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Facebuker Shabbos Table Talk — ker — Vayechi 5784

Выпуск: Facebuker Shabbos Table Talk — ker — Vayechi 5784. Темы: family_education, parsha_commentary. Поисковые термины: воспитание, дети, семья, chinuch, family, חינוך, ילדים, משפחה, недельная глава, парша, parsha, פרשה, פרשת השבוע. [Yes, not only did our biblical claim to the land include the West Bank, it extended many miles to the east!] Part of the deal was that the men of Gad would fight for the land of Canaan along with their brothers, and only return home once the land was fully conquered according to Hashem’s command. Perhaps this is what Midrash meant when it taught us that one of the causes of the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage was “that they [the Jewish people] did not change their names [from Hebrew ones to Egyptian ones.]” My Hebrew name is Dovid Avraham. Recognizing the need for people to put their affairs in order, Yaakov prayed that people would become sick before they died, as a sort of warning to start giving their children instructions and telling them what should happen after they were gone. The Torah teaches that, “Each one his blessing, did he bless them.” The change of tense teaches us that though the blessings were given to one son, the intent was that those blessings would be shared among all of them. People hunger for a connection to their past and such traditional, biblical, family names seem to provide a sense of immortality and continuity that flashy, “cool” names, cannot provide. Thus, as we approach the introduction to the book of Shmot, the book of bondage and redemption, we find the list of names of the sons of Yaakov, the eternal reminder of who the Jewish people really are. The rabbis taught us that by not forgetting their original names, by not completely becoming Egyptian in deed as well, the hope of the Jewish people to be redeemed and freed never died out. The Torah’s insistence on recording the names of the sons of Yaakov – the eventual tribes of Israel – highlights this important fact of life and family to us. Though in today’s vernacular, this is a good thing, kind of how “bad!” meant good in the 1970’s, when Yosef was told that his father was ill, he must have been confused. This comports well with the dictum of Chazal that when a person visits someone sick, thereby performing the mitzvah of bikur cholim, he takes away 1/60th of the illness.

Издание

Facebuker Shabbos Table Talk

Дата

29 декабря 2023 г.

Страниц

2

Темы: family_education, parsha_commentary