[Avodah] two Lemech's

[Micha Berger]

RnTK noted on Sun Oct 18 9:07pm EST:
>  noticed a curious thing in the parsha yesterday, something that had
>  never struck me before:
>  Noach's father and father-in-law both had the same name --  Lemech!  
...
> Anyway, I wonder if anyone else here ever noticed that Noach's father
> and father-in-law were both Lemech's? and whether the name has any
> significance, or whether the two Lemech's had some [cosmic] relationship?

Perhaps this is address in a CC post from our new chaveir RYA, one that
I'm sure would make R' Prof YLevine happy. See
<http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2009/10/20/abandoning-the-masses>.
He opens:
> I often find the thoughts of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch utterly
> exhilarating in their relevance a century and a half after they were
> written. (Biased I am. During the great controversy around the
> bicentennial of his birth, I spelled out my belief that his writings
> were some of the most useful to contemporary thinking Jews.)

> Several passages in parshas Bereishis always excite me. In one of them,
> RSRH detects not only meaning in the names in the geneologies of both
> Kayin and Shais, but treats them as a pattern that governs the pendulum
> swing of societies. That pattern invites comparison with our own times.

It would seem that the two aspects of the "pendulum" were in extreme
sync by Lemech's day. Which would make sense, since their children were
a zivug, and mark the end of that whole era.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate,
micha at aishdas.org        Our greatest fear is that we're powerful
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