Chiastic Structure of Datan and Aviram's Argument

Numbers 16:12-6:14

Moses then sent word to summon Dathan and Aviram, the sons of Eliav. They said:

A. We won't go up!
      
        B. Isn't it enough that you brought us out [of Egypt], a land flowing with milk and honey - just to kill us in the desert! 
                
                  C. But you have made yourself an authority over us - yes, made yourself an authority.
     
         B. You didn't bring us to a land flowing with milk and honey, or give us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Do you think that you can pull something over our eyes? 

A. We won't go up!


How do we explain this structure? It seems to me there is an obvious element of chiasm here, from the very fact that it begins and ends with "we won't go up", and has a parallel "land of milk and honey" as well. But usually the middle C is to emphasize or inform in a way that we would not have known before. Isn't their claim of authority obvious? Didn't we know that before?

Maybe we have to dig deeper to find the true chiastic structure. Maybe there is a hidden, subconscious message that Datan and Aviram may not have even known about their complaint, but is deeply embedded in it.

On the outside, externally, it looks like Datan and Aviram are upset because Moshe has the gal to lead them, and yet has led them badly. Is this the same claim as Korach? Korach had said, "כִּי כָל הָעֵדָה כֻּלָּם קְדשִׁים וּבְתוֹכָם יְהֹוָה וּמַדּוּעַ תִּתְנַשְּׂאוּ עַל קְהַל ה," that everyone is holy, and therefore there should be no authority structure (alternatively: anyone should have the chance to lead the people). And Datan and Aviram seem very similar to that - why do you lift yourself up? Let's look closer, though.

A. We won't go up!
      
        B. You took us from Egypt with milk and honey to die in desert
                
                  C. But you have made yourself an authority 
                                 
                                      D. On us 
                
                  C. Yes, made yourself an authority.
     
         B. You didn't bring us to a land flowing with milk and honey, or give us nice land

A. We won't go up!

The main difference between Korach's claim and Datan and Aviram's claim is, "עָלֵינוּ." Korach had said that there is no reason Moshe should lord himself "עַל קְהַל ה." But that is not what Datan  and Aviram say. They say, "כִּי-תִשְׂתָּרֵר עָלֵינוּ, גַּם-הִשְׂתָּרֵר". The Torah wants to show that, deep down, their problem of Moshe's authority was not like Korach's. Not the noble intentions of Korach that you have too much power over the people, Datan and Aviram were upset that you have too much power over us, Datan and Aviram. We couldn't care less about the rest of Israel - but us, we don't want you to be able to command us in any way. We want to be able to do what we want without your authority.

In doing this exercise, I thought of an "out-there" interpretation that might work.

Perhaps the claim was that, by what right can you lead us - if your leading has gotten us into such trouble that we are cursed to die here? This is obviously your fault! We would never be in this mess if it weren't for you.

Blaming Moshe for their sins! But the Torah hides in their speech what they really knew - a Freudian slip in their mouths. They knew they were themselves at fault, and are lashing out at Moshe because it's easier than blaming themselves. So even though it sounds like, how could you cause us to die here in the desert and continue to be our leader, they were really, deep down, acknowledging that it was not on Moshe, but, "on us." It's our fault. It was a subconscious confession, realization, which the Torah hides in a chiastic structure.

Sermon Given In Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue, London

On June 11th

(After the many thanks yous to the community and Rabbi Mendel Lew, its rabbi, CJF and United Synagogue)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. As far as I have traveled, from New York to London, England, somehow I can be halfway across the world and find the religious experience of prayer so familiar in another Orthodox synagogue. The music, the melodious cantorial experience, the liturgy, the reading, the many features of an Orthodox synagogue, these are those that make me feel as if I am actually home. That isn’t to say that an Englishman is like a New Yorker, I expect you would be offended at such a comparison. But what I mean is that I have found this synagogue a uniting experience, I feel as if we are family, and I thank you for your friendliness and hospitality that has made Michal and my stay here all the more pleasant.

There is one issue that stands out as something you will never find in a synagogue in Ameica, one that could perhaps shock a New Yorker. In large print on the wall behind me, to my left, as you well know, is the prayer for the Queen of England, who deserves a grand happy birthday for her 90th today. However, we simply don't have such a prayer in New York - we haven't had monarchy in a few centuries.

But it is most fascinating for me, coming from Yeshiva University and the United States. The prayer for the queen, written in English as well as in Hebrew, must be contrasted with what we have on my right, the prayer for the state of Israel. And if you think about it, you may find it most strange. How, indeed, could we have said both today? Does this not represent a fierce dichotomous experience? How could we both pray for our brothers and sister in Israel, pray for the safety of our own nation, our own private concerns, and yet pray for the country in which we live? How can we abide in two worlds, a world which values the outside world, the welfare of where we stay, turning us outward, and also live in the world of what makes us special as a people, which should turn us insular and inward? Is it possible to care for the Euro games (England vs Russia tonight!), yet value as well the lesson of the Sabbath and the importance of Torah? It certainly seems conflicting!

