Daf 4a - Dot to Dot
Ein Yaakov
- The World of Talmudic Aggada
By Dr.
Moshe Simon-Shoshan
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In loving memory of Channa Schreiber (Channa Rivka bat Yosef v' Yocheved) z"l,
with wishes for consolation and comfort to her dear children
Yossi and Mona, Yitzchak and Carmit, and their families,
along with all who mourn for Tzion and Yerushalayim.
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Lecture
11: Daf 4a
Dot to Dot
The next
section continues to discuss King David. Previously, the Gemara examined the
verse in which David declares, I am a chasid. We noted at the time,
that, strictly speaking, in Biblical Hebrew, the term chasid does not
mean a righteous person, but, rather, a loyal follower. As such, Davids
statement is not as self-aggrandizing as it may first appear. Nevertheless,
there is still something troubling about a great person such as David boasting
about his good qualities and seeming to express his confidence that God will
take care of him as a result. Now, the Gemara questions whether or not David
made such a claim:
But how could
David call himself pious?
It is not
written:
Had I not [lulei]
the confidence that
I would enjoy
the good reward of the Lord in the land of the living; (Tehillim
27:13)
and a Tanna
taught in the name of R. Yosi:
Why are there
dots upon the world 'lulei'?
David spoke
before the Holy One, blessed be He:
'Master of
the world,
I am sure
that you will pay a good reward to the righteous in the world to come, but I do
not know whether I am among them.
[He was
afraid that] some sin might cause [his exclusion].
In order to
understand this passage, we need some background information. According to
scribal tradition, words and letters written with little dots on top of them are
scattered throughout the Bible. What is the meaning of these dots? In ancient
Hebrew manuscripts, a dot over a word means that it is a mistake and should be
erased, much like a strikethrough in a modern text. Normally, this means that
when someone copies the text, those letters or words should be eliminated and
not copied. In the case of the Bible, however, the tradition is for scribes to
copy the letters with the dots on top of them. The reason for this peculiar
practice is explained in an important passage in Avot De-rabi Natan
(Version A, Chapter 34), which is an expansion of Pirkei Avot:
Why (are
these dots in the Torah)?
For Ezra said
as follows:
If Elijah
comes to me and says,
Why did you
write it thus?
I will say to
him,
I have
already placed dots on them.
And if he
says to me,
You wrote
properly,
I will remove
the dots from them.
In other
words, when Ezra the scribe was preparing an authoritative edition of the Torah,
he could not determine the correct reading in some places. In these cases, Ezra
was caught in a bind. If he deleted the words in question, he might be held
responsible in heaven for removing words from the Torah. If he did not delete
the words, he might be held responsible in heaven for adding words to the Torah.
Ezras compromise was to leave the words, but with dots over them, somewhat
similar to an asterisk next to a homerun record. In other words, dots in the
Torah, and by extension the entire Bible, mark questionable words, that may be
incorrect.
The
implications of this explanation should not be underestimated. It means that we
have evidence from the text of the Torah, as well as from an important rabbinic
work, that the text of the Bible is not exactly identical to the text that was
first written down by Moshe and then later, the prophets and holy authors. It is
simply the best text available, because it was meticulously preserved by Ezra
and the other scribes. Minor errors, however, may still have crept in. With
regard to the Torah, this would appear to contradict Maimonides eighth
principle of faith, which is generally understood to assert that our Torah
scrolls are identical to the ones Moshe Rabbeinu wrote. Indeed, R. Moshe
Feinstein found this passage so scandalous that he declared it to be a heretical
interpolation! (Igrot Moshe YD 3:114). However, there is no real basis
for this claim. R. Eliezer Waldenberg, the Tzitz Eliezer, took R. Moshe
Feinstein to task for declaring disturbing passages in the writings of great
rabbis to be interpolations or forgeries. R. Waldenberg argues that such
emendation is not the traditional way of dealing with difficult texts (Tzitz
Eliezer 14:100). I would add that editing texts that do not conform to our
preconceived notions threatens the integrity of our tradition. Problematic
midrashim should also be left in the text and perhaps marked with an
asterisk.
Returning to
our Gemara, the word lulei, if not, in Tehillim 27:13, has dots
on top of it. These dots seem to suggest
an alternative reading which eliminates that word. Without the dots, the text
would be translated as something like I have the confidence that I will enjoy
the good reward of the Lord in the land of the living. This reading has an
advantage, because the use of the term lulei is problematic here.
Usually, this term is used in sentences with two clauses which fit the following
pattern, If not for X, then Y (generally a bad thing) would have happened. For
instance, in Tehillim 119:92, we read: Were it not for (lulei)
Your Torah my delight/ Then (az) I would have perished in my affliction.
