Wednesday, June 16, 2010

kvetching and more rashi

why do we always have to have 5-10 minutes of arguing/negotiation before we do chumash? it was the same with sarah. i say, let's do chumash. then maybe a negotiation about when. let's do it at this time, no at this time. back and forth. that's not what gets me.
then it's: "how many pesukim are we doing?" i say the number, and the whining, negotiating, metaphorical (and sometimes not-so-metaphorical) kicking and screaming begins.

as i said, we are in the middle of the toldos adam. easy shmeezy repetitive pesukim. so i tell chana today that we are doing 3 generations. (remember last time we did 2 and she did a mini hiss over it). so she starts in. so i said, "why does it have to be a negotiation and complaint every time?" it's like she asks, so that she can feel that it's too much, so that she can complain it's too much, then have the overwhelmingness of it all hover over her head during even the simplest of pesukim. i said, "how about i don't tell you how much, and we just start? i don't want to tell you when it starts this whole thing." i meant to get her actual input on an actual plan of how we can work this out. (other than "let's do fewer pesukim."). somehow, though, just my bringing it up diffused it so we started.

i reviewed the 5 words, which she nailed. yay! a few more days and i think we can do it only once in a while. then we did the first rashi. then the second rashi. she started muttering that she didn't want to do all the words. chana's personality is extremely anti-authority, so i decided it would be best if i gave in and let her not read the entire rashi. so she saw i thought about it, and agreed with her. she just didn't want to read the last word. that's the way she is. anti-authority. not anti-work. so she read the rashi, and then read the last word, too. only coz she didn't have to.

i had been wanting to translate this rashi for/with her. but there are a few complications. it is a drash, and i don't think she has enough grasp of pshat to comprehend a pshat/drash diyuk. the pasuk says "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man" and rashi says he started having children the day hashem created him. it's a short rashi and the words are not so complicated, and chana's been practicing reading it for a few days now. but i knew there would be 2 steps. 1. literal translation and 2. understanding.
and i thought understanding would be difficult.

but today we did chanoch, and she noticed that he lived MUCH shorter and naturally asked why, and why would hashem take him. so i know rashi addresses that. so i'm thinking about attacking that rashi. just have to figure out how.

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