We read today an interesting Haftorah that seems wholly irrelevant to our Parsha. Bamidbar mostly discusses the numbers of the Jews, but only the first verse in the Haftorah relates to that topic - the promise of God that we shall one day be numerous like the sand in the sea and stars in the sky. The rest of the Haftorah, however, is not about that at all - it goes on to describe our falling away from God, and how one day we will unite in the time of the Messiah.

However, I believe it is indeed relevant - our relationship to God as Jews is summed up by the last few verses, which tells us how we can indeed become full of potential and truly innumerable.

The most pivotal verse states:

And I will make a covenant for them on that day with the beasts of the field and with the fowl of the sky and the creeping things of the earth; and the bow, the sword, and war I will break off the earth, and I will let them lie down safely.

God says, I will make a covenant with you, that somehow involves all the living creatures of the world, and all major conflict will dissipate. The bow and the sword will cease to exist, not only for us but for everyone. If we pay attention to the words of the prophet, we are struck by the seeming impossibility of that which he suggests. A covenant! That means a special two-way promise between God and the Jewish people. The end of war! That means a fundamental change in all of humanity!

Again we see the dichotomy we noticed earlier. And actually, we do find that there seem to be two ways to be religious Jews. We find that some have turned to their own, made their own communities, their own studies, their own schools, and have little to no connection and interaction with those beyond them. In truth, we have the concept that we are chosen, special, that this necessitates a focus particularly on our people, our practices, our Torah. And yet we know of the concept of tikkun olam, on being a light unto the nations, on reaching out to the human species and the recognition that we are all in this world together! And so many Jews go to Africa and many third world countries to heal the sick and change the world for the better. But often this leaves behind those special aspects of Jewish religion. Which one are we meant to practice? Are we Jews first and only, or Jews of the world? Must we rectify the universe, or shall we concentrate on setting our own house in order?

Let me present this in the view of Shavuot. There are two themes present in Shavuot that contradict and collide with each other; two ideas that coexist while giving us inconsonant messages We find that all the pilgrimage holidays in the Torah, Passover, Sukkot, and yes, Shavuot, have agricultural significance. Sukkot is the Holiday of Gathering, Chag Haasif, where one pulls together and piles up the grain from his field. Passover is the Chag Haaviv, the springtime holiday, where we plant our grains, especially wheat. Finally, Shavuot is the reaping holiday, Chag Hakatzir, when the wheat has grown enough to be cut in the field. In other parts of the Torah, it is called “Yom Habikkurim” since farmers bring their first fruits of the field to the Temple during this time. This is a theme to which anyone, Jew or Gentile, can relate: the need for grain, the worry about sustenance, the concern about feeding one’s family.

Amazingly, the rabbis of the Talmud identified an altogether different meaning of the holiday, hidden in the Torah’s chronology itself. That is something we will be saying in our prayers tonight and for the next couple of days, “zeman matan torateinu”. The time that we were given OUR Torah. It was around this time, about 50 days after leaving Egypt, that we found ourselves at the foot of a mountain, one nation, one soul. We declared, Naaseh Venishma, and from then on we became God’s “Am Segula”, His treasured and special people. A pivotal aspect of Jewish history.

Do you see the vast change here? The universal concern of the farmer and his crop is transformed into a nationalistic Torah ideal! The rabbinic consideration of Shavuot is extremely particularistic. It is the time for what makes us different, special, separate. Yet we must contrast this with the agricultural emphasis of the Torah, which is completely universal. Everyone is a farmer - or rather, everyone can appreciate the food we eat, the renewal of the cycle of the seasons, of the change that happens year in and year out as we move from spring to summer, from fall to winter, and its effect on our food supply. There is nothing that makes Chag HaKatzir, the reaping holiday, uniquely Jewish. All can understand it. But this is not so within “zeman matan Torateinu,” the holiday of the giving of the Torah. We seem stuck between two worlds, between ourselves on one hand, our particular nationalistic mission, the Shavuot which is the time of our Torah, and the Shavuot of all the world, the other, the people beyond us, those not Jewish, whom we interact with every day, those who enjoy eating as much as we do and who rely on the welfare of the food economy as much as we do. What is the nature of this holiday? What’s its message, a universalistic one or a particularistic one?

Another ritual related to Shavuot also contains this mysterious dichotomy. Jews around the world have been counting the Omer, the days from Passover leading up to Shavuot. Last night was the last time we performed this mitzvah - 49 straight nights of counting. Why do we do this?

