Tractate Berakhot Semester 1, Test 2
The Story
Sugiya: A sugiya is a passage from the Talmud. This particular passage is called an agada, a legend. (The other type of passage is Halakhah.) Agadoth help us understand the theology and philosophies behind the halakhot in the form of a story, not just the dry rabbinic arguments and humor that can be found throughout most of the Talmud.
אינת It was taught The following is being drawn from a braithah.
א "
יסוי ר Said Rabbi Yossi ךלהמ יתייה תחא םעפ
ךרדב
Once upon a time, I was walking on the road
Once upon a time, Rabbi Yossi was walking through the streets of Jerusalem. It came time to pray, and he went into one of the ruins alongside the road in Jerusalem (which had been destroyed by the Romans) to pray. We shall soon see why exactly Rabbi Yossi left the road to pray inside a ruin.
תחא הברוחל יתסנכנו
םילשורי תוברוחמ And I entered into a ruin of the ruins of Jerusalem
ללפתהל To pray
בוטל רוכז והילא אב Came Elijah, of blessed
memory Because of the parenthesis, we can see that the word “shamar” actually meant “to wait,” as opposed to “to guard,” as it is usually translated. This is one of just a few times that the word “shamar” means “to wait.”
חתפה לע יל רמשו And guarded me at the opening
<יל ןיתמהו> (And waited for me) יתלפת יתמייסש דע Until I finished my prayer יתלפת יתמייסש רחאל After I finished my prayer
Here, we see a perfectly normal interaction between Rabbi Yossi and Elijah the Prophet (of blessed memory) – no dry Talmudic humor yet!
יל רמא [Elijah] said to me יבר ךילע םולש “Peace upon you, Rabbi!” יבר ךילע םולש ול יתרמאו
ירומו
And I said to him, “Peace upon you, my rabbi and
teacher!”
ינב יל רמאו And [Elijah] said to me, “My son,”
וז הברוחל תסנכנ המ ינפמ Why have you entered into this ruin?”
The first thing that Elijah wants to know is why Rabbi Yossi went into the ruins to pray —why not pray outside, on the road?
ללפתהל ול יתרמא And I said to him, “To pray!” Wasn't that pretty obvious? ללפתהל ךל היה יל רמאו
ךרדב
And he said to me, “It should have been to you to pray on
the road!” When Elijah rebukes Rabbi Yossi, telling him that he should have prayed on the road (as opposed to the ruins), Rabbi Yossi counters by saying that he wanted to pray someplace quite and peaceful, lest someone disrupt his prayer.
ול יתרמאו And I said to him יתייה ארייתמ I was worried ירבוע יב וקיספי אמש
יל רמאו And he said to me According to Elijah, Rabbi Yossi should have instead prayed a short version of the prayer while on the road, as opposed to praying while the normal prayer while in the ruin. הלפת ללפתהל ךל היה
הרצק
It should have been to you to pray and shortened prayer
העש התואב In that time, We will now see the three very deep, meaningful lessons that Rabbi Yossi learned from his encounter with Elijah.
השלש ונממ יתדמל יתדמל
םירבד השלש ונממ
I learned from him three things
ןיסנכנ ןיאש יתדמל
הברוחל I learned that one should never enter into a ruin
Well, duh. You never know what you're going to find in a ruin...
ךרדב ןיללפתמש יתדמלו should always pray on the And I learned that one road
Since it's generally considered bad form to enter a ruin, then, yes, it's a good idea to pray on the road.
ךרדב ללפתמהש יתדמלו And I learned that he he who
prays on the road The third thing that Elijah learned was that, if one was to pray on the road (as one should, see above), then one should pray a shortened prayer and then get on with one's day.
הרצק הלפת ללפתמ Should pray a shortened prayer.
ינב יל רמאו And he said to me, “My son,”
Well, this is a rather odd question: why would Rabbi Yossi be hearing some voice inside the ruin?
