[Avodah] HQBH speaks through History [was R' Angel & Geirus Redux]

[Michael Makovi]

> I went to a talk of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein about TuM, and the most
> memorable part, IMHO, was when he said that those who study mada
> generally understand Sefer Bereshit better. If so, it's not only the
> leaders who need TIDE/TuM.
>
> Mikha'el Makovi

See also the introduction to Judaica Press's Trumat Tzvi (abridged
Hirsch Chumash) - there, it quotes Dayan Grunfeld (I forget from where
- sorry, my library is in EY and I'm in chutz) who quotes Rav Hirsch,
to the effect that without knowing Egyptian, Canaanite, and
Greco-Roman culture and history, one cannot understand what the Torah
was polemicizing against.

See also the Hertz Chumash in Vayikra 18 or 20 (I forget which) about
the sexual practices: there, he shows how all the sexual practices in
the Torah were popular throughout antiquity, not by "barbarians", but
rather by civilized Egyptians and Persians. The same passage, almost
exactly the same, word-for-word, occurs in R' Munk's Call of the
Torah. I don't know if one if copying the other or if they both have a
common source; neither author provides an attribution.

Mikha'el Makovi