Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Deeper Insights Into the Pesach Haggadah - Part 3

okay oh we didn't quite finish the four cents on page 29. there were two questions that i asked which i didn't answer yesterday one is how does the haggadah say about the wicked son because he used the phrase to you he's excluding himself in the community which is a terrible thing when the wise son also says has commanded you which would sound as if he's also excluding himself from the community the answer is very simple look carefully what the wise son says page 29 did i say 27 i'm i'm a mistake i'm sorry 29. what is it that the y says that that cancels out that implication in his case he says hashem our god so he can't be excluding himself from the community well the question is if so why does he say he commanded you simple answer is he's not of age he's still a minor so you can't say that he's commanded he's not an adult okay that's the answer to that question and then the wise son mentions three different kinds of mitzvos now in english they're translated as testimonies decrees and ordinances in the hebrew testimonies is pretty good a dos comes from the word aid which means a witness these are symbolic commandments things that you do which carry a symbolic meaning in other words at least as far as we can naturally see in the world there's no particular impact of the action per se is just associated in one's mind with certain themes and therefore it has that significance decrees is a word for hukim and this is largely misunderstood the majority of authorities say that the word hok refers to a mitzvah whose meaning is not commonly known maybe it requires a capitalistic study or deep philosophical study to know it does not refer to commandments that have no meaning the considerable majority of commentators say that all commandments have meaning they all have reasons they all have explanations but some of them are not well known they're not in the part of the tradition that's widely studied and appreciated so it's a relative term and then ordinances i don't know what that word means in english actually in hebrew means fully logical commandments that means ones which even the torah had not been given we would know our binding that's where the talmud describes them now the wise son presents himself as someone who appreciates the differences between the various categories of commandments and is committed to all of them that's not obvious there are people who have subjective preferences for some of the others a person who prides his philosophical understanding is going to find it difficult to accept and perform a commandment for which he doesn't have a reason the attitude of the jewish tradition is too bad do it anyway there are people for whom religious performance is expressing my rejection of the world engaging in something which transcends the world they chafe precisely at the commandments that do have reasons indeed i have seen it written if a commandment has a reason that i can understand then it's not transcendent it can't really be divine it's only human to be really divine it's got to be nonsensical there's certainly a strand of christianity that holds that way so this why son says i accept all of them and that's that's what qualifies him as wise now the goddess says you should explain to him the law that you must not eat dessert after the final taste of the pastel hazard offering which by the way applies in our times after the last uh matzah there's not really a law it's like a customer or suggestion and it is by far the least significant element in the entire passover performance and what the god it means here is that you can explain to him everything even this not to the modern externally oriented person this seems like gigantic overkill this definitely seems ocd don't eat anything after the paschal sacrifice or the last matzah so that the taste of the monsters remain in your mouth all night long i mean they're going to see that as really obsessive-compulsive too bad too bad to the wise son you can teach him everything even that and he'll understand it he'll appreciate it and he'll value it that's the rough meaning of that okay we're together okay now the next page we have a number of short applications of the ideas we've discussed up until now each with its own style this first paragraph is tamudic style it's a good to analyze it in detail and to see how talludic logic works one might think that the obligation to discuss the exodus commences starts with the first day of the month of nisan one might have thought that but the third says you shall tell your son of that day so what you might have thought is wrong now i don't know why the english says but the hebrew says you might think same same phrase as the beginning that on that day could be understood to mean no that's not the right translation from the day period from the daytime it implies that but not both the words from the daytime therefore the torah adds it is because of this that hashem did so for me when it went out of egypt the pronoun this implies something tangible it implies something you point to it's a demonstrative in hebrew as it is in english thus you shall tell your son applies only the time when the matzah and moral lie before you end of the hebrew quote in your english translator puts in at the center we get for a problem to answer a problem that you'll see shortly that's what it says let's go through it again piece by piece one might think the obligation to discuss the exodus commences with the first day of the month of nisan why would one think that where is the gutter coming from that's a natural false thing false thought that will occur to a person the commentators say that moses started to instruct the jewish people about the laws pertaining to the exodus on the first day of the month so since that's when moses started the process and we are so to speak reliving that process perhaps we could start the discussion of the exodus from the beginning of the month and that would be a performance or a partial performance of the mitzvah to declare to your son the process of the