Sunday, October 9, 2011
תולדות
In class this week, we learned about the word תולדות. We said that it could mean either "Stories" or "Children of". Honestly, most people do not learn ספר בראשית as in depth as we do here, so they do not understand the immense honor it is to have your story written down in the "stories" section. I know I didn't understand. Of course I knew that the people whose complete stories are told in Bereshit were wither very great people or they had stories that future generations could learn from. In our analysis of Sefer Bereshit, we found that there were many "mess-ups" in the various "batches" of people. The first mistake was the family of Adam and Chava. They were the first people created in the image of Hashem. They were also the first ones to violate a direct commandment from Hashem. Their story teaches us that defying a direct commandment from Hashem won't lead to anything good. The next mistake was their son Kayin. He was the first one to use the power of jealousy for evil. This particular incident was probably the source for "Don't covet" in the Ten Commandments. He was punished for his sin, but his descendants continued to defy Hashem. It was Adam and Chava's third son, Shet, who recognized Hashem and whose descendants include Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and Bnei Yisrael. Though Hashem also had to deal with Noach's generation and the generation of the Towel of Bavel, all of it eventually led to BNEI YISRAEL: the chosen people. Now it's our job to emulate the great deeds of our forefathers and avoid the mistakes of the "unchosen people".
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I agree with all but one thing here. You said that קין's jealousy is the probable source for he commandment of don't covet. I just want to point out that to covet something is not the same as to be jealous of someone. I a person covets something, he wants THAT specific thing. He doesn't just want one like it. He wants THAT one. When a person is jealous of someone else, they might want something that someone else has, but they probably don't care if it's that one or another one just like it. You might not agree, but that's what I think. If you don't agree, leave another comment and we cnan discuss this further :).
ReplyDeleteI also agree with most of what Sarah says except for "The first mistake was the family of Adam and Chava." I don't think that Adam and Chava were a mistake. Sinning is inevitable and Chava or Adam were bound to sin sooner or later. They didn't know right from wrong yet and they needed to sin to understand that Hashem is omnipotent and violating a direct commandment from Him will get them punished severely. It's kindof like saying you had a baby and the baby tripped you causing you to break a leg. That is an unfortunate event (and you should probably look where you're going and not just leave your baby on the ground unattended) but it doesn't mean the baby was a mistake. Without Adam and Chava, Shet would not have been born and neither would Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov or any of us.
ReplyDeleteMirel: Calm down :) When I said that this may be the source of the commandment of don't covet, I meant that this could have been the first clue that that commandment is necessary. I know that coveting and being jealous are two different things. Coveting is the more extreme form of jealousy. Maybe Hashem saw that Kayin acted out of jealousy and wanted to prevent similar incidents in the future.
ReplyDeleteAlyssa: When I said that the first mistake was the family of Adam and Chava, I meant that the mistake occurred within the family, not that their existence was a mistake. We do come from them physically, but it is their actions that I consider to be "mistakes" or "mess-ups".
I don't think that their mistakes caused horrible things because, yes they did make a mistake, but it led to our nation, if they hadn't made a mistake Hashem might never have known not to destroy the world, and many lessons wouldn't be learned, by their mistakes it teaches everyone something, Kayin may have been extremely jealous of something, but this led to the commandment. (we can look at their mistakes as a good thing)
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