Maimonides provides an answer in his Guide for the Perplexed 3:43 - “Shavuot is the time of the Giving of the Torah. In order to honor and elevate this day we count the days from the previous festival until it [arrives], like someone who is waiting for a loved one to arrive, who counts the days by the hours. This is the reason for counting the Omer from the day that we left Egypt until the day of the Giving of the Torah, as this was the ultimate purpose of leaving Egypt: “And I will bring them to Me” (Exodus 19:4).”

Thus, the counting of the Omer is to create that excitement and anticipation of the Torah. Our Torah. Our national endeavor. Our our our.

However, we have other sources that relate the counting to our anticipation of the upcoming harvest. Rabbi David Abudraham, the 14th century Spanish commentator on the Siddur, makes it a powerfully dramatic and indeed, traumatic religious experience: “Because the world is distressed from Passover to Shavuot regarding the grain and the fruit trees… Therefore, God commanded us to count these days so that we will remember the distress of the world, to return to God wholeheartedly, to plead before Him to have mercy on us, and on all people, and the land itself, so that it should produce grain as it is supposed to, for it is our life.”

So again, which is it - Torah or agriculture? The giving of the Torah or the celebration of the harvest? The particular or the universal? Looking inward or glancing outward?

The former chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, visited Yeshiva University several years ago. He taught the semicha class a powerful lesson of leadership and resolution of conflict which provided me with a crucial insight into this conundrum – an insight that had a powerful effect on my own understanding of this conflict.

Orthodox Jews around the world have the practice to mourn for part of the time that we count sefirah - for the Talmud reports that thousands of students of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva died during this time period. How did they die? A plague wiped them out. The Sages were certain that this was supernatural. Thousands of students of the same teacher all died in a plague in such a short time span? What could possibly have caused this tragedy? Were they murderers? Rapists? They worshipped other gods? What is the worst crimes that could have warranted such terrible destruction and disaster in Jewish life? Must be something pretty bad. The Talmud states, “Lo nahagu kavod zeh lazeh.” - “They didn’t respect each other.”

Commentators (and rabbis on the Talmud) have struggled for centuries to understand the meaning of this. For lack of respect, failing to honor a fellow colleague, God sent them a death penalty?

Some focus on an even greater incongruity, for if we look at the teachings of Rabbi Akiva, it is even harder to understand what could have caused his students to act this way. After all, it was Rabbi Akiva who declared “You shall love your fellow as yourself” the greatest rule of the Torah. It was Rabbi Akiva who, when asked what an extra definitive article in the Hebrew command of “You shall fear the Lord”, he said that includes scholars as well. How could the students of Rabbi Akiva turn their backs on their teacher and ignore his teachings? How could Rabbi Akiva’s followers completely disregard his most important lesson?  

Rabbi Sacks noted that some say that the plague was not while Rabbi Akiva was still alive, but rather after his death. If so, said Rabbi Sacks, this indicated that the problem with his students took place in a post-Akiva world. What happens when a great leader dies? How do the followers of that leader react? Perhaps, as we have seen in our lifetimes, the problem was not simply about not giving respect to each other, but that they broke into sects of Jews who fought over their rabbi's teachings and legacy.

On the one hand, as we have noted, Rabbi Akiva was a man of ethics. Respect for each other and the respect of the sages of Israel was paramount. Peace and tolerance were matters that Rabbi Akiva valued highly. In many ways, he saw the value of the entire mosaic of humanity. He saw value in all people, going so far as saying in the Mishnaic work Ethics of the Fathers that all humankind is blessed for having been made in the image of God.

However, paradoxically, Rabbi Akiva supported the Bar Kochba revolt. He supported war for Jewish independence. He even imputed a divine mission to Bar Kochba as granting him the possible title of Messiah. For Rabbi Akiva. this was a religiously driven war. Rabbi Akiva the universalist was also Rabbi Akiva the particularist.

Somehow, Rabbi Akiva taught war as often as he taught love. Somehow, he taught particularism as much as he preached universalism. Rabbi Akiva was obviously a complicated man. And when every wonderfully complex leader dies, the complexity dies with them. The followers are too often unable to synthesize the multifaceted nature of their leader, and lines of extremism, of schism, are drawn. Some fight for the warring legacy of Rabbi Akiva. Others fight for his universalism and pacifism. And they are completely unable to see eye-to-eye - for each believes that he is fighting for the holy legacy of their leader, their teacher! They cannot ever agree, and each is willing to fight to the death for what he knows is the truth. As one can imagine, it wasn't too long before their extremist political-religious "legacies" died out. And the world was in shambles for it. It would seem that insulating ourselves from the world is just as dangerous as giving ourselves completely over to it. We learn from Rabbi Akiva’s students that there is a failure to Judaism to be an extremist, a fundamentalist, in either direction. His students believed that Rabbi Akiva’s true legacy was either particularism or universalism – and the result was that not one survived. For Rabbi Akiva’s legacy is reflected in the complexity of having a Judaism that insists on both the universal and the particular. Only the combination of the two accurately conveys the Jewish People’s divine mission.