exodus that's why it's a natural thought the torah however says you should tell your son on that day how does that contradict the natural thought how does that wipe it out because the the natural thought says what you might have thought what what from brush holders the key word is start keyword is start you might have thought to start from the beginning of the month and then and then of course continue you're starting then because moses started the process then as the process goes on and develops you'll go on to explain more and more about how it developed thousands of years ago right but that can't be right because the torah says 20 days no on that day implying only one day so it can't be a two-week process bang that knocks down the first idea now it says on that day hmm i wonder which day that might be it's a singular day maybe it's the 14th of nisan before the holiday begins what would lead someone to think that the 14th of nissan is a good candidate for the one day on which you tell the story of the exodus because next morning actually but what happened on the 14th say again no we left it left agent on the 15th the spectacular performance on the 14th the paschal sacrifice that's when they took a totem animal of the egyptians an animal that was sacred to the egyptians and slaughtered it in their faces and risked death because god told them that's what they have to do so the last plague of the ten was that on the 14th the 15th 50th it was later and indeed in the jewish set of commandments there is a drastic penalty for violating certain commandments which is called courage which means being cut off from god that penalty applies to only negative commandments that are violated with two exceptions there are two positive commandments which if they are violated carry the penalty of courage being cut off from god one of them is circumcision and one of them is the paschal sacrifice offering the paschal sacrifice not eating it not eating it on the night of the 15th that doesn't carry it or free to pass if someone exempt that exemption is not right absent himself from offering the paschal sacrifice on the 14th he's thereby cut off from god and by the way the day before they left egypt they did both they circumcised themselves and they offered the basketball sacrifice that was a precondition for being saved so since the the 14th carries that gigantic significance one might have thought to tell the story on the 14th on the afternoon of the 14th when the paschal sacrifice was offered it was offered in egypt the first time it was offered for a thousand plus years you know when when they had the temple okay that was another natural thought but that's wrong why is that wrong because the torah adds the following words it is because of this that hashem did so for me and it went out of egypt now i'm supposed to speak those words to the seder it's because of this the word this is a demonstrative someone can ask me what this are you talking about you know the paint on the walls the you know the the hagar in your hand what is that this you're referring to says the haggadah i'll tell you what it's referring to it's referring to the mata and the murder that's what it's referring to now when are the matsumura in front of you in the nighttime it's saturn that's when they're in front of you so obviously the tour is telling you to perform this recital at night yeah you with me well you shouldn't be with me because there's an obvious objection to this you can only recite the exodus from egypt when matsumura in the table the critic will ask well put it on the table in the afternoon put it on the table what the problem is it isn't a table to point to put it there how do you get from the matsumura on the table two it's got to be done at night who's stopping you from putting it on the table in the afternoon what kind of proof is that the answer is that you're pointing to something and saying for the sake of this god took me out of egypt now let's try it out for the sake of there being matza factories from chanukah and people are working 14 hours a day and they're producing crackers and crackers and crackers and sending the crackers all over the world that's why god took me out of egypt so there will be cracker factories that's probably not right that's probably not the reason why it took us out of egypt no he put it took us out of egypt to perform the mitzvah and the mitzvahs at night you're not pointing to physical crackers you're pointing to a mitzvah and the crackers are only a mitzvah at night now this shows you the way comedic logic works this is a good example of how kinetic logic works there's a natural thought and there's a contradiction of the natural thought and you have to read the natural thought precisely and read the the contradiction precisely to see how it contradicts it that's a good example of how community thought works way together fine now originally our ancestors were idol worshippers and now we spoke about omnipresent yesterday has brought us near to his service it is written joshua said to the people so says hashem god of israel your fathers i don't know where they're always from your fathers live beyond the euphrates river tarakh the father of abraham and the chor they served other gods then i took your father from beyond the river and i led him through all the land of known i multiplied his offspring gave him isaac to isaac i gave i gave jacob and esau mounts to the ear to inherit jacob and his children went down to egypt now this paragraph reflects a disagreement in the talmud what is the scope of the story of the exodus that we are required to tell one says the scope is from slavery to freedom the other says the scope is from idol worship to receiving the torah at sinai and serving god the second is more or inclusive than the first let's stop to analyze the difference of opinion here from slavery to freedom that's what happened we saw already at the beginning that the answer to the four questions of the four-fold question that this performance has one leg on the slavery side and went like on the freedom side that's what happened on the night of the 15th