T'fillah #3

My thanks to Aaron Zimmer for bringing up this Gemara and pointing the way to understanding it

(בבלי תענית ה ע"ב)

רב נחמן ורבי יצחק הוו יתבי בסעודתא, אמר ליה רב נחמן לרבי יצחק: לימא מר מילתא!

...אמר ליה: הכי אמר רבי יוחנן: יעקב אבינו לא מת.

אמר ליה: וכי בכדי ספדו ספדניא וחנטו חנטייא וקברו קברייא?!

אמר ליה: מקרא אני דורש, שנאמר (ירמיהו ל') 'ואתה אל תירא עבדי יעקב נאם ה' ואל תחת ישראל, כי הנני מושיעך מרחוק ואת זרעך מארץ שבים' - מקיש הוא לזרעו, מה זרעו בחיים - אף הוא בחיים.

רשי

אף הוא בחיים - שיביאנו בגולה כדי לגאול את בניו לעיניו, כמו שמצינו במצרים: וירא ישראל וגו', ודרשינן: ישראל סבא

Rabbi Nachman and R. Yitzchak were having a meal together. R Nachman said to R Yitzchak say a piece of Torah! R Yitzchak responded: " R Yochanan said - Yakov Avinu never died". R Nachman said back- did they eulogize him, embalm him and bury him for nothing?
R Yitzchak said- I am giving a derash, as it says:
(Jeremiah 30:10) "Therefore don’t you be afraid, O Jacob my servant, says Hashem; neither be dismayed, Israel: for, behold, I will save you from afar, and your seed from the land of their captivity..." we compare Yakov to his seed, just as his seed is alive - so is Yakov alive.

Rashi: So is Yakov alive- Hashem will bring Yakov from exile to redeem his children before his eyes. As we note in the case of Egypt "Israel saw the great hand that Hashem displayed with Egypt" we doresh that it was Israel the elder who saw this event.

The focus of the Gemara is to bring out two startling derash insights, obscured by a simple minded approach to the world of peshat.

1. Yakov, though presented in peshat as biologically dead, in some important sense, is still "alive".

2. This "life" of Yakov expresses itself in observation of the Geula process, most specifically at Yam Suf where "Israel saw the great hand that Hashem displayed with Egypt".

Problems

1. If the peshat states that Yakov was biologically dead- in what sense is the derash saying he still alive?

2. If the peshat states that "Israel" refers to the generation of Yotzei Mitzraim observing the "great hand of Hashem" in what sense is derash saying Yakov was posthumously observing the event?

3. Why is Yakov alone among the Avot in being alive?

4.Why is Yakov's posthumous life reduced to observing the redemptive process?

5. Why is Yakov alone among the Avot in being shown the redemptive process?

"Life" of Peshat and "life" of Derash

According to Rashi, the key to understanding the derash insight lies in the principle of redemption. Yakov's post biological life reduces to observation of generations of his children, B'nei Yisrael, undergoing their experience of Geula as we see in Yirmiyahu:
"I will save you from afar, and your seed from the land of their captivity". What insight must we make to understand this act of Yakov observing redemption?

If we think about it, the pasuk chosen by chazal strongly indicates the answer. What does it mean that "Israel saw the hand of Hashem". We are too cavalier in our expectations about observing the acts of Hashem. A simplistic reading of the pshat reduces observation of the principle of Yad Hashem in history to trivial sense perception.This sort of trivializing of Chumash is an affront to the Chochmas Hashem. We do not expect to be able to observe "gravity", "dna" or any other principle of theoretical Chochma without deep and extensive prior education. How much more so is education necessary, if we are to observe the expression of the framework of Shem Hashem implied by "Hashem's hand striking the Egyptians"?! Observing that a tangible event is an effect of the principle of hasgacha requires a deep theoretical basis, a formulation of a shem hashem framework capable of application to the observable phenomenon.

It is this simplistic view that the derash seeks to shock us out of. In reality, observing Yad Hashem is anything but a triviality, it is an application of theoretical principles of the highest order. The derash accomplishes its wake up call by reminding us of the living mesorah of Yakov, the theoretical framework of Shem Hashem that allowed Geula to be a phenomenon we were capable of observing at all. Pharaoh was not able to make this observation, nor were the vast majority of Jews who died in Egypt.We observe Yad Hashem because of the theoretical framework of Yakov, we see because we sit on the shoulders of giants. We are now in a position to see the point that the derash is driving home regarding Yakov being alive. In the biological life sense of peshat, Yakov was dead, to be sure. In the derash's deeper life of mind, in the sense of being the giant upon whose shoulders observation rests, Yakov was anything but dead.


We have answered questions 1 and 2, let us now deal with the rest in Tefilla #4-

3. Why is Yakov alone among the Avot in being alive?

4.Why is Yakov's posthumous life reduced to observing the redemptive process?

5. Why is Yakov alone among the Avot in being shown the redemptive process?