arig@cvl.UUCP (Ari Gross) (12/12/85)
The chatam sofer in his sefer torat moshe offers this 'vort on our
parsha mee'kaitz :
Yehuda tells Yosef at the end of the parsha "hinnenu avadim laadoni
gam anachnu....". The medrash comments on the first pasuk of next week's
parsha vayeegash "vayeegash ailav yehuda vayomer bee adonee....davar
beaznei adoni....." - Yehuda intimated secretly to Yosef that he would
tell on him to Pharoah since he (Yosef) swore falsely on Pharoah's
name when he said "chay paroh" ("chay paroh ki meraglim atem").
The medrash is perplexing. Why does Yehuda originally reconcile himself
to the fact that all the brothers will become slaves to Yosef ; why
does he only threaten Yosef (that he'll tell Pharoah that he swore
falsely by his name) when Yosef says that he only wants the culprit
(Benjamin) as a slave "ve'atem alue leshalom el avichem"?
Now concerning the oath that Yosef made of "chay paroh ki meraglim atem"
that in and of itself is not to be considered a false swearing since
Yosef conditioned it on them not bringing the youngest brother back
with them . The only point at which Yosef could have been accused of
swearing falsely by Yehuda was in his words "im taitzu mee'ze...
ki im bvoh achichem hakaton...." since in truth he let the brothers
all go back home, with the exception of Shimon, before Binyamin came
down to Egypt. Now whether this could be considered swearing falsely
or not depends what Yosef meant when he said "im taitzu mee,ze" -
did he mean "im taitzu koolchem (all of you) mee'ze" or not ? If
he meant "all of you" may not leave until Binyamin is brought here then
Yosef did not swear falsely since he kept Shimon in Egypt until the
brothers returned. But if Yosef meant "not a one of you" may leave
until... then he did transgress his oath.
In Gittin , beginning of perek ha'omer, we find : "One who says to
ten people "kees'vu u'tenu" [concerning giving a get] .....".
On this the gemara inquires, does he mean all ten people have to write
and sign it or are two of them alone sufficient ?
So apparently , in a case like this,we're not sure what the person's
intent is - does he mean all of the people present or only some of them?
In any event, being that using a plural form of the verb can mean "all
of you" Yosef could have argued that "chay paroh .. im taitzu mee'ze"
meant "I won't let all of you leave" and that he didn't break his
promise since he made Shimon stay behind. But when Yosef said
"asher neemtzah hagaveeah beyado hoo yeeyeh lee le'eved ve'atem
alu le'shalom..." it was clear that he used a plural form of the
verb (ve'atem ALU) even when he didn't mean to include everyone. This
then meant that when Yosef said "chay paroh im taitzu mee'ze" he didn't
mean to include all of them, but rather he meant to say "not a one of you
shall leave until your youngest brother comes to Egypt" - an oath we know
he broke since, with the exception of Shimon, he let them all return to
Cannan before Binyamin was brought down to Egypt. Therefore, only at this
point in time was Yehuda able to go over to Yosef and threaten him that
if Yosef didn't let them all go he would tell Pharoah he had swore falsely
in Pharoah's name. Thus, only after Yosef said "ve'atem alu le'shalom"
did it become appropriate for the verse "va'yee'gash ailav Yehuda..." .
Shabbat shalom & a happy Chanukah to everyone.
ari
ari@columbia-20.arpa
arig@cvl.arpasher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher) (12/12/85)
Because of disk space limitations net.religion.jewish will cease to be distributed on my machine and indeed in all the western new york region. There are good reasons for doing this. What I want is to at least get mailed to me the Dvar Torah stuff. Of all of net.religion.jewish I find that this stuff is the part I'd least like to do without. Also is there a mailing list on jewish affairs? I would expect that net.religion.jewish will disapear from many machines due to restrictions on disk space and phone lines and so a mailing list will probably get a much wider audience. BTW it will probably be pointless to respond to me via the news seeing as I will not be receiving it for much longer. -David Sher sher@rochester (ARPA) seismo!rochester!sher (UUCP) -- -David Sher sher@rochester seismo!rochester!sher
joel@rochester.UUCP (Joel Seiferas) (12/12/85)
I appreciate the divrei Torah, too. We could continue to read them here at Rochester if there were a "net.micro.divrei", say -:).
sher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher) (12/13/85)
It turns out that it was a false alarm and net.religion.jewish will for the time being continue to be supplied to rochester and the wny area. (And who says prayers are not answered?) I am sorry for any inconvinience my message may have put you or your computers or the phone system in general. -David -- -David Sher sher@rochester seismo!rochester!sher