@IsaacMoses You used "too localized" for some question about a broken mug... or something... in the past. I thought that that was appropriate. The question you just linked to, OTOH, seems sufficiently general -- or at the very least generalizable (but I think general as it stands) -- to be open.
Well... easily generalizable. I guess not sufficiently general as it is.
@msh210 Nope. I'd appreciate if you'd leave an "I edited" comment.
@msh210 Part of the reason I've closed some of the more blatant ones instead of editing is to make it clear to the asker that we're serious about this "we're not your Rabbi" deal. Closure, edit, and re-opening with comments to document serves this purpose, I think.
@msh210 Now I've got a request to re-open from SethJ. I'll handle it.
It didn't announce the warmup chat at all, unless I missed it. (Maybe it only did at the beginning, six hours ago?) And now, it's saying "happening now" for a chat that starts in 26 minutes.
@msh210 Whatever process just put a system message up on our site to announce the Parasha Chat
BTW, I'll probably have to leave the chat early today, so if someone else could officially close it at the right time (just with a comment saying "ends here"), I'd appreciate it.
DESPITE WHAT YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ON THE SITE, THE PARASHA CHAT STARTS AT 12:30 EST / 19:30 ISRAEL / 17:30 UTC -- NOT NOW. Of course, you're welcome to discuss the parasha at any time, including now. :-)
@msh210 Indeed, and if you want to get a head start by posting some topics of conversation now to be picked up when there are more people here, that's fine.
How should we relate to an answer where that answer has already been given by a previous poster with the same or greater detail? I assume this happens because the poster failed to read previously posted answers (I was guilty of this at least once).
Up-vote for participating with a good answer?...
Sure. (Didn't want to presume since I was the last to arrive.) I'm struck by how readily Paro accepts an interpretation from a foreign slave, right away and not after the fact. Is there some reason to believe that God was nudging him or did he figure that out on his own?
@MonicaCellio I seem to recall a midrash that says something like this: He dreamt the stated dreams' interpretations, but could not remember them. When the magicians interpreted the dreams for him, the interpretations didn't sound right. When Yosef did, it did. EDIT:See my next post, below.
@msh210 , that makes sense. I wonder if Paro somehow recognized God's role in this (he mentions God in talking to Yosef), and if so what happened over the next few generations to lose that.
@msh210, also: there is an explanation by the Lubavitcher Rebbe that Yosef's interpretation was unique in one particular regard - his was the only one that accounted for both sets of cows standing next to each other at the same time.
Which Yosef explained to mean that these sets of years will "coexist" in a sense - during the years of plenty they'll be thinking ahead to the years of famine, and conversely, during the famine they'll have the stored-up food to sustain them.
@msh210 , ah, ok. One of the timing challenges is that I'm joining this chat from work but my books are at home. This is still the best time for all timezones so that's not a complaint -- just lack of planning on my part.
@Alex , when I flew to Israel during Chanukah a few years ago I was told that I'd just miss a night. There weren't any I could see from the air anyway, thought.
@msh210, I guess that gets into the question of whether you can be yotzei by lighting in public but not at home. I think in Shulchan Aruch it says indeed that the shammash who lights in shul still needs to do so at home.
@ShmuelBrill: right, that's what I was getting at with "the same level of chiyuv." Same is true about kiddush too, according to some posekim. But there can be a case where there are other bnei bayis over bar mitzvah at home.
@msh210, yeah, if he said it in shul he wasn't yotzei Ner Chanukah there (because, as you said, it has to be "beiso"). With kiddush and havdalah, I suppose he could just have in mind not to be yotzei with the first one.
Just heard an interesting point from Rabbi Haber: A man who has said havdala cannot be motzi his wife on the tzad that she is not chayeves (like the Rema) since there is no obligation (arvus) to help her become yotze a mitzva she doesn't have.