If Rabbi Akiva was both universal and particular, both loving the fellow and fighting for our independence, so must we be. My friends, Rabbi Akiva teaches us that Judaism requires us both to be people of the world and people of the book. To love Jewish particularity along with love for the world around us. To keep our values in a world indifferent to values, and to teach where people wish to learn. If it looks contradictory on the outside, we must show how it is actually part and parcel of what it means to be a Jew.

Judaism starts with the question, and never fully answers it. In each generation, we look to our traditions as we look forward to the future that awaits us. We learn from our ancestors as we teach the next generation. We are indeed part of this world, and we hope for a day that our covenant with God, as we saw in the Haftorah, will influence the whole world toward world peace and prosperity, with the days of the Messiah soon to come.

Tonight we will begin Tikkun Leil Shavuot with learning Torah, here in the synagogue. If you would celebrate this holiday with us, please, I urge you, come tonight and learn together with us. Emphasize the importance of our unique addition to the world, even while we keep the universalistic ideal alive. See how the Torah can teach us so much about our positive contribution to the world. Come to see how to successfully synthesize the universalist Shavuot message of Chag Hakatzir, the time for praying and celebrating with the world, and the particularist message of Zman Matan Torateinu, the time to celebrate our Torah, our values, and our love for one another.

Scans of Divrei HaRov 1970-1971

Scans of Divrei HaRov 1970-1971

Listening to Dan Klein, author of Shadal on the Torah

Last night, I had the pleasure of listening to Dan Klein, who talked about his experience translating Shadal's commentary to the Torah, what inspired him to do so, and some of the difficulties he had in that translation.

When he opened up for questions, Rabbi Pesach Sommer asked him to talk about Shadal's interesting theory that "eye for an eye", which was interpreted by the rabbis as only monetary compensation, to Shadal remained available in the pshat for the rabbis to use for rich wicked people who are sadistic, who could theoretically just pay for their crimes. Thus the rabbis could employ the pshat in exigent circumstances. Rabbi Sommer asked where Shadal got this idea from. I didn't quite understand the question, why does Shadal need a source? I suppose the question really was, are there earlier sources that have the same kind of idea, or was this a product of Shadal's creativity?

It actually triggered an answer in my mind. Because Rabbi Eliezer says in Bava Kama 84a that indeed, "eye for an eye", means a literal eye for an eye, and the Talmud works hard to figure out how he didn't mean his own statement literally. Perhaps, this means Shadal was an adept reader of the Talmud and saw that the rabbis had previous traditions that read pshat and derash for the sake of how to run Jewish society. Thus, according to this, the rabbis are not consciously lying to the people, but rather using two modes of interpretation: the pshat as it pertains to living society, and the halachic drash as it pertains to living society.

Interestingly, someone else responded to the question that Maimonides in the Guide 3:41 creates a distinction between the pshat of "eye for an eye" and the rabbinic interpretation. I have written about this elsewhere. This person thought that the bigger question on Shadal is that he casts the rabbis as completely apart from the text of the Torah. As in, their role in interpretation was takkanot and not real interpretation.

I thought the bigger question was the idea that the rabbis lied to the people about where their interpretations came from, seemingly pretending that these were the original understandings of the Torah. I asked if this was connected to Shadal's idea that lying is ok for a purpose. We see this when the Jews are asked to lie to the Egyptians to borrow their gold, yet don't plan to return them. Shadal says that this is appropriate to do because the Egyptians were wicked and it was right for the Israelites to get their money for their servitude, and it doesn't matter that they lied. So perhaps Shadal saw a right of the elite to lie for a good purpose.

Dan Klein agreed that this was an element of it. He noted that Shadal talks about how the rabbis would pretend their interpretation was the only one for the good of the people to keep the law. Someone behind me commented interestingly that we can see Shadal attributing this even to God, that God would lie in the Torah for the beliefs of the people. For example he does this in his first comment on the Torah, where he claims that the Torah will not attempt to explain higher truths of the world, but rather desires the goodness of people, and thus the Torah is not an attempt at historical or scientific truth. (A rabbi of mine pointed out that he thinks Shadal is the first one, we're talking 1800's, to say explicitly that the Torah is not written in order to relay historical or scientific or philosophical truths) Meaning, the Torah will engage in "necessary truths" that encourage a certain mindset. 

A good example that comes to mind is his comment to the purpose of the half-shekel count, where he says that the people believed in the concept of an ayin hara, and the Torah did not wish to remove this superstition completely since it encourages belief in divine providence. Therefore it made use of a contemporary belief for its own elite purposes.