וז הברוחב תעמש לוק המ What voice have you heard in this ruin?”
לוק תב יתעמש ול יתרמאו And I said to him, “I heard a female voice
הנויכ תמהנמש That hummed like a dove”. תרמואו And is saying
Here, the voice is lamenting the fact that, because of the Benei Yisrael's sins, God had to destroy the Beth ha'Miqdash and exile the nation amongst all of the other nations.
םהיתונועבש םינבל יוא יתיב תא יתברחה
Oh, to my sons, that in their transgressions I destroyed
my House
ילכיה תא יתפרשו And I burned my Temple תומואה ןיבל םיתילגהו And I dispersed them
throughout the nations ךשאר ייחו ךייח יל רמאו And he said to me, “On my
life
Elijah explains that what Rabbi Yossi is hearing is not necessarily something out of the ordinary — rather, this happens three times a day!
תרמוא דבלב וז העש אל
ךכ It is not just at this hour that [the voice] is saying this םויו םוי לכב אלא Rather, every day
םימעפ שלש Three times [a day] ךכ תרמוא [The voice] says such
דבלב וז אלו And not only this Additionally, when the Benei Yisrael are praying, God shakes his head in approval. לארשיש העשב אלא
תושרדמ Khenesiyoth and Bathei Midrashoth לודגה הימש אהי ןינועו
ךרובמ And anwer, “<Hebrew text here!> בקה
"
ושאר ענענמ ה The Holy One, Blessed be He, shakes his head רמואו And says
Here, we are compared to the sons of the king, who are banished from their father's table—and yet, we are still close to our father, the king.
ךלמה ירשא Blessed is the king ותיבב ותוא ןיסלקמש That invites him to his house תא הלגהש באל ול המ ךכ
וינב So, too, to the father that exiled his sons םינבל םהל יואו And, oh! to the sons םהיבא ןחלוש לעמ ולגש That were exiled from their father's table. Symbolism in the agada:
• ruins: destruction, anarchism, tragedy, exile, the past
• the road: moving on, not dwelling on the past, our never-ending march toward the sunset
• Elijah's rebuke: Everything must be done in moderation — don't go out of your way to make everything super-mega-ultra-perfect, work with what you have. Don't pull yourself back just for the extra bit of khavanah.
▪ Question: What if Rabbi Yossi was praying for the geulah?
▪ Answer: He might have been, but you must still act in the moment and not dwell on the past — “Yesterday is history; tomorrow is a mystery — but today is a gift. That is why it's called the present.”
• praying alone: the redemption is meant to be a communal effort, not just something that you undertake yourself. You are not supposed to separate yourself from society.
Daf 4, Amud B
רמ רמא Said Mar
ק ארוק "
ללפתמו ש [He who] recites the Shema and prays [the Shemoneh Esreh] רל היל עייסמ
'
ןנחוי Supports to Rabbi Yohanan
ר רמאד '
ןנחוי As Rabbi Yohanan said According to Rabbi Yohanan, our prayers should look something like this:
• Shema
• Shemoneh Esreh • Shemoneh Esreh • Shema
• Shemoneh Esreh אבה םלועה ןב והזיא Who is the son of the World
to Come?
הלפתל הלואג ךמוסה הז תיברע לש
He who juxtaposes [the berakhah of] geulah to the
recitation of the prayer of Arvith
רמוא יול ןב עשוהי יבר Rabbi Yehoshua, son of Levi, said
According to Rabbi Yehoshua, we should place the Shemoneh Esreh in between the Shema—thus, the Shema should be the first and last things that we recite every day. םונקת עצמאב תולפת The prayers in the middle
Morning
were placed
Question: What does being a “[S]on of the world to come” mean?
Answer: It is meant to emphasize the importance of juxtaposing the recitation of geulah with the recitation of the Shemoneh Esreh.
יגלפמ אק יאמב In what are they arguing?