we had a transition from slavery to freedom so tell them to serve and stay in slavery and freedom is natural and it's obviously necessary what's the point of view of the other position he's adding context further in the in the past and further into the future if you'll tell me like a historian you can't understand an event unless you see its context you can't understand an event unless you have the the past beyond before it which led up to it and the future consequences of it i'm sympathetic to that suggestion but then how do you know where to draw the line you're going back to the tarek the father of abraham want to go back to noah why don't i go back to the flood and do you why not go back to the creation you're going forward to receiving the turret sinai go forward to entering the land of israel building the temple go forward to the messiah who told you where to draw the lines if you're adding more context obviously the second position holds that this additional context is minimal you can't understand the story of exodus from slavery to freedom unless you add in this context without this context you understand it at all further context could always deepen your understanding quite right but it's not necessary what he says is this goes back to those words with me in the evening when i spoke about freedom what he says is this is not a stroke in favor of human rights this is not a political matter this is not an anticipation of universal human rights in the united nations and all the rest this was an investment in the jewish people serving god at sinai as rashi explains in the verses there that i showed you the other night so the second authority says without this additional context from idol worship to to receiving the torah sinai you can't understand slavery to freedom at all you haven't achieved any understanding now the haggadah simply avoids the issue by putting them both in and that way doesn't take sides on the on the issue that's what this paragraph is doing here are we together okay now let's take a look at this in a little more detail look at what joshua says this is where he's just come into the land of israel you want to conquer it it was after the conquest 24. your fathers lived beyond the euphrates river terrace the father of abraham and the and they served other gods that is to say and served other gods abraham according to maimonides also served other gods you may have heard the midrash that abraham came to his recognition of god at the age of three maimonides says 48. another text to my mind he says 40. ramona says abraham served other gods by sacrificing to the sacrificing to them with his own hands he was an idol worshiper so abraham was really the first bottle tuba he was immersed in it and gradually with great struggle freed himself from it intellectually and with the courage behaviorally then i took your father ivor behind beyond the river and led him to the land of not multiplied his offspring and gave him isaac up to here it's a jewish story josh was speaking to the jewish people in the land of israel after they've conquered it giving them a historical survey watch how he ends to isaac i gave jacob and esau to esau i gave mount saiyar to inherit jacob his children went down to egypt then he goes on to tell the rest of the story of the history of the jewish people what is esau doing here what do i care about the fact that esau inherited seiyur why did joshua mention about to put that in you may have heard the phrase which is used in common common discussion and sometimes even in so-called scholarly context the jewish god what they probably mean is the jewish way of understanding god describing god thinking about god living with god but it's a dangerous phrase remember the god that we worship as people of the torah is the one creator of the whole universe and he is whether they know it or not the god of the chinese and the god of nigerians and the god of all the christians and the muslims and the hindus and the and the buddhists and all the rest so this passage this verse which talks about the development of the jewish people has a description of esau because the god who guided the development of the jewish people also gave say here to isa and he's monitoring and managing other parts of human history also one should not think that his activity is related only to what happens to us okay now another short paragraph bless is he who keeps his pledge to israel blessed is he for the holy one blessed he calculated the end of the bondage bondage in order to do as he said to our father abraham and the covenant between the parts so we'll have to figure out what does he calculated god doesn't need to do sums you know um and he calculated in order to do couldn't have done it without calculating what does the calculation accomplish as it is they said to abram or avraham didn't have the navy at that time know with a certainty that your offspring will be aliens in a land not their own they will serve them they will oppress them 400 years and also upon the nation whom they will serve i will execute and judgment they shall leave with great possessions this was said to abraham and it predicts the period of being strangers that predicts a period of slavery and oppression and it predicts an exodus with the destruction of the power anyway of the nation that enslaved them first of all i want to take a look at a detail this verse i'll show you something about how this verse is written and then i'll be able to explain what it means that god calculated know with certainty that your offspring will be aliens in a land not their own they will serve them they will oppress them 400 years those words are three-way ambiguous and as the previous cases i gave you they're structurally ambiguous i don't mean that oppressed could mean no no more marshmallows and so forth and so on they're three ways structurally ambiguous three ways grammatically ambiguous what's the ambiguity it says that there will be strangers in a land that's not their own yes so saying the same thing saying i think that i don't know if that's one but where's the ambiguity ambiguity means it could be