I would add as well that Shadal thinks God engages in flat-out lies for the good of the people. (Of course the Talmud states that God lied to Sarah about Abraham for the sake of peace, but I'm referring to the law and the reasons for it in the Torah.) He writes at the end of Yitro that the reason provided for not using metal to build the altar in the Torah was a fake reason so that people would keep it without conditions. Because if the real reason was given, people would say, I wouldn't fall into that trap. In this, he is following in a kind of footstep of the Talmud Sanhedrin which asks why the reasons were not revealed for many commands. It states that for the few that had the reasons provided (king shouldn't have too many wives to not fall into idolatry, nor too many horses lest he go back to Egypt) Solomon fell because of them, where he felt as long as he didn't violate the reason he could have these things, and his end was that he did indeed violate the reason, and fell into idolatry.

This leads me to the point of my post.

In Genesis 37:2 Rashbam famously writes that Torah verses always have a simple meaning apart from the Talmudic reading.[1]

ישכילו ויבינו אוהבי שכל מה שלימדונו רבותינו, כי אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו. אף כי עיקרה של תורה באה ללמדנו ולהודיענו ברמיזת הפשט וההגדות וההלכות והדינין ועל ידי אריכות הלשון ועל ידי שלושים ושתים מידות של ר' אליעזר בנו של ר' יוסי הגלילי וע"י שלש עשרה מידות של ר' ישמעאל והראשונים מתוך חסידותם נתעסקו לנטות אחרי הדרשות שהן עיקר ומתוך כך לא הורגלו בעומק פשוטו של מקרא. ולפי שאמרו חכמים: אל תרבו בניכם בהגיון. וגם אמרו: העוסק במקרא מדה ואינה מדה, העוסק בתלמוד אין לך מדה גדולה מזו ומתוך כך לא הורגלו כל כך בפשוטן של מקראות וכדאמרינן במסכת שבת: הוינא בר תמני סרי שנין וגרסינן כולה תלמודא ולא הוה ידענא דאין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו. וגם רבינו שלמה אבי אמי מאיר עיני גולה שפירש תורה נביאים וכתובים, נתן לב לפרש פשוטו של מקרא. ואף אני שמואל ב"ר מאיר חתנו זצ"ל נתווכחתי עמו ולפניו והודה לי שאילו היה לו פנאי, היה צריך לעשות פירושים אחרים לפי הפשטות המתחדשים בכל יום. 

Those who love intelligence should perceive and understand what our rabbis have taught, that a Biblical passage never departs from its plain meaning - even as the most important aspect of the Torah comes to teach us and tell us through hints found in the plain meaning of the text, the aggadot, and halachot and laws derived through lengthy words and the 32 methods of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yossi HaGalili, and the 13 methods of Rabbi Yishmael. The Rishonim, because of their piety, busied themselves with the drashot as their focus, and because of this they did not regularly delve into the plain meaning of the text, and because the Chachamim said not to spend too much time with higayon and expressed the significance not of learning Torah but of learning Talmud as having no greater measure, they did not regularly engage in establishing the plain meaning of the text. It is as we say in Talmud Shabbat, "I was 18 years old and I learned all of the Talmud and I never knew that a Biblical passage never departs from its plain meaning. Even our Rabbi Shlomo, my maternal grandfather, enlightener of the eyes of the exile, who wrote commentary on Tanakh, set his heart to explain the plain meaning of the text, even my grandfather Shlomo was an adherent of this school; and I, Shmuel the son of Meir his son in law, had an argument with him and before him, and he admitted to me that if he had had the time, he would make new commentaries according to the plain meanings that arise each day.

And in the beginning of Mishpatim he states:

ידעו ויבינו יודעי שכל כי לא באתי לפרש הלכות אעפ”י שהם עיקר, כמו שפירשתי בבראשית כי מיתור המקראות נשמעין ההגדות וההלכות, ומקצתן ימצאו בפירושי רבינו שלמה אבי אמי זצ”ל, ואני לפרש פשוטן של מקראות באתי. ואפרש הדינין וההלכות לפי דרך ארץ. ואעפ”כ ההלכות עיקר כמו שאמרו רבותינו הלכה עוקרת [מקרא] 

Those who have intelligence should know and understand that I have not come to explain halachot, even though they are the most important, as I explained in Genesis, the halachot and aggadot are derived from extraneousness in the text, and some of these can be found in the commentaries of my maternal grandfather, Rashi. But I have come to explain the pshat of the verses. I will explain the laws and the halachot according to their plain meaning. Even so, the halachot are most important, as our Rabbis said: “Halacha can uproot Scripture.”