אמיא תיעב יא If you want to say
There are two possible explanations for why Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Yehoshua are arguing:
• logic: they have logical reasons for their opinions
• text: there are biblical verses that discuss what they are talking about. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Hakhamim took over as the religious leaders of the Jewish people. They were charged with finding a way for all Jews to observe the mitzvoth without losing the original purpose of said mitzvoth. They derived Halakhah and adapted it to modern life.
ארק Text [i.e., the Bible]
עביא "
ארבס א [Or] if you want to say logic?
עביא "
ארבס א If you want to say logic Redemption = Yetziath Mitzrayim
One possible explanation for Rabbi Yohanan is that because part of the redemption from Egypt happened during the nighttime, even though the majority of the redemption from Egypt happened during the day after. This is why it is so important for Rabbi Yohanan to juxtapose geulah with the Shemoneh Esreh. רד
'
רבס ןנחוי As Rabbi Yohanan logically deduced
אתרואמ הלואג “Redemption” is the evening יוה ימנ So, too
אתיילעמ הלואג אלא Rather, the main redemption ארפצ דע אלא איוה אל Is not present until morning.
רו '
רבס יול ןב עשוהי And Rabbi Yehoshua logically deduced According to Rabbi Yehoshua, since the main part of the redemption from Egypt did not happen until morning, the concept of somekh geulah le'tefilah does not apply.
איוה אלד ןויכ Because it did not happen until morning ארפצמ אלא
אתיילעמ הלואג איוה אל There was no main geulah. According to Rabbi Yehoshua, there was no “main” redemption — there was only one redemption.
באו "
ארק א And if you want to say text
Seeing that the “logic” argument failed, we can now turn to biblical sources — and we see that both rabbis draw their conclusions from the same source.
ושרד דחא ארקמ םהינשו And the two of them derived from the same source ביתכד As it is written “ךמוקבו ךבכשב " “And when you lie down,
and when you arise”
ר '
רבס ןנחוי Rabbi Yohanan deduced
According to Rabbi Yohanan, the reason that we should be somekh geulah le'tefilah is that because we are somekh gulah le'tefilah in the morning, so to we should mirror the same behaviors in the evening.
המיקל הביכש שיקמ To parallel lying down to waking up
ק המיק המ "
ש How does it parallel the Shema חאו
"
הלפת כ And then tefilah ק ימנ הביכש ף
" חאו ש " כ
הלפת
So too “when you lie down,” you recite the Shema and
then the tefilah ר
'
רבס יול ןב עשוהי Rabbi Yehoshua logically deduced
According to Rabbi Yehoshua, the verse implies that the Shema should bookend the tefilah because it is the first thing that you say when you get up in the morning, and should thus be the last thing that you say at night. If you say it closer to the time you wake up, you should also say it closer to the time you go to sleep.
המיקל הביכש שיקמ To parallel lying down to waking up
ק המיק המ "
ש How does one parallel the qeriath shemah? ותטמל ךומס He who juxtaposes it to his
bed. ק ימנ הביכש ףא
" ךומס ש
ותטמל
So, too, “when you lie down” you juxtapose the
Shema to your bed
Talmud Yerushalmi: There are three examples of things that must be juxtaposed to one another:
• semikhah and shehithah: before slaughtering an animal, you must first lean yourself against the head of the animal, and state that you are transferring your sins to it. The animal must then immediately be slaughtered.
• Washing the hands before eating bread and then reciting the berakhah • connecting the blessing of geulah to the Shemoneh Esreh.
The source of the last example is from Psalms, where the ending of one pereq is “yihyu le'ratzon imrei fi ve'hegyon lefanekhah God tzuri ve'goali”, which emphasizes the concept of geulah. The next pereq begins with “yaankhah God be'yom tzarah,” emphasizing the concept of tefilah—first, we talk about the redemption, and then we talk about God answering our prayers. The Yerushalmi then relates the following parable to help us better understand the point that it is making: a friend of the king comes knocking on the king's door. No one answers, and the friend waits and waits. The friend gives up and leaves, and no sooner does the king come to answer the door. Symbolically, our tefilah is knocking on God's door — however, we must first alert God to tell him that we are coming, which is the purpose of geulah.