read in like in this case in three different ways there are three different ways to read it with which give it different content i'll give you a hint what is it that's going to take 400 years there will be strangers okay the structure of the text is a b c 400 years here's the three ways in which you could read it one way we could read it is a b and c are going to happen and that whole process will take 400 years that's one way to read it here's another iterated a is going to happen how long will it take don't know five minutes five thousand years i'm not telling you i'm not committing myself but b and c will take 400 years here's another way to read it a is going to happen without specification b is going to happen without specification and c is going to take 400 years it depends on where you put the comma and the text bears all three readings which means god gave himself a certain amount of flexibility here how shall it be managed shall the oppression be 400 years shall the slavery and the oppression be 400 years or shall the period of being strangers and the slavery and the oppression all of them together last 400 years which of course would be the shortest extent right if all three together take only 400 years that's shorter than leaving out a and or b and giving them independent time and only c taking 400 years now this is what it means by saying that god calculated he sees them in egypt and he sees the suffering and he sees the assimilation he sees them losing their thread which way shall he take this verse shall he take the verse in the most inclusive or most or most exclusive way the longer way or the shorter way and in the end he took it in a shorter way because the 400 years i calculated as follows it says your descendants your offspring will be strangers in the land not their own abraham's child is isaac if you start from isaac's birth to the exodus you get exactly 400 years isaac was living in the land of canaan belonged to the canaanites to the extent that abraham had to purchase negotiate and purchase the burial site for sarah they were in possession of the land so the beginning of the aliens in the land not their own that starts when isaac is born then they go down to egypt they're certainly there in the land not their own the slavery and oppression lasted about 90 years there were 210 years in egypt the slavery and oppression lasted about 90 years and that's when they went out okay so that's what means calculate and there's a little hint to it in the actual numbers in the hebrew it says god calculated the case kate's is kuf zari does anybody know how to calculate the numerical value of kuftsari it's 190 okay now if you take 400 and and subtract 190 you're left with 210 10 is the exact number of years that they were in egypt altogether so he subtracted kate's from 490 and got 210 and when it was 210 years in egypt was over means end and he calculated the end okay so that's and this by the way is something that occurs uh not only here but on occasion that there'll be a verse in a prophecy which is ambiguous which means god is not so to speak building an absolute an absolute prediction but it's a prediction that could come true in several ways and he then chooses due to circumstances later which ways which way it should come true okay now bottom of the page it is this that has stood by our fathers and us for translation here is correct um well in the hebrew it's better read that not four fourths gives something away then again the translators pushing in his opinion what it means but the truth hebrew is that it is this that has stood by by our fathers and us that not only one has risen against us to annihilate us but in every generation they rise against us to annihilate us and the holy one blessed be he rescues us from their hand okay this also is ambiguous although the ambiguity here you have to push a little hard to see it starts it is this that has stood by our fathers and us what is this i think the natural intuitive way to read it is as follows it is this that has stood by our fathers and us look in every generation people have tried to destroy us annihilate us what has stood by us is that hashem that the holy one blessed be he rescues us from their hand his rescuing power is continuously there to save us from the danger that's what has stood by our fathers in us that's one way to read it some commentators take the word this and apply it to the entire sentence which in english starts with the word for you know what has stood by us and guaranteed our survival that there have been attempts to annihilate us and god has saved us from them the attempts to annihilate us also stood by us because when we seep too far into assimilation when we are absorbed too drastically into the culture of the peoples around us then anti-semitism and even an attempt to annihilate us is the antidote to that assimilation and helps to preserve the jewish nation think of the story of purim there was a gigantic failure of the jewish people during that time you can say if you like that's what provoked the decree of annihilation as a proposed punishment for it then they got out of it by doing shuba but you can also say that god anticipating that they will do chuva and be rescued from it used the threat of annihilation to wake them up to wake them up and shake them up to the point where they would be able to be saved from that debilitating assimilation so here is another structural ambiguity which and both sides of which i think are accurate to be ready either way okay together fine now comes a very interesting passage we are going to now go in through through the various details of the exodus and the way in which it is done here is the following there's a certain passage in the book of deuteronomy where a farmer brings his first fruits to the temple celebrating the beginning of the new crop and when he does so he's called upon to make a declaration and the beginning of that declaration is a summary of jewish history up to that point so what the god does is takes that declaration which the farmer makes and then take it apart word by word and show associated material