[Avodah] Why is north above?

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "lreich" <lreich at tiscali.co.uk>

>>   Rashi on Bamidbar 34:11 and Devarim 3:1 says that North is  upwards.

Nowadays the prevailing convention is for maps to be printed  with north on 
top.

In earlier times this was not so; often east was so  favored.

So what is the origin of Rashi's assumption.

Is there any  connection with the Pole star being nearly overhead?   <<

Leslie Reich 






>>>>>
 
 
You are making a simple but common mistake.  You are assuming that  "up" 
means "at the top of the map, i.e., north."  But in fact "up" in the  Chumash 
and in Rashi means up in altitude, going towards higher  ground.
 
 
You mention Rashi in Bamidbar 34:11.  Look at Bamidbar 34:11 -  12.  The 
pesukim there say that the eastern boundary of E'Y went down from  Shefam to 
Rivlah, then further down to the Yam Kineres, then down the Jordan  River, 
down down down to the Yam Hamelach (the lowest point on earth, I believe  -- 
but not the furthest south!)  
 
Rashi merely points out that as you go from north to south ALONG THIS  
EASTERN BOUNDARY OF E'Y, you are going lower, lower and lower.   His exact words 
are, "as the boundary goes from north to south, it keeps  going down."
 
Just a couple of pesukim later, Bamidbar 34:15, on the words "kedmah  
mizracha" ("to the front, to the east"), Rashi spells out that FRONT = east,  
BACK or behind = west, RIGHT = south and LEFT = north. 
 
When Rashi says that north is up and south is down, he is talking about  
altitude in a specific geographic area.   All the time you are  going from 
north to south along the Jordan River, you are going down, down, down  in 
altitude, from mountains in the north to a low plain, even lower than sea  level 
-- where the Dead Sea is.
 
In fact I am pretty sure that the Yarden is called the Yarden -- "that  
which goes down" -- because it starts up high and goes down, down, down.  
 
But you must not think it is going from up at the top of a map to down at  
the bottom of a map!  Rather, Tanachically speaking, the Yarden is  flowing 
from left to right as you face front/east with the Mediterranean sea  behind 
you.  Whenever you orient yourselves in Tanach in terms of  direction, you 
have to face east. 
 
The Torah (and Rashi) never uses the words "up" and "down" for direction as 
 we Westerners do when we look at a  Western map.  The Torah uses  "front" 
and "back" for directions.  The Torah only uses up and down  for height, 
altitude.
 
In Devarim 3:1 it says, "vana'al derech haBashan" -- "we went up the way of 
 the Bashan."  I think the Bashan is somewhere around the Golan  Heights.  
In any case, it is a place with a high altitude, and it  is somewhere to the 
northeast of E'Y.  When Rashi comments over there, "kol  tzad tzafon hu 
aliyah" he is NOT saying that the north everywhere in the world  is "up."  He 
is saying that the further north you go from the Sinai Desert  to the Bashan, 
the further up you go.  You are going up in  altitude.
 
The ArtScroll translation does not clarify this but in the  Silverman 
Chumash, the translation of this Rashi on Devarim 3:1 is  explicit:  "Every 
journey towards the north (from the wilderness towards  Canaan) is 'uphill.' "
 

--Toby  Katz
=============
Romney -- good values, good family, good  hair


-------------------------------------------------------------------   


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20120723/a4a595cc/attachment-0002.htm>