[Avodah] Fables and Lies

[Richard Wolpoe]

On Dec 4, 2007 9:40 AM, <T613K at aol.com> wrote:

>
>
> From the American Heritage Dictionary:
>
> --begin quote--
>
> myth  n. 1. A traditional story presenting supernatural beings, ancestors
> or heroes that serve as primordial types in a primitive view of the world.
> 2.  A fictitious or imaginary story, person or thing.  3.  A false belief.
>
> --end quote--
>
>
> *--Toby Katz*
>

another definition:

a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of
> a people
> wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn<http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=0&oi=define&q=http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn%3Fs%3Dmyth&usg=AFQjCNE_B7zGO1uc0hPolVkr7Oz5N97aGg>


[note nothing about falsehood here]

In Nishmablog's recent survey of what was the principle purpose for giving
the Torah this was one of the options, giving the Jewish People a common
story/history.

Star Trek New Generation had an episode where Captain Picard is stranded
with another captain who spoke ONLY in metaphors reflecting his
civilizations cultural "mythology"

Some yekkes have an expression for fleeing "vayivrach ...." that refelcts
what Ya'akov did when  he escaped Esav [from the haftora for Vayetze in
many  kehillos"

As a people are common language includes the Torah and the Haggadah of
Pesach which provides a common set of concepts to transmit our story to our
progeny - lema'an asher yetzaveh

Micha:

> although I think only the Rambam goes so far as to condemn those who make
> a farce out of the Torah (in his opinion) by believing every medrash.
>

Permiyi me to qualify this quote a bit
I think he meant belieivng every Midrash to be literally true. I thinkthe
Rambam did no DISBELIEVE any Midrash per se. IOW There is a true message
between the lines of every Midrash, but taking them literally leads to
farce.

-- 
Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe at Gmail.com
see: http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20071205/1ee24428/attachment-0002.htm>