Here, however, the sentence opens, if not for (lulei)
, but never goes
on to tell us what would have happened if not for his confidence that he would
ultimately enjoy Gods goodness. If we accept the reading suggested by the dots,
the verse is quite straightforward. Once we delete the word lulei, we no
longer have the first half of a conditional phrase, but a complete declarative
statement.
However, R.
Yosi cited in our Gemara clearly does not understand the dots over lulei
in this way. Far from making Davids words more certain, as we have argued, R.
Yosi argues that these dots suggest that David lacks confidence in his future
divine reward. How does R. Yosi get to this reading of the dots?
Rashi here
says that the dots decrease the meaning of the verse, so that it means that it
was not clear to him that he would see the goodness of God. In other words,
Rashi sees the dots as impacting the text, not on the graphic, but on the
semantic level. In this case, according to R. Yosi, the dots do not erase the
letters under them, but, rather, reduce the meaning of the words that they mark.
Instead of a statement of Davids firm belief, we now read it as a statement of
his doubts.
The Maharsha,
R. Shmuel Eidels (15551631), the great Polish Talmudist who wrote an important
commentary on both the aggadic and halakhic parts of the Talmud, has a different
approach. He focuses on the fact that not all the letters in the word lulei
have dots on them. The letter vav does not have a dot on top of it. The
simple explanation for this is probably that the vav is not truly a
letter but an expendable em kriya, or vowel marker. The Maharsha,
however, calls into play a technical rule of dot interpretation which states
that if the majority of the letters are dotted, then we read the verse as if the
undotted letter or letters are removed. In this case, we are left with
the letters lamed, lamed, alef. The Maharsha suggests that we are meant
to read in place of lulei the word lo, no or not." In this interpretation, the verse
would read, I did not have confidence that I will enjoy the good reward
of the Lord in the land of the living, expressing Davids doubt about his
ultimate reward.
R. Yosi
explains Davids doubts by placing the following words into his mouth, Master
of the world, I am sure that you will pay a good reward to the righteous in the
world to come, but I do not know whether I am among them. R. Yosi explains: [He
was afraid that] some sin might cause [his exclusion]. With these lines, the
Gemara inaugurates its discussion of theodicy, the justification of Gods ways
to man. Generally, theodicy deals with the question of, Why do bad things
happen to good people? Soon, this question will dominate the Gemaras concerns.
Now, however, the Gemara is concerned with a more narrow issue: Why are Divine
promises not always fulfilled? David
makes it clear that we should not think that God does not fulfill His promises.
The righteous will be rewarded. Why then is he worried that he might not receive
his reward? The Gemara seems to take for granted that David was, by and large,
righteous. The concern here is that some sin might cause (shema yigrom ha-chet) him not
to be rewarded. As I understand this, the principle of
garam ha-chet
asserts that indeed God fulfills his promises. However, a sin, not
necessarily a grievous one, can be grounds for God not fulfilling his promise.
Hence, human agency can prevent the fulfillment of the Divine promise, even if
it may be difficult for us to pinpoint exactly which human action gave God
grounds for withdrawing His promise.
The Gemara now presents two more instances of
garam ha-chet
in the Bible:
This conforms
to the following saying of R. Yaakov b. Iddi.
For R. Yaakov
b. Iddi pointed to a contradiction.
One verse
reads:
And behold, I
am with thee,
and will keep
thee whithersoever thou goest (Bereishit 28:15),
and the other
verse reads:
Then Yaakov
was greatly afraid! (ibid 32:8)
[The answer
is that]
he thought
that some sin might cause [God's promise not to be fulfilled].
Similarly it
has been taught:
Till Thy
people pass over, O Lord,
till the
people pass over that Thou hast gotten (Shemot 15:6).
'Till Thy
people pass over, O Lord':
this is the first entry [into the Land].
'Till the
people pass over that Thou hast gotten':
this is the
second entry.
Hence the
Sages say:
The intention
was to perform a miracle for Israel in the days of Ezra,
even as it
was performed for them in the days of Yehoshua bin Nun,
but sin
caused [the miracle to be withheld].
First we have
the case of Yaakov. God explicitly promised Yaakov that He would protect him.
Yet Yaakov was afraid when he faced Esav. Did Yaakov lack faith in Gods
promise? Rather, Gods promise may be invalidated by sin. Thus Yaakov could not
rely on Gods protection, because it is always possible that some sin had left
him unprotected.
Similarly,
the Rabbis interpret the double reference to Israels passing over as
referring to Israels entry to the land both under Yehoshua, and under Ezra
following the Babylonian exile. This reading suggests that the two entrances are
equivalent, and the Gemara interprets this to mean that God is promising similar
miracles for both entrances into the land. But we know that actually, the
entrance under Yehoshua was full of miracles, and the entrance under Ezra was
not miraculous at all. Could God have failed to fulfill His promise? Once again,
the answer is that Gods promises are subject to cancellation due to sin. Hence
God did not send miracles in the time of Ezra because some sins of the people
invalidated the biblical promise.
