinguishes man from animal is the ability to speak. Speech
: is a chibur between the gashmiyus of the body and the ruchnius of the
: nefesh. Moshe Rabbenu stuttered because he was so ruchani that this
: connection was weak and therefore he could not speak well. He did not have a
: phsyical defect....

It is unclear to me which skill of speech distinguishes man from ape. I
therefore suggested that ru'ach memalela should be taken as "a will of
speech", ie that we're aware of our own thoughts, and therefore can maintain
an internal monologue. This gets me away from problems like explaining how
Chantak the orangutan could coin the idiom "tomato toothpaste" for ketchup.

See <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/12/ruach-memalela.shtml> for my ramblings
on human consciousness.

That said, this would suggest that his speech problem was stammering
(struggling to get the mouth to form the next word) more likely than
stuttering (repetition of syllables). The typical stammerer is thinking far
faster than his mouth could move, and therefore the two get out of sync.
Sounds much like saying his ruchius outpaced his ability for his gashmi to
keep up.


On Tue, January 23, 2007 7:34 am, R Alan Rubin wrote:
: I haeard the following idea from Clive Lawton. I do not know what his
: sources were.
:
: He suggested that Moshe's problem with speech was specifically with
: regard to the Bnei Yisroel and not Pharoah. Since Moshe had been
: brought up at court he ... spoke their language and was unique in his
: ability to speak with Pharoah. On the other hand he had been brought up apart
: from the Bnei Yisroel and was worried about relating to them.

If I understand the Sefas Emes (Va'era 659) correctly, he says something
similar, and therefore may be RCL's source.

The SE explains that it's not that BY wouldn't listen to Moshe because he was
an aral sefasayim. Rather, his label "aral sefasayim" referred to the fact
that he couldn't speak in a way that BY would listen to.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi