[Avodah] Kama Maalot Tovot Lamakom Aleinu?

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 09:37:05AM -0700, Liron Kopinsky wrote:
: RMG pointed me at the Ritva and Abudraham who both say that you see from
: this question that these pesukim are just "asmachta b'alma vhakabala ikar".

: It's not a particularly satisfying answer to me, but that's my chisaron.

Combining this thought with RAF's about looking at this as one looks at
aggadita in general...

Li nir'eh the machloqes between 40 and 50 makos might really be about
whether there is a difference between teva and neis.

Teva is with eser ma'amaros, but that is 10 sheheim arba'im. 40 then
becomes the usual metaphor for birth and rebirth -- 40 days before and
after conception, 40 days of rain, 40 years in the midbar, 40 se'ah of
water, 40 chaseir achad melakhos, 40-1 makos, etc...

For R' Eliezer to say the makos too were 10 sheheim 40 would mean that
the lemaalah min hateva of makkos are the same in kind as teva. "He Who
commanded oil to burn could command vinegar to burn."

Rabbi Aqiva, OTOH, holds that nissim are different in kind. Thus, each
makkah had an element beyond the normal fourfold-act of teva. It's R'
Aqiva who says (Sanhedrin 67b, Tanchuma Va'eira 14) that one frog,
when hit, became all the frogs of the makkah. (R' Elazar b' Azariah
responds with a possibility that while rare, doesn't defy nature --
the frog called the others.

This might be the beginning of making this machloqes leshitasam with the
same two tannaim WRT sukkah. R' Eliezer says the sukkos we commemorate
were ananei hakavod; R' Aqiva says they were actual sukkos. (Sukkah
11b) R' Eliezer more naturally considers our teva sukkos representative
miraculous ananim, since they are of a kind. (I did imply at the beginning
of the paragraph this was still half-baked.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 11th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        1 week and 4 days in/toward the omer.
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