• Question: Why does the blessing of geulah get God's attention?
• Answer: By praising God, we are drawing him nearer to us. After we draw God closer to us by praising God, we can then ask for what we want.
Rashi (zeh somekh): Quoting the Talmud Yerushalmi that we studied above, Rashi interprets the parable to mean that one should approach God through praise in the same way one would praise a friend before asking them for help.
the period of the Rishonim. In his commentary, the Rif quotes the Gemara verbatim, but only the final conclusions, leaving out the rabbinic arguments and stories.
Rabbi Yonah Girandi: Rabbi Yonah, who was a cousin of Maimonides, wrote a commentary on the Rif's commentary. His students published his commentary in his name postmortem. According to Rabbi Yonah, one can ask: why is the reward so great for being somekh geulah le'tefilah? He offers two possible answers:
• By taking us out of Egypt, God released us from our enslavement to other human beings, and replaced our human masters with God itself. Just like a servant to a human master, we must also do exactly what God wants us to do. Here, Rabbi Yonah does not see the connection of geulah to prayer, but rather to serving God. Geulah comes first, and then prayer (which is the exact reverse of Rashi). We first praise God, and then we serve him — prayer is not about asking what we want, but instead about serving God.
• By juxtaposing geulah to tefilah, we tell God how much faith we have in God, and then we show our utter and complete faith in God by asking It for what we need and want in life. When a person shows his/her complete faith in God, God will answer that person in the same way God answered his/her ancestors. Thus, according to this explanation, tefilah can only be best understood when put in the context of geulah.
אניברד הירב רמ ביתמ Refuted Mar, son of Ravina הינפל םיתש ךרבמ ברעב “In the evening, he blesses
two [berakhot] beforehand The point that Mar is raising is that if you want to say that there are two blessings recited after the Shema, then one has to be interrupting the flow from the Shema to the Shemoneh Esreh, and you are thus not being somekh geulah le'tefilah.
הירחאל םיתשו And two afterward” תרמא יאו And if you say ךומסל יעב That we need to juxtapose הלואג ךמס אק אל אה
הלפתל He did not juxtapose [the two] there!
ונביכשה רמימל יעב אהד Because we need to say “Hashkhivenu”
That second berakhah is Hashkhivenu, which is also said between the Shema and the Shemoneh Esreh.
ירמא It was said
However, we can look at the second berakhah as merely an extension of the blessing of geulah, not necessarily as its own separate blessing.
ונביכשה ןנבר וניקתד ןויכ אימד אתכירא הלואגכ
Because the rabbis established Hashkhivenu to
be comparable to a lengthened geulah
יכה אמית אל יאד And if you don't say so Assuming Mar's statement is true, then there is also a break during Shaharith, too, when we say the verse, “God sefathai tiftah u'fi yagid tehilatekhah”
ךימס יצמ יכיה תירחש Then we also find it in Shaharith! ןנחוי יבר רמא אהו And thus said Rabbi
Yohanan
According to Rabbi Yohanan, we recite the two verses at the beginning and end of the Shemoneh Esreh during the morning to create one very long prayer, so too we say רמוא הלחתב In the prayer, it says
ה '
Hashkhivenu to create one really super-de-duper long prayer. The two verses at the beginning and end of the Shemoneh Esreh of Shaharith are also meant to make an elongated prayer of geulah.
רמוא אוה ףוסבלו And at the end, one says יפ ירמא ןוצרל ויהי <verse>
םתה אלא Rather, there רמימל ןנבר וניקתד ןויכ Because the rabbis
established [thus] to say אימד אתכירא הלפתכ To be an elongated prayer
ימנ אכה So, here, too רמימל ןנבר וניקתד ןויכ
ונביכשה
Because the rabbis established to say