Fascinatingly, in his first comment quoted, he states he spoke to his grandfather about this, and Rashi in fact lamented his lack of time to engage in more pshat activities. This sounds like Rashi agreed to this distinction and wanted to do this even more than he had already. But did Rashi ever really contradict the halacha of the rabbis?

Shadal, indeed, seems to revel in such a distinction. In fact, he views the rabbis as very consciously diverting the pshat reading for the sake of halacha. He does this in a few ways. Sometimes it is just so that they don't view the Torah pshat as appropriate for their day anymore. Sometimes it is that the original Chazal interpretation was one way, which aligned with pshat, and the rabbis felt it was time to change. Sometimes the rabbis saw that the values of the Torah pushed for a different interpretation than the pshat. And lastly, sometimes the pshat remains in play so the rabbis can choose it when they want and sometimes not. I'll list some examples when I have time.

According to the Rashbam, Rashi agreed that there is a difference between pshat and halachic drash, and wished he could have done the pshat more in his work. Did Rashi engage at all in pshat separated from the rabbi's halacha?

He does, sometimes. And one just came up in Mishpatim, on Exodus 23:2, he concept of "acharei rabim lehatot". There, Rashi says something Shadal finds incorrect. Basically, Rashi declares that after having told us what the rabbis say about this verse, he will try his hardest to explain it on a pshat level. He says that part of the meaning of the verse is that if a litigant asks what your personal opinion was, don't tell him what the majority opinion was, but rather what your true opinion is.

This is incredible, says Shadal, since it goes against an explicit Mishna in Sanhedrin that a judge is forbidden to reveal his vote among the votes of Bet Din. How can Rashi go against this Mishna? And more incredibly, the Smag just quotes Rashi lehalacha, and more incredibly than that, no commentators that Shadal could find picked up on this problem in Rashi.

Shadal quotes two answers from his students. One was that the Mishna in Sanhedrin referred to proper judges who adjudicate correctly, while Rashi was referring to a context specifically of wicked and biased judges, in which case you can reveal your vote to the litigants if you are a proper judge on a wicked Bet Din. The second answer seems to be that Rashi isn't talking about a judge in this specific comment, but rather a scholar who is asked his opinion about the judgement that happened in Bet Din, which he was not a part of.

Both of these are somewhat difficult to fit into Rashi's words. I've seen some say that the Mishna in Sanhedrin means that once the votes have occurred, a judge cannot tell what his vote was. But before that point, if someone asks, he may.

My answer is perhaps also difficult to fit in Rashi. Nevertheless, I think it can fit, and is a combination of these three answers. That is, there is another Mishna in Sanhedrin that states that the court was set up that the judges sit in rows and opposite them the students listen and sometimes provide their understanding to the court. So if the Bet Din thinks a man is guilty of murder, and a student has a reason why he shouldn't be guilty, he can stand up and provide it. If in fact there is substance to his objection he gets put on the Bet Din as a vote towards innocence for the man.

Thus, it could be Rashi is describing that a litigant goes over to the students and asks if they have any way to argue to his merit. And the point is that even if a student sees that the court will not vote for him, he should stand up and tell his own opinion regardless of the majority.

The point I'm getting at is this. Shadal is upset at Rashi for two reasons. Firstly, reason demands that a judge just can't go announcing his own opinion, it would be a breakdown of the system. Second, Rashi is violating a Mishna.

This second thing is very curious. Since when does Shadal care if pshat violates a Mishna? And interestingly, Shadal never provides his own answer to this question. Instead, he gives two difficult answers of his students. Perhaps Shadal didn't really care that it violated the Mishna, only that it violated reason and pshat needs to be reasonable. Perhaps he saw that Rashi did indeed see this difference and was willing to provide the pshat of a verse that could go against the Mishnah. And in this, Rashi is a support for Rashbam's approach, and Shadal's as well.

I found a comment of Shadal that is just thickening the plot. This is on Leviticus 19:35, where he says that Rashi on Chumash explains the words, but in his commentary on the Talmud, tries to explain the passage as a whole:

ורנ " ה וייזל תפש על רש " י . ולא ידע כי רש"י גם הוא הזכיר מידת הלח והיבש , וכן הוא בכ " י ובדפוסי ויניציאה ואמשטרדם , ואם בבא מציעא ס " א ע " ב כתב רש"י ( ד " ה משורה ) משורה מידת הלח היא , שם פירש כך לפרש הברייתא , וכאן פירש אמיתת הוראת המילה בפסוק .

Does this affect our discussion? I'm not sure.

[1] Yet in Leviticus 13:2 regarding tzara'at, Rashbam declares that laws regarding these things do not have a simple meaning at all, and one must only the Talmudic reading.

כל פרשיות נגעי אדם ונגעי בגדים ונגעי בתים ומראותיהן וחשבון הסגרם ושערות לבנות ושער שחור וצהוב, אין לנו אחר פשוטו של מקרא כלום ולא על בקיאות דרך ארץ של בני אדם, אלא המדרש של חכמים וחקותיהן וקבלותיהן מפי החכמים הראשונים הוא העיקר.