This passage
concludes the Gemaras extended discussion of King David. As we have seen, David
plays multiple roles in the rabbinic imagination. He is the ideal rabbi, but he
also may represent the Exilarch or Patriarch. He is the ideal king, and also a
commentator on Divine justice.
After a
hard days work
The next
section in the Ein Yaakov is just a few lines after the discussion of
sins and providence. This baraita chronicles the proper way for a person
to spend his evening hours:
For so it has
been taught:
The Sages
made a fence for their words
so that a
man, on returning home from the field in the evening,
should not
say:
I shall go
home,
eat a little,
drink a
little,
sleep a
little,
and then I
shall recite the Shema and the Tefilla,
and
meanwhile, sleep may overpower him,
and as a
result he will sleep the whole night.
Rather should
a man,
when
returning home from the field in the evening,
go to the
synagogue.
If he is used
to read the Bible,
let him read
the Bible,
and if he is
used to repeat the Mishna,
let him
repeat the Mishna,
and then let
him recite the Shema and say the Tefilla,
[go home] and
eat his meal and say the Grace.
And whosoever
transgresses the words of the Sages deserves to die.
This passage
presents two alternative scenarios for a man who comes home from a day of work
in the fields. The first scenario is presumably the more common one, though the
rabbis disapprove of it. The normal routine for a worker in those days, Jewish
or not, was presumably to come home around nightfall, eat the evening meal, and
go to sleep. The rabbis sought to change this evening routine. At the very
least, they wanted everyone to recite the Shema and say the Shemoneh
Esrei of Maariv. Given human nature, even individuals who sought to
fulfill the words of the rabbis would arrive home hungry and tired. They would
naturally want to eat dinner and rest a little before attending to their
religious duties. Inevitably, in many, if not most, cases, the poor working man
would be fast asleep for the night before he has a chance to pray. The Rabbis,
therefore, instituted an alternate evening routine, which is meant to ensure,
not only that a person fulfills his basic responsibilities, but that he observes
the commandments at an even higher level. Rather than go straight home after
work, a person should go to the synagogue, where he will not only pray,
presumably with the community, but he will also study some Torah at his own
level. Even the mundane act of eating dinner needs to be sanctified, as the
Rabbis stress, by saying Birkat Ha-mazon following the meal.
The passage
ends with the statement, And whosoever transgresses the words of the Sages
deserves to die. This seems like a rather harsh statement, especially given
that many biblical prohibitions do not warrant the death penalty. The Gemara,
however, is concerned with a slightly different issue:
Why this
difference that, in other cases, they do not say 'he deserves to die,'
and here they
do say 'he deserves to die'?
If you wish,
I can say
because here
there is danger of sleep overpowering him.
Or, if you
wish, I can say
because they
want to exclude the opinion of those who say that
the evening
prayer is only voluntary.
Therefore
they teach us that it is obligatory.
The Gemara
wants to know why this warning appears specifically here. After all, the Rabbis
regularly note all sorts of rabbinic enactments without attaching this menacing
caveat. The Gemara offers two answers. Both answers argue that the Rabbis added
this line here, because in this case, one might think that in fact a person is
not liable. The first answer suggests that extenuating circumstances, that a
person cannot resist the onset of sleep, justify relieving the worker of
liability if he should fail to pray before falling asleep. The Gemara here uses
the term ones, the usual halakhic term of exemption due to extenuating
circumstances.
The second
answer presumes that the reference to the death penalty specifically refers to
the failure to recite Maariv, the evening prayer. Elsewhere, the Talmud records a great
debate regarding whether the evening prayer is obligatory or only optional.
According to the great scholar of the history of prayer and liturgy, Ezra
Fliesher, this debate is linked to another debate about the model on which the
rabbinic institution of daily prayer is based. One opinion is that daily prayer
was modeled after the sacrifices. In this case, there should be only two
obligatory prayers, Shacharit and Mincha, just as there are only
two daily obligatory sacrifices. Furthermore, the evening is not a time for
sacrifices, and hence not a time for obligatory prayer. The other opinion is
that these prayers were modeled after the acts of the patriarchs, Avraham,
Yitzchak and Yaakov, who, according to the Midrash, set the precedent for
praying morning, afternoon and evening, respectively. Our baraita insists
that all people say Maariv, so it clearly holds that Maariv is
obligatory. It further emphasizes that Maariv is obligatory by stating
that one who fails to say this prayer is worthy of death.
Interestingly, while the Gemara ultimately rules that Maariv is optional,
collective practice over the generations has given it the status of a
requirement. However, as I understand it, since women never accepted this prayer
upon themselves, even authorities who rule that women are obligated in
Shacharit and Mincha still exempt them from saying Maariv.
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