Nedarim (32a) R. Abbahu said in R. Eleazar's name: Why was our Father Abraham punished and his children doomed to Egyptian servitude for two hundred and ten years? Because he pressed scholars into his service, as it is written, He armed his dedicated servants born in his own house. Samuel said: Because he went too far in testing the attributes [i.e., the promises] of the Lord, as it is written, [And he sand, Lord God,] whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? R. Johanan sand: Because he prevented men from entering beneath the wings of the Shechinah, as it is written, [And the king of Sodom said it to Abraham,] Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself.
Did these opinions originate with the rabbis? Or are we expected to believe it was given on Sinai? What about ramban , which also appears in the zohar?
ReplyDeleteCan a regular person give their peirush?
There's pshat and then there's drash.
ReplyDeletePshat is what actually happens. Drash is what happened in a magical world where everyone looked and acted like they did around the time of Chazal.
It's the famous dispute in Avos - which student of RYBZ was great - the one with the innovative mind or the one with the perfect memory? If you say the latter, then without imagination you can't visualize that a society 1000 years older was any different than it is today. Hence why Satmar children books have pictures of Moshe Rabeinu, a"h, in a shtreiml.
It seems that if you asked Chazal what Avraham Avinu's followers did all day, they'd say "They were learning Gemaras! Why, AA's version of Avoidah Zarah was way longer than ours! What else would they do all day other than learn?"
I dunno, maybe tend the sheep, harvest the grain, go looking for a water supply, defend against raiders...
Would he learn the gemara daf yomi, with rashi and tosafos?
ReplyDeleteThey say he kept the entire oral law and gezeiros drabbanan. But he served meat and butter on the same table. There was a get out clause of this one - was it that angels don't eat? Or are they not required to eat mehadrin?
The first person to learn Torah with Rashi was Rashi's father. Get it? GET IT?!?
ReplyDeleteha ha!
ReplyDeleteIt is like starting the Torah with the 10 commandments -
or learning that Moses wore a shtreimel,
or even - this is controversial - that David Hamelech was head of the Sanhedrin (lovely Greek name, with no Hebrew / Biblical equivalent).
Well the last one is easy to counter - yes, he was the head of the Sanhedrin but that was just Chazal taking the contemporary term and retconing it onto whatever the Supreme Court was called in David HaMelech's time.
ReplyDeleteIf he was head of a supreme court, (as opposed to being King), then there would be other "rabbis" who told him off and tell him to bring korbanos for his crimes. Except none of that happened - it was Nathan the seer or prophet who had direct communication with G-d. Oops, "Lo bashamayim hi", so obviously Nathan was irrelevant, since his psak was like the tanur of Aknai.
ReplyDeleteKing David was a King, that is what Kings did. The round table was an innovation of King Arthur, who must have had some influence with the rabbis, as he was a Brit, and also was fed up with the Romans.