[Chassidut] R. Posner Tuesday 6:00PM - Note New Time

Ian Jacobi jacobi at MIT.EDU
Mon Feb 2 12:51:36 EST 2004


New Class Time for Spring Semester: Tuesdays 6:00 - 7:00PM in W11 Board 
Room

Exodus 15:1 - "Moses leading the Jews in song - a profound 
leader-nation relationship"

Also, an update on last week's class from Rabbi Posner:

"A couple of questions were raised at last week's class:
1. Why did G-d tell Moses to ask Pharaoh for permission for the Jews to 
leave for three days when the intention was to leave permanently?
2. Why did G-d tell Moses to tell the Jews to "borrow" gold and silver 
when they never intended to return the stuff?

These questions are discussed in " The Torah Anthology" by Rabbi Yaakov 
Culi (interested in who he was?http://www.milechai.com/product2/ta.htm) 
Book #5 page 25- 27.

Briefly: G-d didn't want the Egyptians to think that by giving the gold 
and silver they were done with the Jews. He wanted the Egyptians to 
chase after the Jews so that they would drown in the Red Sea (a 
punishment for drowning the Jewish boys). This is also why He told 
Moses to ask for a three day leave, for if he asked for the Jews to 
leave completely they would not have lent them the gold and silver 
(fearing they would not get it back) and then they would have no reason 
to chase after them and they would wouldn't be drowned....
Was it a lie? No, he said "we will go for three days" no mention was 
made of returning!
 
I will bring the book on Tuesday night , IYH, so you can get the full 
explanation."

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