from the book of exodus so as to fill in the background to those words in the book of deuteronomy now i think the careful reader will be wondering why do it that way listen we're telling the story of the exodus right so take out the book of exodus isn't that where the story of the exodus is sure just read the book of exodus you know the first 15 chapters or so just read it and then you'll have it why do it in this peculiar way where you start with some a short extract from the book of deuteronomy and take each word it takes each word and associated with passages from the book of exodus why do it that way now you could answer that's the structure of jewish learning comparing text to one place or another analyzing explaining you could say that you could say that i think there's another another point here what's the attitude who is it that's bringing his first fruits to jerusalem it's a jewish farmer someone who inherited his land from his father from grandfather great-grandfather he's living in peace including your prosperity things are going well it's got a well-functioning government it's got god's leadership through the king and the priests and the prophets and he's doing a retrospective isn't that the position of the person in the at the seder he's doing a retrospective he's telling a story about what happened to his ancestors so the goddess chooses a passage which is a retrospective where the person who recites it is telling a story about what happened to his ancestors and uses that as the text for our description here i think that works out fairly nicely okay um now the haggadah introduces this text within with an exhortation and this exhortation needs a little work go and learn what love under aramean attempted to do to our father jacob for pharaoh decreed only against the males and love and attempted to uproot everything as it is said and now starts the passage now first of all i want to make a kind of specialist comment here go and learn our literature has phraseology for inviting someone to analyze something study something in the babylonian talmud it's tashma tashima means come and hear in the jerusalem talmud and the zohar it's means come and see the author of this text knew both of them the other knew both of them if he says go out and learn he's telling you something else this is not a comment here it's not a come and see it's a go and it's go out not just go it's not lake it's say go out and here did you just come in here and come and see it's a long story i'm not going to go into that now but i think the at least the surface implication here is what you're going to learn now is something that's not obvious you may have to leave behind your normal intuitions and your normal interpretive categories because what you're going to be told may be something that's hard to assimilate and you have to be suspicious about your background information to to be able to to deal with it and what it says is lovan attempted to uproot everything whereas pharaoh decreed only against the males well okay pharaoh's agreed on the males we know that at a certain point pharaoh said drown all the newborn males in the river where do you see that lavan attempted to uproot everything loving was a nasty guy no question about it jacob worked for love him for seven years to marry right rocco and he substituted leia and then they had to work another seven years and then laughing says please i see you made become maybe successful don't leave me and jacob says what should i earn for my substance livelihood and make a deal and love and cheats him on the deal and six years later loving turns against him and jacob runs and okay he's a nasty guy okay he he wanted money and he cheated jacob and he wanted to take it back and where do you see that he wanted to upboot everything well when lovin catches up with jacob and they have a disputation and lovin um shall i say well if i say in cautiously that would imply that he's normally cautious which isn't true um says i have the strength of my hand to do you harm is these are my children and grandchildren i wouldn't do anything to them so why did you say you had in your hands the power to do them evil was he anticipating wiping them all out his own grandchildren probably not so where do you see a hint that love on wanted to upload everything the answer is that he wanted to keep jacob with him he wanted to keep jacob with him lovin's attitude towards jacob is you're a dreamer you're a dreamer you're not in contact with the real world you have your head in the clouds and your feet in the clouds you're lost you're lost you have your dreams the girls your wives are my daughters the children your children are my grandchildren you're living in my country in my culture will drown you will swamp you you'll die with your dreams and the rest of the family that you're building will belong to me that was the plan and that's what jacob avoided by leaving him the oral tradition says that it was decreed 400 years being strange it's in a foreign land it doesn't say where nowhere in that prediction does it say egypt it could have been in the quran with lovan and his culture for the whole 400 years god took us out of there because we'd have been swamped we would have lost we would have been absorbed and swallowed took us out to egypt where the physical subjugation together with the foreign culture was not as virulent not as strong and threatening as it was with lover that's something which requires a certain amount of ability to see beyond the obvious and the surface and that's why i think the haggard says go out and learn this is something which you can't just see on the surface and as a matter of fact the next verse is structurally ambiguous and the god is taking it one way whereas it could be taken another way here it's also ambiguous in terms of the terminology so let's start an aramean attempted to destroy my father you see the first line on the page love honest and aramian so now the verse that's an introduction to the verse which says and aramian attempted to destroy my father and he descended to egypt and sojourned there with few people and became a