Friday, January 2, 2009

Parshas Vayigash

For this weeks Parsha I was going to finally use the sefer my great grandfather wrote. There was just a little problem it was all in Hebrew. I figured I would try to see if I can read through the Hebrew, but it was too much for me. Maybe I’ll ask my father during the week to help me read through it, so that I can learn something from it.

I actually already wrote a Parsha post earlier this week in my Meme post, but I didn’t get to write the whole thing. So here it is:

Something To Say:

It will happen that when [Jacob] sees that the youth [Benjamin] is missing he will die (44:31).

In this parshah, Judah confronts Joseph, the viceroy of Egypth, who is unrecognized by his brothers, about the impending captivity of Benjamin the youngest.

R’ Menachem Mendel of Kotzk asks: Why did Judah worry only about Jacob’s distress? What about Benjamin’s wife and 10 children – why was Judah not worried that they, too would die because of their pain? The Kotzker explains that we learn from this verse that a child does not experience suffering for a parent to the extent that a parent suffers for a child’s pain.

I’ve never heard this before, and it was completely new to me. After reading this I thought to myself, that it makes sense for it to be like that, cause normally parents die first, and that’s why it’s so cruel when Natzi’s threatened to kill the parents children in front of the parent’s eyes.

Leora talks about Serach in her Parsha post, about how she relayed over the news that Yosef is still alive to Yaakov in gentle manner by saying it in a rhyme or with a harp. It reminded me of Parshas Vayishlach where the opposite happened and Timna was rejected in a not nice way.

5 comments:

Shorty said...

I agree. A child may not fully understand when a parent "isn't coming back". They have thoughts of "where did they go" and they may even blame themselves, that they did something wrong to make the parent go away.

Anonymous said...

I wish you lived on the next block so you could come visit us on Shabbat, and we could go through your grandfather's sefer together. My husband's Hebrew is quite good, especially when it comes to understanding the parsha, so I often can throw my questions at him.

Nice comparison between Serah and Timna.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

Shorty: true, I remember reading often that it happens and little children blame themselves. Often by divorce too, they think they did something wrong. But here it's saying that it's harder on the parent to loose their children, than it is for the child to loose their parent.

Leora: awww you are so nice! Thanx so much!
That's great that your husband has good Hebrew.

Thanks, inspired by your posts of course.

Anonymous said...

I love these weekly Parsha posts :)

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

KT: aww Thanx! Glad you like them!

Post a Comment

Click the "Subscribe" link to get e-mail follow up on comments.