Wednesday, October 5, 2011

when a pshat oriented rashi turns out to not be pshat

today is rashi day. we did just shlishi today, and 3 new (difficult) pesukim. chana convinced me that even though there are a bunch of things in sheni that she doesn't know, she can do sheni tomorrow.

so for rashi, we did the large rashi about yaakov asking the shepherds why they are back so early. even though i had her read it 3x with nekudos, there are still a number of words she doesn't know, and when we go to the other chumash, there will be abbreviations like af al pi chen, that she still doesn't know nor know the translation.

she argued quite a bit about reading it 3x. but eventually did. i also chose the rashi on "rachel bitcha ketana." i thought that it was a decent pshat oriented rashi, which shows why certain nuances of the text are there. ie your daughter and the younger.

BUT chana made an excellent point. she said she does not understand the point of the rashi. lavan did not cheat yaakov in that way; he said that it was not done in this part of town to let the older marry before the younger. and how could he know lavan was a cheater anyway; he just met him. excellent points and i think it demonstrates that she is taking the torah seriously and it showed me there are a lot of midrashim that we take for granted that actually are difficult to understand and take as pshat.

(she also mused yesterday that she is glad in our society men don't marry more than one wife).

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