It seems to me that he believes that though Chazal did not focus on pshat, there are places where they did. His definition of Chazal's midrashic/Talmudic interpretation, is when they seek to derive from the way the pshat is phrased, when there are extra or strange words or letters in the Torah. But here, they are just trying to explain what it means as pshat and not extra letters etc. And Rashbam accepts that they have it right, because, there is no way to know pshat on a metaphysical condition unless you know how it manifests and why, which Chazal claim to know.

I think its significant that that's how he defines Chazal's abilities and what they were doing in midrash. See Rashbam on Genesis 1:1

בינו המשכילים כי כל דברי רבותינו ודרשותיהם כנים ואמיתים. וזהו האמור במסכת שבת: הוינא בר תמני סרי שנין ולא ידענא דאין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו. ועיקר ההלכות והדרשות יוצאין מיתור המקראות או משינוי הלשון, שנכתב פשוטו של מקרא בלשון שיכולין ללמוד הימנו עיקר הדרשה, כמו 'אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם', ודרשו חכמים באברהם, מאריכות הלשון שלא היה צריך לכתוב בהבראם. 

Etzba Elohim Hi

When I was a kid, I liked to think that when the chartumim say after the plague of lice that they couldn't recreate, that it was (Exodus 8:15) "etzba elohim hi", that this should be translated as "God is giving us the finger".

In point of fact, it is a great debate if they meant God or "the gods", among Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Ramban, and see Shadal who interprets Onkelos to mean "the gods" even though he explicitly says "min kadam hashem", and see Shadal on Genesis 1:2 as well.

The debate is centered over if they admitted that God was in control and not them. Did they really recognize God? Weren't they polytheistic idolaters? If they were saying that it wasn't God but their gods, why does it say that they declared this after they couldn't recreate it? It would make sense for them to admit defeat, not blame something else. And if it means they were not admitting defeat, what does it mean that Pharaoh didn't listen to them?

I think the answer is that they were actually referring to Moses. It is the finger of Moses, who must be a god! How else could he work this magic? We should obey him!

I haven't seen anyone else offer this answer. In fact, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explicitly says the opposite: אמרו איסטגניני פרעה לא מן כח גבורת משה ואהרן היא אלהן מחא משתלחא מן קדם י"י היא. But I think it flows thematically throughout the parsha.

Early in the parsha, God responds to Moses to recharge him with his mission, and right before Moses is to perform the plagues, the Torah interrupts to give lineage. Why? The meforshim debate this "interruption" in the narrative. Rav Hirsch thinks it was because the Torah wants to emphasize how Moses is human, not a god, not supernatural. He is mortal and like everyone else in that essential way. This is the important message to receive before hearing the amazing miracles that are wrought through him. He is the human instrument of God, not God Himself.

This is a Jewish concept. We do not believe in any one person as a god who is infallible and all-powerful.

It's a Jewish concept that Pharaoh cannot accept. In fact, God promises Moses (Exodus 7:1) that He will make Moses a god ("elohim") to Pharaoh soon after in the parsha. Again, the meforshim debate what this could mean. But I think (and I haven't seen anyone suggests this as well) that Pharaoh will come to view Moses as an actual god - his mistaken belief in the possibilities of a person being a god would allow this to happen. This is the closest to pshat in my belief.

Maimonides on "Boiling in Excrement"

Maimonides interprets "boiling excrement" to be a metaphor for embarrassing oneself when one mocks something true. I think anyone who has embarrassed oneself doing so knows this feeling quite well.

Gittin 57a: 

אסקיה לבלעם בנגידא אמר ליה מאן חשיב בההוא עלמא א"ל ישראל מהו לאידבוקי בהו א"ל (דברים כג) לא תדרוש שלומם וטובתם כל הימים א"ל דיניה דההוא גברא במאי א"ל בשכבת זרע רותחת אזל אסקיה {ליש"ו} בנגידא <לפושעי ישראל> א"ל מאן חשיב בההוא עלמא א"ל ישראל מהו לאדבוקי בהו א"ל טובתם דרוש רעתם לא תדרוש כל הנוגע בהן כאילו נוגע בבבת עינו א"ל דיניה דההוא גברא במאי א"ל בצואה רותחת 

He then went and raised Balaam by incantations. He asked him: Who is in repute in the other world? He replied: Israel. What then, he said, about joining them? He replied: Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.  He then asked: What is your punishment? He replied: With boiling hot semen.  He then went and raised by incantations [Jesus].  He asked: Who is in repute in the other world? Answer: Israel. What about joining them? Answer: Seek their welfare, seek not their harm. Whoever touches them touches the apple of his eye. He said: What is your punishment? Answer: With boiling hot excrement, since a Master has said: Whoever mocks at the words of the Sages is punished with boiling hot excrement.