@Alex So he can say a bracha on behalf of others without intending to be yotzei himself? Saying for the klal depends on level of obligation but not actual fulfillment? (I realize that I'm straying pretty far from the original topic of the day here so feel free to push this off.)
@MonicaCellio, it seems so. There's a similar concept in Shulchan Aruch about someone who is going to be leading multiple Seders on Pesach night (talk about getting off-topic!), where he can say at least some of the berachos over and over.
It's in O.C. 484:1: "if he wants to go to the other houses first, he can say the berachos for them and not eat or taste anything, then go home and say kiddush."
Returning for a minute to the parshah, I'm trying to figure out something (will probably end up as a question). It hardly seems like the brothers could have taken enough grain - just one donkey-load each - to last them more than a couple of weeks. What was the point, then?
@Alex They had fruit (they brought it as a present to Yosef) (maybe preserved?). So maybe (due to the famine) they were cutting back on grain and eating (preserved?) fruit instead -- and a few donkeyloads' grain would do.
@ShmuelBrill, one of the mefarshim (don't recall which one) says, in discussing the question of why Yosef never contacted Yaakov, that it's a week or two's trip each way.
@msh210, first of all, there's the story where one of the brothers opens his bag "to give his donkey food at the hotel" - that implies that he, at least, had just the one. Anyway, though, I think the Midrash says that Yosef limited everyone to one donkey-load each, to prevent hoarding, and also to force all of the brothers to have to come down (otherwise they could just have sent one of them with all ten donkeys).
"Amtachas Binyamin", "the load of Binyamin", is telling but not IMO deifnitive: it could mean "a load of" not "the load of". I think.
@Alex Oh, okay, then. (Your proof from "his donkey" is only strong when coupled with the fact that entered Egypt separately. Otherwise, it could be he had one, and each brother had one, and the additional load donkeys were shared among them all. But the midrash you cite answers my question.)
@msh210: there's also, at the end of the parshah, "each of them loaded up his donkey" after the goblet was found. That also implies that each one had just one, otherwise it would have had to say that each of them reloaded "chamorav." (Presumably the search was not just in their personal valises, but in their grain bags too.)
Is it appropriate to use the term "guru" to refer to an expert in matters of Judaism or Jewish law on the assumption that it will be understood as the second definition here, or is it inappropriate no matter what because of the vestigial influence of the first (Hindu) definition?
@Alex, do we know how much a donkey can carry? Or if they loaded up the donkey as opposed to also riding it? They may have enough for a couple of months there.
In fact, if it was, in fact, RSRH who did that analysis, I'm pretty sure I was exposed to it in high school, which contributed significantly to my appreciation of his commentary and later adoption of it as a favorite.
@msh210 The differences are there to find. The deep, insightful interpretation is a bit harder to duplicate.
@YDK "Roland de Vaux explains in his book Ancient Israel: its life and institutions that the origin of the unit homer is an ass-load, i.e. as much as an ass can carry" -- from en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:assload
OK, gotta go participate in a "holiday lunch." Hopefully, they've finished Grace by now. (c.f. judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/4676/…, except that this time, it's not potluck, and my food is strictly brown bag, so that issue doesn't apply as such)
@YDK After they go back they argue with Yaakov about going back with Binyamin and at one point somebody says "we could have been there and back twice already if you'd just stop resisting" (paraphrase), so it sounds like they came back with at least enough food for 4x the journey length (a week?). I don't know how much grain (net of what it had to eat on the way) a donkey could carry; I've got some medieval sources on army movements at home but nothing directly applicable here.
How should we relate to an answer where that answer has already been given by a previous poster with the same or greater detail? I assume this happens because the poster failed to read previously posted answers (I was guilty of this at least once).
Up-vote for participating with a good answer?...
Is it appropriate to use the term "guru" to refer to an expert in matters of Judaism or Jewish law on the assumption that it will be understood as the second definition here, or is it inappropriate no matter what because of the vestigial influence of the first (Hindu) definition?
