[Avodah] Where was Dan?

[Akiva Miller]

.
R' Micha Berger asked:

> 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, wherever that is"?

I apologize for not stating my question more clearly.

To me, it seems very obvious that things get forgotten over the course of
time, and people accept that as natural. No one today is sure exactly which
mountain is "Har Sinai", but that phrase is not totally meaningless. We
understand what it refers to, and we understand why we're unsure which
mountain it is. Similarly regarding the relatively short list of nonkosher
birds; we don't really know what an "atalef" is, but that doesn't bother
us, because Jews have not been zookeepers over the centuries, and we never
bothered to keep track of these birds' identities. We've been farmers, but
we concentrated on wheat and barley, and most of us are not shocked to hear
of uncertainty about "shiboles shual".

But I have always expected that the Dor Dei'ah did know these things. Maybe
not every single individual, but surely there were experts who one might
consult. It MUST have been so, because consider the reverse: Imagine Moshe
Rabenu teaching Parshas Shmini, and six hundred thousand people all asking,
"What's an atalef?" At the very least, Moshe himself must have been able to
answer the question, because if he couldn't, then the pasuk is literally
meaningless. And I just can't accept that.

So too, if they are learning that Avram went to Dan, and someone asked,
"Was Dan near or far? Where was it?", there must have been someone who
could have answered. But if Dan was a place which did not yet have that
name, then the pasuk would have been meaningless to all of Klal Yisrael.

R' Micha again:

> Why would Hashem be speaking a code only the first generations
> can understand and not the hundreds, or thousands, or infinite
> generations after them?

You include the word "only", and that highlights which part of my question
you misunderstood. I don't mean to suggest that the Torah should be
understood ONLY by the Dor Dei'ah, but that the Torah SHOULD be understood
by the Dor Dei'ah.

Our understanding of the Torah is a function of how well we learned it and
how well the middle generations taught it. But there is a presumption that
the first generation did understand it perfectly. We have even heard
descriptions of the procedure, by which Moshe taught Yehoshua and then
tested him, and Yehoshua taught the Zekeinim and tested them, and the
Zekeinim taught the people, etc, etc, with tests and reviews backwards and
forwards, to insure that every. single. little. thing. that. Hashem.
conveyed. was. present. and. understood. by. everyone.

So, to suggest that there was a word which did not have a clear and precise
meaning in the year 2448, is simply unacceptable.

Akiva Miller
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