[Avodah] Ta'am of eating matzah

[Richard Wolpoe]

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Michael Makovi <mikewinddale at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Maybe we don't all need to study it in-depth, but certainly it seems
> we should have a basic knowledge of more or less what was going on
> then. We don't all need a crystal-clear picture, but certainly the
> kind of knowledge one can get from a Hertz chumash plus visits to the
> history museum, along with a first-edition (not second-edition)
> Soncino Tanach or a Daat Mikra, couldn't hurt. And maybe a few of us
> *should* study it in-depth...because Rav Hertz and the Daat Mikra-ists
> did do so, I can rely on their digests.
>
> Mikha'el Makovi
> _______________________________________________
>

Tangentailly I learn very little Nach for the same reason.  W/O a context of
what was being talked about and w/o understanding contemporary idioms
[bittuyim] the meforshim imho are sometimes making the difficult to
comprehend impossible to comprehend.

If we could really understand the Nevi'im in the same way their
contemporaries could it would be quite different.  And if I could really
understand the imagery in Koheles it would make a lot more sense.

Humash - although older - is much more alive because it has been kept in the
foreground for much  longer.   there are still issues that  are tough to
understand. But When my daughter mentioned that s'or and dvash were
considered Egyptian Delicacies, that which stumped the Sefer Hachinuch came
alive for me. Espeically in light of the Rambam on Bassar beChalav.

Even the chronologies in Shof'tim are subject to re-interpretation. For
example, we all know that Huldah and Yirmeyahu were contemporaries;  but
there is a PRESUMPTION that Shof'tim never over-lapped on the time line. But
who can say for sure that the last few years of Shofeit X were not the first
few year of Shofeit Y?  Just because the SIMPLE read is that they were
linear does not necessarily mean there was ZERO overlap.   IOW, we are
projecting how  the chronology WAS based upon the way WE would write it.
But in Nach, maybe overlaps were not accounted for stylistically.

Remember the numerous Persian Kings squeezed in by Hazal to fit a span of 52
years? That  could be a prime example not of SHORTLIVED rules but
OVERLAPPING rulers.  Remember Midian had 5 kings at one time in  P. Pinchas
and several kings at the same time in Shof'tim.

-- 
Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe at Gmail.com
see: http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
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