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and found the following on Parshas Re'eh (11:26): רְאֵה, אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם--הַיּוֹם: בְּרָכָה, וּקְלָלָה. "Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse".Onkelos translates: חֲזוֹ, דַּאֲנָא יָהֵיב קֳדָמֵיכוֹן--יוֹמָא דֵּין: בִּרְכָן, וּלְוָטִין (no deviation from the original).
Targum Jonathan ben Uziel explains a blessing and a curse as בירכתא וחילופה, "a blessing and its opposite".
In the Sparks of Chassidus section, the following commentary is brought:
How could God, who is the very essence of good, issue a curse? Are we not taught, "No evil thing is issued from Above"? (Bereishis Rabah 51:3)Right? Wrong!
In truth, however, God does not issue curses at all, and only blessings are "issued from Above". The problem lies "below", in our ability to receive God's blessings. If a person is not a fitting receptacle for the goodness which God bestows upon him, he will simply be unable to accommodate God's blessings. The result will be that after its downward path through the spiritual worlds, the blessing is received in a way that appears, to our human eyes, as a curse (See Shaloh, Re'eh 374b). At least that is how it appears in the spiritually dampened moments of exile.
Thus, Onkelos, who authored his work amid the Babylonian exile, interpreted the word קללה as "curse" (see Classic questions). However, Targum Yehonoson wrote his commentary in the land of Israel during Temple times, when the average person could easily appreciate that "no evil thing is issued from Above". Thus, he rendered קללה as "substitute" (חילופא), indicating that God Himself only issues blessings, but that His blesings may later become "substituted" by something else.
And this also explains why, in the Messianic Era, we will not only forgive God for the sufferings of exile, but we will thank Him (see Isaiah 12:1), for then it will be evident how even God's "curses" were in fact blessings in disguise.
(Based on Likutei Sichus vol. 19, p. 13ff; vol. 4, p. 1091)
There is no Targum Jonathan ben Uziel on the Torah, only on the prophets as testified in the Talmud. The Targum Jonathan that we know is in reality the Targum Yerushalmi (the Jerusalemite Targum). The reason why the two got mixed up is probably a copyist error: he thought that ת"י (T"Y in English) was Targum Jonathan and not Targum Yerushalmi (both have the same abbreviation in Hebrew). That is also the reason why, in the academic world, this Targum is called "Pseudo-Jonathan".
So the whole shtickl Torah from the Rebbe was made out of whole cloth. Nice try, still. And a nice fantasy about the times of Mashiach, explaining away the age-old problem of how evil can exist in the face of a benevolent God.
During that same Shabbos, I had to sit through a shiur which had a surprising moment.
In Devarim 13:2-6, it says the following:
If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams--and he give thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spoke unto thee--saying: 'Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them'; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God putteth you to proof, to know whether ye do love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. After the LORD your God shall ye walk, and Him shall ye fear, and His commandments shall ye keep, and unto His voice shall ye hearken, and Him shall ye serve, and unto Him shall ye cleave. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken perversion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of bondage, to draw thee aside out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee.The good old passage about the commandment of killing false prophets, i.e. people that don't believe in your crap and decide to prophesize some more crap.
If you look up the Baal Haturim entry to כִּי-יָקוּם בְּקִרְבְּךָ in our chumashim, it says that בקרבך in Gematria is equivalent to זו האשה, which would mean that the false prophet in your midst is the woman.
Now, before we all start bashing the sages again (which they do deserve in e.g. the story of the garden of Eden where Eve is blamed for all our sorrows and in many passages in Tenach / the Talmud), the female discrimination in this case boils down to Christian censorship.
In the more elaborate Peirush haTur al Hatorah of the Baal Haturim himself, a note is made that the original gematria reads: כי יקום בקרבך נביא - זו האשה ובנה, 'THE woman and her son", obviously referring to the false Messiah Jesus and his mother Maria.
So to both the Rebbe and the Chazal-bashers: it ain't always that simple.
I don't understand the problem. Both the Targum Yerushalmi and Targum Yonatan were written in Israel. So the Rebbe's underlying point is the same, regardless of what he calls the pierush.
ReplyDeleteNope, his point is that Yerushalmi was written in times that the Beis Hamikdosh was still there. However, if you check your sources, you will see that Targum Yerushalmi was written between the 8th century earliest and latest 15th century.
ReplyDelete"people that don't believe in your crap"
ReplyDeleteCan you explain to me why I should believe in your crap - evolution. You can laugh at a snake talking in the garden of Eden, but I can laugh at worms turning into people.
Perhaps because UK understands your system and disagrees, whereas you clearly fail to understand anything about that which you criticize?
ReplyDelete