Eruvin 21b: 

דרש רבא: מאי דכתיב (קהלת י"ב) ויתר מהמה בני הזהר עשות ספרים הרבה וגו'. בני הזהר בדברי סופרים יותר מדברי תורה. שדברי תורה יש בהן עשה ולא תעשה, ודברי סופרים - כל העובר על דברי סופרים חייב מיתה. שמא תאמר אם יש בהן ממש מפני מה לא נכתבו - אמר קרא עשות ספרים הרבה אין קץ. (קהלת י"ב) ולהג הרבה יגעת בשר. אמר רב פפא בריה דרב אחא בר אדא משמיה דרב אחא בר עולא: מלמד שכל המלעיג על דברי חכמים נידון בצואה רותחת. 

Raba made the following exposition: What is the purport of the Scriptural text: And, furthermore my son, be admonished: Of making many books etc? My son, be more careful in [the observance of] the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah, for in the laws of the Torah there are positive and negative precepts; but, as to the laws of the Scribes, whoever transgresses any of the enactments of the Scribes incurs the penalty of death. In case you should object: If they are of real value why were they not recorded [in the Torah]? Scripture stated: 'Of making many books there is no end'. And much study is a weariness of flesh. R`Papa son of R`Aha B`Adda stated in the name of R`Aha B`Ulla: This teaches that he who scoffs at the words of the Sages will be condemned to boiling excrements.

Maimonides writes in his introduction to the Mishna:

Translation: 

And because they knew [this fact] (peace be upon them), that all of [Hazal's] words were clear, with nothing superfluous stated, they commanded and exhorted, that no one may ridicule them: “Anyone who ridicules them of the Sages is sentenced to boiling excrement (Gittin 57a). And you have no greater boiling excrement than stupidity which made him degenerate into ridiculing the words of the Sages! Thus, you will never find anyone who hates their words, except for a man who seeks superficial pleasure, granting benefit to sensory pleasures, one whose heart does not shine with any of the shining brilliance of Torah...

The Plot Thickens - Shadal on Tikkun Soferim

There are articles out there I have been meaning to read regarding Shadal's view of "tikkun soferim" - apparently the claim held by some midrashim and some rishonim that Chazal or pre-Chazalic soferim changed some of the language of Scripture for a variety of reasons.

This is a far-out claim that flies in the face of Maimonides' Eighth Principle that nothing in the Torah was changed since Moses received it, and so the concept is usually interpreted as "God having changed the Torah as if he was a sofer changing the language".

Shadal is a bit unclear to me. Sometimes he subscribes to some idea of "tikkun soferim". We can see this on Genesis 31:39

ואיננו רחוק שקריאת גנבתי אינה אלא תקנת סופרים, שהחכמים הראשונים התקינו שתהיה הקריאה כך כדי להרחיק המליצה התמוהה גנבתי יום וגנבתי לילה.

Apparently, this is in regard to how vowelization should be.

Of course, the most famous place that "tikkun soferim" comes up is on Genesis 18:22, where Rashi quotes it, and there is some debate on his comment if he also believed it to be Chazal who changed the Torah's words to protect God's image. Interestingly, Shadal feels that this need not be relied on, but there is another pshat:

ואברהם עודנו עומד לפני ה': במסורה ובמדרשים (לא בתלמוד) הזכירו פסוק זה בכלל י"ח מלין תיקון סופרים, וזה לשון בראשית רבא (פרשה מ"ז י"ב) אמר ר' סימון תיקון סופרים הוא זה, שהשכינה היתה ממתנת לאברהם. אמנם (כדברי הראב"ע) אין לנו צורך לתיקון סופרים, כי הנה המלאך השלישי היה גם הוא הולך לדרכו אחר שסיים דבריו לאברהם, אלא שאברהם ניגש אליו והתפלל, על כן נתעכב המלאך אצלו, ואמנם סיבת התעכבו היתה כי אברהם לא חזר לאחוריו אלא עמד וניגש אליו ודיבר דבריו.

It almost seems as if he accepts it as a concept, but he doesn't think it's necessary in this. It is interesting that he is sure to note the Talmud does not seem to have such a concept.

The plot thickens, however, when we look at Exodus 9:18, where he says that the Masoretes claim that a certain word is written without a mapik heh when it should have had one, and this proves they are innocent of having changed the text, since they could have changed the words to fix the problem. Shadal for his part thinks its accurately not a mapik heh word anyway.

הנה זו ראיה על נקיון כפיהם, שלא שלחו ידם להגיה מסברה ולהוסיף המפיק שלדעתם היה ראוי להיות בתבות הללו.