Pardes

[onionsoupmix]

If you just read chumash Bereishis straight, it sounds like the quite a few of the avos and their children were morally corrupt and petty people. Yaakov acquires his blessings from his father through lying. Leah and Rochel keep fighting over who has more children and whom Yaakov will sleep with tonight, Rochel steals the terafim,Shimon and Levi

Comments

[elcour]

In all fairness, I don't think you do chumash Bereishis' figures justice in your first paragraph

[onionsoupmix]

Jacob acquires his blessings from his father in order to survive, because his father is the Patriarch, who is directly connected to God and whose blessing will give only one of the rival brothers this superpower over the other.

No evidence that this is what he was thinking nor that this is what occurred. Survival was not at stake. Both of the brothers survive and the language of the blessings does not condemn one child to eternal suffering and the other to eternal bliss. It does say that one will rule over the other, but many aspects of their brachos did not come true. Eisav's curse about having to serve his brother did not come true and neither did Yaakov's bracha about ruling over many nations.

Rachel took the terafim so they could not help her father against Jacob.
Shimon and Levi massacre Shechem to avenge (erase, in fact) the trail of impurity cast over their sister; as she belongs to their family, it is a shadow cast upon the whole clan.All of these things could be true, but they are still wrong and in the case of Shimon

[ymarkov]

still wrong and in the case of Shimon and Levi, evil
Par for the course for the times, I suspect. More people have been killed over lesser slights. (Sh'khem was not a city by today's standards - a few hundred people at most.)

But sadly, I have no idea what this means.
elcour is IMHO right about models. Darshanim pursue models. How can all (or most) of them be true? The Mikra is holy. What this means is that it is "nitna le-daresh", given for interpretation. There is "what really happened", which in most cases is not really ascertainable. Then, and more importantly, there is "what do we learn from this?" Models of the latter are offered for judgment of k'lal Yisrael and are accepted or rejected. In the former case, they become "true", even if they contradict.

[onionsoupmix]

There is "what really happened", which in most cases is not really ascertainable

Wait, this means that you believe that the events in chumash bereishis may have not really happen the way they are explained? And the important thing is what we can learn from it? You must be one of those new Reform-odox Jews or something...

Also, I don't know that I can learn something meaningful from all these stories in chumash bereishis. Akeidas Yitzhak is easy. Cain and Hevel is easy. What did you personally learn from the story of the dudaim? Reuven moving the beds? Shimon and Levi's massacre of Shchem? Rochel stealing the terafim? Avraham and Yitzhak hiding their wives when they go abroad?

[anonymous]

I'm not sure that making major mistakes necessarily makes one a morally corrupt person, from the perspective of one's entire life. I've always considered the essential thing about Yehudah to be that he does these things, like condemning Tamar and selling his brother, but then is able not only to come to realize that he was wrong but to admit it publicly and do what he can to fix the problem. When he tells Joseph how Binyamin is so much more important to their father than any of the rest of them, he has made peace with the fact of his father's favoritism, and does what he can to protect Yaakov's feelings even though Yaakov is still openly more concerned about the welfare of one of his children than the others. Yaakov may not have learned from his parents' mistakes in picking favorites, but Yehudah has learned from his own mistakes. This loses all of its punch if he never made any mistakes in the first place

[onionsoupmix]

Interesting argument. I think that you are correct in the case of those who acknowledge their mistakes and attempt to fix the problem, like Yehuda. But what about those who don't, such as Shimon & Levi?

[bringing_peace]

1. Yaakov BOUGHT the bechora, so the blessing was his. (such sales were common in those days - red about it in "History of the Jews.")Why he didn't inform his father of the sale is a different question

[onionsoupmix]

It doesn't say in Chumash that Reuven slept w/ Bilha - this is what commentaries write.
35:22

Terafim - Rochel was protecting her husband & her children from her father.

How is stealing the terafim protecting anyone from Lavan? In fact, it resulted in the opposite effect- Lavan ended up chasing after them to find the terafim.

Yehuda didn't go visiting harlots. He came across one on his way and couldn't withstand the urge (not great, but rather different). He also admitted to what he did when confronted w/ facts - which gives him rather a lot of credit.Not great, but rather different? Say you open up the newspaper tomorrow and read about some great gadol in Eretz Yisroel who admits that he couldn't withstand the urge to sleep with a hooker when he happened to meet her. Would you think " Oh,not great, but just different" ? What if you found out that he was one of those people who advocated killing off all hookers by burning them? Okay, so now he admitted his hypocrisy, but would you still think he deserves a lot of credit? Really,

[ymarkov]

Let's give Yehuda a break - he was not "advocating killing off all hookers". His daughter-in-law was not a free woman who was eligible to engage in such behavior by the standard of the times. Once he realized that she had forced him into [pre-Tora style] yibum (rather than had sex outside the family), he canceled his order.

Rakhel may have thought that Lavan could use his terafim to divine their whereabouts. (It's interesting that Yakov buried, rather than burned them, after the Shkhem affair.)

[onionsoupmix]

Wait, so you think that if Yehuda had just found out about some other Jewish woman, one who was not related to him, he would have been fine with it?

And yeah, clarify for me why his daughter in law could not engage in such behavior under penalty of death while he was free to do as he pleased. Is that just the standard of the times? In which case, what are we to learn from it for our times?

Off Topic

[anonymous]

http://imamother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=474417&sid=a970610d816c7d15cff780b354eb323d#474417

The latest from your fave group.

[llennhoff]

Contemporary rabbonim (especially the non-Orthodox, but including those like Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks) see in Bereshit an opportunity to learn about family dynamics.

One aspect I find interesting is the relationship between pairs of brothers. In the beginning of Bereshit the Cayn - Hevel relationship goes badly wrong, and the elder kills the younger. Throughout the book the younger son is favored and the older reacts badly, until the very end. At the conclusion of Genesis, Jacob gives the primary blessing to Joseph's younger son, and the older son implicitly consents. This ends the theme - the next pair of brothers are Moshe and Aaron, and they have no problem with the younger son ranking higher.

In general I agree with one of the comments downthread. There are 70 faces to the torah, and they needn't be consistent. The fact that there are only 70 rather than an infinite number implies that there are wrong interpretations that can be made as well. Our job is to find and learn the correct interpretations.