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  • From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yorenu (teach US)
  • Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:43:48 -0700


If I have understood the very helpful comments of David, Yitzhak and Harold, I conclude:

1. Although the jussive rendering of "let him" is not possible for the Biblical text, it could have been intended by the rabbi (as a piece of wordplay).
2. The simple "his God will teach him" is also compatible with the standard reading (Israelites are rebellious and just want to avoid responsibility).
3. "His God will teach us" is also a possible reading, if we choose to leave the dagesh out of the nun in the Talmudic yorenu, and if we regard the shift from "him" (vav with nun energicum) to "us" (standard nun-vav suffix) as a piece of wordplay.

What Harold has shown me is that even in the case of "teach us", the assertion can still be understood as simple defiance, or in his words "daring God to teach them". (On the other hand, an interpretation more favorable to the Israelites would be opposed to reading "teach him", which would indeed indicate that they don't take responsibility even for their own inclinations.)

Therefore the translation is a matter of judgment and how one understands the Talmudic context. I assume that this is not the place for such argumentation. But I'll conclude with a few simple observations:

1. I regard the "Israelites" and "Knesset Yisrael" in the Talmudic passage as referring to all of us, not some "bad old Israelites" to whom we can feel morally superior.
2. The preceding gemara has suggested such a self-questioning perspective, as for example when Rav Ashi meets the bad old King Manasseh and discovers the king to be not only his superior in Torah scholarship but also in moral willpower. If Rav Ashi can't simply feel superior to Manasseh, then we can't simply feel superior to some "defiant Israelites" in a parable. Furthermore, the immediately preceding paragraph of the gemara concerns a context in Zechariah where the "Israelites" are the post-exilic audience who are going to reverse the bad behavior of their ancestors (as are we).
3. Harold's assertion that "the passage leads up to the discipline of the inclination" is questionable. What the passage more clearly leads up to is a request for instruction. Instead of defiance, we can just as well read it as an admission of the fact that we need God's help even for the carrying-out of repentance -- that even when it comes to sins that are clearly our own fault, we can't rely on ourselves alone to be able to overcome the feelings and misunderstandings that led to them. We need God even to find the way to God. Then the inclination to simple defiance can be harnessed and channeled into the kind of "challenge" to God that Abraham, Jacob and Moses engaged in.

That's how it strikes me anyway.

Thanks again,
Gabe Eisenstein
Dear Gabe,

Third-person pronominal suffixes augmented with nun are attached to the long prefix verb (the future/imperfective) and not to the short prefix verb (the jussive). Consequently, a jussive rendering like "let his God teach him" is completely out of the question. The word order of subject-verb with the prefix verb is also generally diagnostic of indicative vis-a-vis modal.

Regards,
David Kummerow.



I don't know why Soncino saw fit to translate it this way. I also don't trust
Artscroll. But it seems that the only way to read the verse is "teach him."
The direct context is the following little passage:
The prophet said to Israel: Repent!
Israel responded: We cannot overcome our evil inclinations which control us.
The prophet said: Discipline (ysrw) your inclinations!
Israel responded: "His god will teach him."

The back-and-forth between Isaiah and Israel is Israel's refusal to take the
prophets' advise and an attempt to throw the burden over to someone else.
Furthermore, the passage leads up to the discipline of the inclination. So
that "teach him" is the only appropriate reading.

Following David Kummerow's comments, I note that in Rabbinic Hebrew,
the regular imperfect expressed wishes:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OPQXid589wIC&pg=PA122&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1_1&sig=ACfU3U1F3yustFFLMFtAcsa0QrIFLq7Vng#PPA124,M1
If you search for jussives or tenses -
http://books.google.com/books?ei=zXxpSMeiLaayjAHkh_TgBQ&id=OPQXid589wIC&dq=fernandez+rabbinic+hebrew&q=tenses+OR+jussive#search
you can then look up some of the following pages which may also be of
interest:
104, 105, 175.

It therefore is rather sensible that a 3rd generation Talmudic authority would
read the verse as such.

Yitzhak Sapir


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:30:26 -0500
From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yorenu (teach US)
To: "b-hebrew-lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <486996C2.5000404 AT earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Gabe,
Your reading seems to be the standard one, in thinking that the point is just to illustrate the unrepentant and defiant nature of the Israelites (that's us!). And if that's all there is to it, you are right that there's no need to translate R.b.b.Hana's yorenu as "teach us" rather than "teach him" (as we agree to translate it in Isaiah). Nonetheless Soncino saw fit to translate "teach us" -- why?


HH: The reason would be a word play. The original comment is made about a farmer and his farming.
So the Israelites could take the forms of the words and make it a statement about themselves, daring
God to teach them. This really would amount to a declaration of unbelief in the threats of divine
judgment that Isaiah was making.







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