nation great mighty numerous now when the torah tells a story and has a sequence of events it's a story in chronological order but often enough it's not just chronic order when the torah says a happened and b happened that c happened it means a led to b and b led to c a was par part of the reason why b happened b is by the reason why c happened here an armenian attempt to destroy my father then he descended to egypt there were a lot of years in between he left lovan came back to israel decades went by before he went down to egypt if the verse says and i mean to turn destroy my father and he descended to egypt that means there's a connection that's the connection that i just told you because we wouldn't have survived the challenge of being in love in and territory so egypt was the substitute so instead when god took us engineered that jacob should leave and tell them by the way god told them to leave when god engineered that he should leave so that was a prelude to going down to egypt and that's why it happened so that's what the verse indicates now i just want to point out commentators discussed this the words in hebrew are me or vad avi comes from a verb to destroy and avi is the object of destroy so destroy my father well he didn't really he tried that's not unacceptable in terms of understanding a biblical verse but if we read it read another way my father was a wandering aramian ovate can also mean to wander and it can mean avi was an aramis of eight and wandering aramia so here again you have to look beneath the surface if you are inclined to read it as my father was wondering i mean this verse will tell you nothing about lovin when we've heard a love on but it can be read the other way as well okay he descended to egypt compelled by the divine decree which is written in the verses here the haggadah doesn't quote those verses but just points out that the descent was not voluntary the verse that he's quoting from deuteronomy doesn't make it clear whether it was voluntary or not so i got a comment that it wasn't voluntary he sojourned there to sojourn means to um be in that environment but there are other verbs for taking up residence becoming a citizen and they aren't used in this verse so the hagora comments this teaches us that our father jacob did not send egypt to settle but only to soldier and temporarily that was his purpose in going there it ended up being 210 years that changed at a certain point in time but that wasn't his purpose as it says they the sons of jacob said to pharaoh we have come to sojourn in the land because there's no pasture for the flocks of your servants because the famine is severe the land of canaan and now please let your servants dwell in the land of goshen it does say dwell but having explained they came to sojourn the indication is that it should be temporary with few people with 70 persons your forefathers descended to egypt and now hashem has made you as numerous as the stars of the heavens now these words require two points of explanation how many people left egypt how many jews left egypt well we know the census that was taken of males over the age of 20 was 600 000. if you assume a roughly equal number of females that's a million two hundred thousand since it was an expanding population you should have a comparably large number of children so i'm rounding off roughly to about 3 million is that credible that you go from 70 to 3 million in 210 years isn't that it died also no that's after the 80 died i mean i don't know how many were there oh yes okay right right right yeah i'm very good so then between 15 million is it credible that you go from 70 to 15 million in 210 years that really bothered me until i sat down with a calculator guess what 210 years when you talk about population is seven generations taking generations 30 years that's a mean reproductive period from 20 to 40 from 20 to 40. so let's see how many descendants must each person have to go from 70 it's not really 70 because they were the wives also who were encountered but let's say 70 to 3 million in seven generations that means you're going to take the number of descendants of each person raise it to the seventh power and multiply by 70. well if you take about 4.7 you go from 70 to 3 million that's all you need do it on your calculator ah but as he pointed out that's only 20 what about 15 million that takes about 5.9 that's all seventh power is a gigantic multiplier it's a gigantic multiply so you don't have to rely on a miraculous explanation now true the midrash says that women gave birth to six at a time midrash is the midrash i'm just pointing out you don't need that midrash you're not leaning on an obvious miracle and this is typical by the way when you see things that look miraculous and if you are inclined to be embarrassed about miracles and so on and so on things that can't be explained naturally investigate them investigate them in detail and you often find that the appearance of something as miraculous and embarrassing is just a matter of poor calculation now in several places god promises the the patriarchs that your descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven oh the number of emails that i received in that subject we know the stars of heaven are 10 to the 20 or later figure is 10 to the 22 that's the one with 22 zeros the jewish people never reach that and never will reach that they can't be that many people so you know what are you going to say about that that prediction that bothered me for a while actually for a long while until i came across a verse i think in the book of kings and then my blazing ignorance was brought home to me because it's a book in the verse of deuteronomy where the torah and the tanakh say that it already happened they say it already happened moses says this to the jewish people in the book of deuteronomy you have now become as numerous as the stars so since the promise is a statement in a book and the statement that it happens is a statement in the book then you have to take the book's point of view maybe the book's point of view is the visible stars maybe the book's point of view is as it