[Avodah] "Ha'od Avi Chai?"

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 09:50:38PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> Therefore, I have always understood "Ha'od Avi Chai?" to be a *rhetorical*
> question...

I posted something similar to the first line I quoted, and AFTER I learned
Seforno. (He's in my shenayim miqra learning this year.)

As we both wrote, this is in response to Yehudah writing about how
the non-return of Binyamin would kill their father. The only way it could
be a real question is if he were arguing that Yehudah was lying.

But then, why doesn't Yosef wait for a reply? What does he do instead?
He reiterates, according to Seforno, giving more detail to convince them
he really was Yoseif. His whole conversation is about his being Yoseif.

But the rhetorical read also has an oddity. First, he tells them how bad
what they did was. They not only sinned against him, they sinned against
Yaaqov too, in all the ways Yehudah is now arguing. Then... It's not your
fault; it's Hashem's plan for how I would become regent and we would be
saved from the famine.

> NOTE: I do concede that Sforno takes the question seriously: "It's
> impossible that he didn't die from his worrying about me." ...

The Seforno is short enough to read in transliteration:
    ha'od avi chai: i edshar shelo meis mida'agaso alai

I didn't assume the Seforno was saying peshat is that the question is
real. I learned the Seforno as though he was saying Yoseif meant:
    Stop telling me how worried you are about the daagah of Binyamin
    coming back, nafsho kesurah benafsho and all that. If you really
    believed that, you would have thought "it were impossible for him
    to have survived the pain of losing me."

I found the above argument so compelling, it didn't cross my mind that
the Seforno was making an assertion rather than a leshitaskha accusation
reinforcing the rhetorical read of the pasuq itself.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 We are what we repeatedly do.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Thus excellence is not an event,
Author: Widen Your Tent      but a habit.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                 - Aristotle