[Avodah] How much is an Omer?

[Arie Folger]

RAM asked:
> b) Are there any other examples of where the Torah
> goes out of its way to define a word? We have lots
> of places where the Torah explains why a person
> was given a certain name, but that's not quite the
> same thing.

Yes, there are, but we tend to miss those instances. A small example,
courtesy of R'Dr. Sol Cohen, of Philadelphia:
Bereishit 26:12: "And Isaac sowed in that land, and found in the same
year a hundredfold; and the LORD blessed him (vayevorakheihu)."

Vos heisst vayevorakheihu? See the next verse: "And the man waxed
great, and grew more and more until he became very great."

To truly appreciate this, you should see how mefarshim deal with the
difficulty of defining the verb barekh. Our esteemed list owner has
written on this, and many others have. There is a fundamental problem:
we use the verb to bless another human being, which means, we express
the wish that G"d, in the conversation as third party, will do
something good unto our fellow we are blessing. However, we apply to
verb to bless G"d. The Kad haKemakh and many others grapple with this,
and suggest that to bless G"d means to recognize that G"d is the
source of blessing, while to bless a fellow human is to pray that he
be the beneficiary of this abundant blessing.

All fine and dandy, but how do you connect the two concepts "to
recognize that [G"d] is the source of blessing" and "to bestow the
blessing unto another" in one word, levarekh? To which R' Sol Cohen,
basing himself partly on his phenomenal knowledge of ancient Near
Eastern languages, says that the Torah provides us the solution, by
defining berekh, in the verses above. To bless means to increase, to
make swell up. As applied to man, it means "And the man waxed great,
and grew more and more until he became very great." As applied to G"d
it means exactly what R' Chayim Volozhiner says (which RMB loves to
quote in this regard), namely, that we bring down Divine shefa' to the
world. That is the consequence of aromimmekha, rommemu E-l, etc.,
which is, through enhancing G"d's reputation among mankind, by
bringing about that more humans recognize G"d's greatness, He will
bring His blessing on us.

Both of them connote increasing, and so, in the above scriptural
quote, the Torah repeated itself, and thus defined a term.

There are many more examples, but since every one takes a few
paragraphs to explain, I shall rest my case now.

This, by the way, is a phenomenon closely related to the occurrence of
doublets in the poetic passages, such as haazinu hashamayim vaadabera
- vetishma' haaretz imrei fi. Or HaShem shimkha le'olam - HaShem
zikhrekha ledor vador. (which is really also a case of *defining*
zekher, but I won't develop that here, leaving the TC who explained
this to me the chance to publish this).

Oh, knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern languages (which I generally
lack, except for Aramaic) greatly increases the likelihood we will see
this phenomenon. Rashi referred to Arabic (hanoten lasekhvi vina) and
Aramaic (all over the place) to understand Hebrew, R'Akiva used
comparative linguistics, as did many other before and after them, so
this is a solid Jewish way of doing things.
-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
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