said in the promise you won't be able to be counted like the stars won't be able to be counted and one of the reasons you can't count the stars have you ever seen the milky way if you haven't i recommend you look up pictures of it on google i mean no i recommend you actually see it in the sky one of the problems with counting the stars in the milky way is you're looking at the star and say okay one two three four uh did i count that one or didn't i count that one very hard to check them off in the sky they're crowded together you know it's hard to pick them apart there's an inherent difficulty in counting the stars and skies you see them with the naked eye whatever it means the idea that the text is prophesying that there will be 10 to the 22 jews is just nonsense that's not what it's prophesied it's prophesying what it calls as numerous as the stars as it stars in heaven and moses who did a census of the jewish people so he knew the number of the jewish people and he says they're as numerous as the stars of heaven that's what it means so that means there's no no problem here they became a nation this indicates that the jews were distinctive there the word for for nation in hebrew is goi and by the way that word is applied to us as well the word does not mean non-jew in common pilots people use it that way but that's not what it means and the tanaka never means that am means people as different because you can have a people which doesn't have its own internal political organization and independence and that won't be a is much better translated as nation the word for a body in particular for a corpse is with avov not with a base which means that it's something which has its own contours its own boundaries and it stands out as an individual that's what that's why it says we became a nation with the word it stands for something which is distinguished there as anybody is has its distinguished identity from any every other thing great and mighty well yeah gadol in hebrew just me really means big so often godola's translated as great what does great mean grade also means big there was a title for a piece of clothing called the great coat that meant your outer garment which goes over all your other clothes which means it's bigger than all the other clothes those won't you wouldn't fit inside great in english also means big but it also means important valuable the word godol in hebrew can mean both i'm not sure that in this context it means great and sense of important and valuable i think it just means big because the verse that's quoted here says the children of israel were fruitful increased greatly multiplied and became very very um very powerful lane was filled with them that refers to numerical numbers now rav they translate as numerous that's probably not not bad it's very interesting in english there's a distinction i suppose it's ancient hebrew also because it's just a logical distinction between what's called count nouns and mass nouns snow is a mass down peanuts is a count noun you can say how many peanuts you can't say how many snow sometimes you transfer mass into count by setting a a a unit how many feet of snow how many inches or how many how many you know cubic yards of snow then you have something to count sometimes the same material can be referred to both ways you have shoes and you have footwear you can't say how many footwear but you could say how many shoes footwear is just a mess a mass of stuff now the word rav in hebrew works both ways rav can apply to mass and rob can attack apply to count rob just means lots and lots so you could say lots and lots of shoes and lots and lots of footwear that's ambiguous you said either way rav is ambiguous they say numerous i don't know not sure the word rav doesn't commit itself to one sided line or the other side of the line at any rate it says i made you rav as the planets of the field now lots a lot which a lot like a lot of milk isn't numerous because you can't say how many milk and it the the comparison in the heat in the verse also i think is is ambiguous it says i made you as numerous now your helpful friendly translator writes the plants of the field but that's not what it says in hebrew and hebrew says is singular which sounds like herbage right so i made you lots like the growth in the field you grew and developed became charming beautiful a figure hair grown long but you were naked and bare i passed over you and saw you down trodden in your blood and i said to you actually downtrodden is not right ms possesses means you're sort of wallowing in the blood downtrodden makes it sound like somebody's pushing you down and and hurting you and and and injuring you no miss possesses just means you're sort of wallowing in the blood and i said amen wading through wading through walking through um and i said to you through your blood you lived through your blood i said to you through your blood sugar you live um the commentators see here what we referred to 30 minutes ago this was the blood of the paschal sacrifice and the blood of circumcision this was a glory a glory what the jewish people did at that time was one of the greatest successes in the whole history of judaism so the prophet says you'll live through that blood that blood is going to give you life spiritual life for forever now the figure of a person who's developed mature and without clothes is the figure of of something which isn't fully human fully human figures cover their bodies everywhere and um it means that there's something shall i say unfinished and primitive about the figure so you've achieved a certain maturity but the functionality that belongs to a mature being you don't have that's because you don't have the mitzvahs if the jewish people ready for the exodus without the torah that's why you're bare and naked but you have this blood you have the blood of those two mitzvos the blood of those two missiles which you are wallowing in which means it's adhering to your skin it means it's a covering for you that covering is a glorious covering and that covering will provide you the ability to survive and flourish in spiritual terms you