[Avodah] Where was Dan?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 09:21:18AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> To me, Radak's second thought (that there was a place called Dan even in
> Moshe's days) is much more reasonable than the first. Why would Moshe write
> down a word that was meaningless to the people of his generation? When they
> learned this parsha, what did it mean to them?
...
> This should have been true of place names as well. If the Torah is meant to
> be learned, then it must be learnable, to everyone since the day it was
> written...

There are many place names in the Chumash that we today can't locate.

Why do you consider his contemporary generation a more important audience
than later ones? If you aren't bothered by the Chumash referring to places
we can't identify, why are you bothered by the Dor Dei'ah having to settle
for "the place where Dan will live, whereever that is"?

This reflects my basic problem with a lot of modern commentary that take
a similar approach. Assuming the Torah only made sense to the Yotz'ei
Mitzrayim, eg the Mishkan was a corrective response to an Egyptian temple,
or tefillin to their headgear, creates more problems than it resolves.
Why would Hashem be speaking a code only the first generations can
understand and not the hundreds, or thousands, or infinite generations
after them?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It's nice to be smart,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   but it's smarter to be nice.
Author: Widen Your Tent                      - R' Lazer Brody
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF