We read 38:1-10:
Why did Judah leave his brothers?
Why does Er die?
Why did Judah tell Onan to marry Tamar?
Why did Judah leave his brothers?
Why does Er die?
Why did Judah tell Onan to marry Tamar?
RASHI:
ויהי בעת ההוא AND IT CAME TO PASS AT THAT TIME — Why is this section placed here thus interrupting the section dealing with the history of Joseph? To teach that his brothers degraded him from his high position. When they saw their father’s grief they said, “You told us to sell him: if you had told us to send him back to his father, we would also have obeyed you” (Genesis Rabbah 85:2).
Abarbanel:
Yehudah descended. He wanted to distance himself from his brothers’ cruelty as well as from his father’s sorrow.
RASHI:
רע בעיני ה' ' WAS WICKED IN THE EYES OF THE LORD — like the wickedness of Onan, and committing the same sin. This must have been the case because of Onan it is said, (v. 10) “And the Lord slew him also — Onan’s death was for a similar reason as Er’s death. Why did Er commit this sin? So that she should not bear children and her beauty thereby become impaired (Yevamot 34b).
Rachel Adelman:
“Couple with your brother’s widow: Relations between a man and the wife of his son or his brother are normally out of bounds (see Lev. 18:15–16 and 20:21), but the principle of levirate marriage, yibum, provides an exception to this prohibition. According to Deut. 25:5,
a man has an obligation to his widowed sister-in-law: “When brothers dwell together
and one of them dies and leaves no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married
to a stranger, outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall unite with her: take her
as his wife and perform the levir’s duty [vayibemah].” But when Er dies and Onan
fails to do his duty as the levir (yabam), the next in line is not necessarily Shelah,
the youngest son; it may be Judah himself. As Nahum Sarna points out, according to
ancient Near Eastern sources the father-in-law could also assume the role of the levir.
Redemption of the childless widow, by granting her seed in the name of the deceased,
trumps the laws of incest.
ויהי בעת ההוא AND IT CAME TO PASS AT THAT TIME — Why is this section placed here thus interrupting the section dealing with the history of Joseph? To teach that his brothers degraded him from his high position. When they saw their father’s grief they said, “You told us to sell him: if you had told us to send him back to his father, we would also have obeyed you” (Genesis Rabbah 85:2).
Abarbanel:
Yehudah descended. He wanted to distance himself from his brothers’ cruelty as well as from his father’s sorrow.
RASHI:
רע בעיני ה' ' WAS WICKED IN THE EYES OF THE LORD — like the wickedness of Onan, and committing the same sin. This must have been the case because of Onan it is said, (v. 10) “And the Lord slew him also — Onan’s death was for a similar reason as Er’s death. Why did Er commit this sin? So that she should not bear children and her beauty thereby become impaired (Yevamot 34b).
Rachel Adelman:
“Couple with your brother’s widow: Relations between a man and the wife of his son or his brother are normally out of bounds (see Lev. 18:15–16 and 20:21), but the principle of levirate marriage, yibum, provides an exception to this prohibition. According to Deut. 25:5,
a man has an obligation to his widowed sister-in-law: “When brothers dwell together
and one of them dies and leaves no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married
to a stranger, outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall unite with her: take her
as his wife and perform the levir’s duty [vayibemah].” But when Er dies and Onan
fails to do his duty as the levir (yabam), the next in line is not necessarily Shelah,
the youngest son; it may be Judah himself. As Nahum Sarna points out, according to
ancient Near Eastern sources the father-in-law could also assume the role of the levir.
Redemption of the childless widow, by granting her seed in the name of the deceased,
trumps the laws of incest.
We read 38:11-23:
Why does Onan Die?
What rights does Tamar have as a widow to Judah’s family but sent home to live in her family’s house?
What significance is cord/seal ?
Why does Onan Die?
What rights does Tamar have as a widow to Judah’s family but sent home to live in her family’s house?
What significance is cord/seal ?
RASHI:
“He would thresh inside and scatter the seed outside” (also a reference to RUTH, later.)
SFORNO:
ע בעיני ה' ' the words “in the eyes of God,” are mentioned to tell us that he was not evil to his fellow human beings.
ATHALYA BRENNER:
So Tamar went: Tamar is obedient. We learn nothing about Tamar’s response or feelings throughout these occurrences. She is twice widowed (or at least bereft of a partner) in a short time, denied her third man and thus the possibility of all-important motherhood. Moreover, she loses her place in Judah’s household by being sent back to her father but is not released of her duty to this same household.
NACHMANIDES:
“the staff you carry” -As a symbol of mastership and rulership. We will read shortly that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” (49:10) All these are what he gave to her.
CHIZKUNI:
“your signet ring and your cord;” these were both items that he could not be without for any length of time. He needed the signet ring for confirming any transactions, and the cord to tie up the sheep. (The third item, his staff, was less important as he was in his prime.)
“He would thresh inside and scatter the seed outside” (also a reference to RUTH, later.)
SFORNO:
ע בעיני ה' ' the words “in the eyes of God,” are mentioned to tell us that he was not evil to his fellow human beings.
ATHALYA BRENNER:
So Tamar went: Tamar is obedient. We learn nothing about Tamar’s response or feelings throughout these occurrences. She is twice widowed (or at least bereft of a partner) in a short time, denied her third man and thus the possibility of all-important motherhood. Moreover, she loses her place in Judah’s household by being sent back to her father but is not released of her duty to this same household.
NACHMANIDES:
“the staff you carry” -As a symbol of mastership and rulership. We will read shortly that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” (49:10) All these are what he gave to her.
CHIZKUNI:
“your signet ring and your cord;” these were both items that he could not be without for any length of time. He needed the signet ring for confirming any transactions, and the cord to tie up the sheep. (The third item, his staff, was less important as he was in his prime.)
We read 38:24-30
Why did Tamar “just” return the cord and seal as opposed to “calling Judah out”?
Why did Tamar “just” return the cord and seal as opposed to “calling Judah out”?
RASHI
כי על כן לא נתתיה BECAUSE THAT I GAVE HER NOT — For (כי) she has acted rightly, because (על כן) I did not give her to Shelah, my son.
והיא שלחה אל חמיה SHE SENT TO HER FATHER-IN-LAW — she did not wish to put him to shame in public by saying “It is by thee that I am with child”, but she said only “By the man whose these are”. She thought: “if he is to acknowledge it, let him acknowledge it voluntarily, and if not, let them burn me and let me not put him to shame in public”. From this passage our Rabbis derived the teaching: Far better that a man should let himself be cast into a fiery furnace (even as Tamar was ready to be burnt to death) and let him not publicly put his fellow to shame (Sotah 10b).
SFORNO:
צדקה ממני, More righteous than me: even though she approached me under false pretences, misrepresenting herself, she still acted more righteously than I did. I did not see her at all when I sent her the goat. [I was too embarrassed to be seen, Ed.] Her deceit was practised for a noble cause. and appears to have been approved by God, seeing she meant to maintain the seed of her deceased husband, whereas I was merely wanting to gratify my libido. Immediately she had done what she meant to do, she resumed living as a widow as I had told her to do….Our sages have used this occurrence as the basis for their saying that “a sin committed for noble cause is better than a good deed when same is not performed as such but as something self-serving.” (Nazir 23).
Kitzur Shulchan Arukh 29:17:
It is forbidden to humiliate anyone either by word or by deed, especially in public. And our Rabbis of blessed memory said,52Bava Metzia 58b. "A person who humiliates someone in public will have no share in the World to Come." Our Rabbis of blessed memory said furthermore,53Ibid, 59a. "It is better for a man to throw himself into a fiery furnace than to put his fellow man to shame,
Jonathan Sacks:
There are three ways of changing the world. You can force people to change, you can pay them to change, or you can inspire them to change. The first is the way of politics and power, the second of economics and the market, but the third is the way of the academy and the house of study. What makes the third better than the other two is that, in the short term at least, power and wealth are zero sum games. The more I share, the less I have. Knowledge, insight, and teaching are non-zero. The more I share, the more I have. The more I teach, the more I learn.
Tamar… harlot or hero or…?
Judah; why does he change? Where is that seen?
כי על כן לא נתתיה BECAUSE THAT I GAVE HER NOT — For (כי) she has acted rightly, because (על כן) I did not give her to Shelah, my son.
והיא שלחה אל חמיה SHE SENT TO HER FATHER-IN-LAW — she did not wish to put him to shame in public by saying “It is by thee that I am with child”, but she said only “By the man whose these are”. She thought: “if he is to acknowledge it, let him acknowledge it voluntarily, and if not, let them burn me and let me not put him to shame in public”. From this passage our Rabbis derived the teaching: Far better that a man should let himself be cast into a fiery furnace (even as Tamar was ready to be burnt to death) and let him not publicly put his fellow to shame (Sotah 10b).
SFORNO:
צדקה ממני, More righteous than me: even though she approached me under false pretences, misrepresenting herself, she still acted more righteously than I did. I did not see her at all when I sent her the goat. [I was too embarrassed to be seen, Ed.] Her deceit was practised for a noble cause. and appears to have been approved by God, seeing she meant to maintain the seed of her deceased husband, whereas I was merely wanting to gratify my libido. Immediately she had done what she meant to do, she resumed living as a widow as I had told her to do….Our sages have used this occurrence as the basis for their saying that “a sin committed for noble cause is better than a good deed when same is not performed as such but as something self-serving.” (Nazir 23).
Kitzur Shulchan Arukh 29:17:
It is forbidden to humiliate anyone either by word or by deed, especially in public. And our Rabbis of blessed memory said,52Bava Metzia 58b. "A person who humiliates someone in public will have no share in the World to Come." Our Rabbis of blessed memory said furthermore,53Ibid, 59a. "It is better for a man to throw himself into a fiery furnace than to put his fellow man to shame,
There are three ways of changing the world. You can force people to change, you can pay them to change, or you can inspire them to change. The first is the way of politics and power, the second of economics and the market, but the third is the way of the academy and the house of study. What makes the third better than the other two is that, in the short term at least, power and wealth are zero sum games. The more I share, the less I have. Knowledge, insight, and teaching are non-zero. The more I share, the more I have. The more I teach, the more I learn.
Tamar… harlot or hero or…?
Judah; why does he change? Where is that seen?