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The following is from the new translation of RSRH's commentary to Chumash
Bereshis.<br><br>
<b>48</b> <font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><b>3
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>Ya’akov then said to
Yosef: The All-Sufficing God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan
and blessed me.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4>4
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>He said to me: Behold, I
will make you fruitful and multiply you and let you become a
community of peoples, and I will give this land to your seed after you as
an everlasting possession.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4>5
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>And now, your two sons who
were born to you in the land of Egypt, before I came to you, are mine:
Efrayim and Menashe will belong to me like Reuven and Shimon.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4>6
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>But the children whom you
beget after them will remain yours; they will be named in their
inheritance according to their brothers’ names.<br><br>
</i></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>It is difficult to
contend that, in a family that already included eleven<br>
sons, this small addition would be considered so significant that it
could<br>
be indicated by the words
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>hen'ni maf'r'cha
vhirbisicha</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>. <br><br>
Rather, as we already noted (ibid. [35:11]), the expression
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>k'hal goyim</i>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>— here<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>k'hal amim</i>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>— assigns the people of
Ya’akov its distinctive mission: This<br>
people is to consist of diverse tribes of differing traits, while
maintaining<br>
complete unity through one common task. This people should represent<br>
the agricultural nation, the merchant nation, the warrior nation,
the<br>
nation of scholars, and so forth. As a model nation, it should
demonstrate<br>
for all to see that the one great mission — common to all men<br>
and all nations and as revealed in God’s Torah — does not depend on<br>
a particular vocation or trait. Rather, all of mankind, with its rich
diversity,<br>
can equally find its calling in the one common mission.<br><br>
The division of the nation into diverse tribes, and the resulting
division<br>
of the Land into different provinces for the different tribes, whose<br>
distinctiveness is thus to be retained —
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>that
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>is what is indicated
here<br>
(in v. 4). Only thus is there any importance to Efrayim and Menashe<br>
becoming two distinct tribes. Without the division into diverse
tribes,<br>
all distinctiveness would be absorbed in the consolidated mass of
the<br>
nation as a whole, just as the land would be divided among the
nation<br>
as a whole and not according to different tribes.<br><br>
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