[Avodah] Parshas Behar (Bahar?)

[Micha Berger]

This was raised on Avodah before. See the thread Parashah Question
indexed at <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=P>.

We never got a peshat answer. Most likely if this isn't a minhag
ta'us, it's because the rabbim ran with some derashah and encoded it
into the parashah naming.

In the next thread in the index at the time of this writing, "Parashas
Behar" I started a discussion about "behar", "bahar", "bohar" (with a
qamatz, transliterated abnormally for me to show the difference) and
"al har / hahar". "B-" is used for mountain ranges or for Moshe at
Sinai. Otherwise "al" outnumbers it 211 to 3 -- and even those three
might be ranges for all I know that for some reason are called "har"
rather than "harei". Just as the case of Yehoshua 20:7 "beHar Naftali
... beHar Efraim ... behar Yehudah" which I concluded from the third
instance were three ranges, not three mountains.

I toyed with the idea that Moshe got the Torah while in a cave, thus
being "behar", or that Sinai is being described as the vehicle for
matan Torah -- behar as "through the aegis of the mountain". The
latter fits derashos about Sinai and anavah being the means of qabalas
haTorah.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter