Berakhot 039
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BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI
of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel
RABIN MISHNAH STUDY GROUP
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When Tavi, his servant, died he accepted condolences. They said to him, "Did you not teach us that one does not accept condolences on the death of servants?" He replied, "My servant, Tavi, was not like other servants: he was a worthy man."
EXPLANATIONS:
1:
Rambam, in his commentary on this mishnah, has one very short sentence: "All this is straightforward." I can't argue with that. 2: DISCUSSION:
Art Werschulz writes about my translation of the Hebrew word istenis:
In the Berakhot 038 Rabban Gamli'el was asked why he bathed the first night after his wife died. Your translation of his reason was, "I am not like most people; I am pampered." The translation I've generally seen for the word istenis had more of a connotation of "weak", "frail", or "having a delicate constitution." As Danny Siegel once pointed out (when he was doing a Shabbaton at our shul), the word is borrowed from the Greek. For instance, there's a neuromuscular disease called myasthenia gravis, a disease of the in which the auto-immune system wrongfully perceives the neuromuscular receptors as invaders, so that antibodies are made to attack them, the end result being that various muscle groups are weakened. I respond: The word istenis is certainly borrowed from the Greek ασθηνης, which means 'weak or ailing' according to Steinsaltz. Jastrow construes 'of feeble health, delicate, fastidious in diet'. Rambam, in his commentary, says that Rabban Gamli'el 'suffered from the cold'. Your guess is as good as mine! RAMBAM, GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO MISHNAH COMMENTARY
… Now we must consider the midrashic statements of the rabbis. You must understand that people react to them in three different ways.
The first group – and they are the vast majority of the people I have met and whose works I have read or heard of – understand these rabbinic statements literally and will not admit the possibility of a non-literal interpretation. For this group whatever is impossible must become possible. They hold their view because of their lack of understanding and background in the sciences: they are not sufficiently sophisticated that they could come to realize their mistake themselves, and there is as yet no one who can bring them to that realization. Therefore, they assume that whatever they understand the rabbis to have said in all their carefully worded statements – that is what they meant to say and they are to be understood literally. On the other hand, if we do understand some of these statements literally we find their content very strange. If one were to relate them literally to the masses (and how much more to their leaders) [without telling them that they were rabbinic] they would be astounded and would be the first to say, "How is it possible that there can be someone on this Earth who actually dreamed these things up and believes them to be true?" Really, we must not judge this poor group too harshly. They truly think they are aggrandizing the rabbis: actually they are dragging them down into the lowest depths without meaning to. God knows, this group is destroying the glory of Torah and darkening its brightness! Many of this group are preachers: they are trying to teach the people what they themselves do not understand properly! If only they would make their ignorance their reason for silence; if only they would keep silence and let that be your wisdom [Job 13:5]. At the very least they could say that they do not know what the rabbis meant in any particular case and do not know how to explain it. But they think that they do understand, and set themselves up to teach others not what the rabbis actually said, but what they think they said!
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