Chavarah- Jewish Community Learning

A blog of Jewish study and traditions. Notes from classes: Torah Study with Rabbi Marder, Toledot and Shabbaton as well as other details found of interest.

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Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Jacob Laban and Spotted Animals


Torah study 7-28    Genesis 30:30-43

Negotiations ...Jacob and Laban... Spotted animals...
Growth of the flocks   Separations of the animals 

Rashi ...when Rachel gives birth to Joseph.  God took away her shame.
Creative interpretation... When woman has no son...she has no one to hang her faults..

V30 dialog between Jacob and Laban.  Jacob reminds Laban that he has flourished since Jacob has been there... Many new flocks.  
Hebrew ... God has blessed you wherever I have turned... Word is' foot.'. Jacob says because he came there that Laban has done well.  Phrase used in many places in the Torah.

New Source. Cuvée .... 
When will I do for my own household?  He says he must make money for his own family.

Jacob says you "don't have to give me anything.". 
Wage for the future work is based on these "flawed" animals.
He could rely on his own skills to make his way and build his own wealth.
Jacob will be self employed.

The scheme...
V32.  Pass through the flock today... Haser - remove abnormal animals.  Or is he asking Laban to remove them. ... Or did Jacob remove them?  Most say Laban.
Spotted.... Some odd uses of this word in other places ie. Ezekiel ...
Word that means both sheep and goat.
This will be my wages....animals taken out but the ones that are born will be his wage in the future.

V33. Reminder of Jacobs integrity...offers that his flock will be all spotted or flawed.
V35 strategy...Laban Takes out the spotted speckled and all that had white in it...Jacob is beatin Laban at his own game,,,

Distance of 3 days journey away from the other flock. -significance of 3 days throughout Torah
Takes flock away so they will not intermingle.
V37. Trees... Lifnei. Play on Laban.  Almond, poplar, plain
Takes branches. Peels off bark showing white streaks.
Sets up troughs of water.peeled rods where animals come to drink..something happened to them when they come to drink... They go into heat
   They mated.
Rashi...females saw the rods..startled. When moves backward males couple with them and the result is the offspring color of the rods...spotted.

Animals result spotted, speckled  and also banded with stripes.
Eli Munk... Lesson...the imagination relates to the results...
Therefore when people have sex the thoughts should stay pure and not of others...
Thought at conception effect the child.

V40
Jacob separates them out...
Sheep face the other speckled animals.
V 41 ... Mikusharot...other animals no rods ...  Manipulating the breeding of the animals.
Autfim... The weak

Jacob now becomes prosperous.

Overall... Sensory impressions at conception effect the outcome...
Using selective breeding.
Recessive genes ...animals are more vigorous..heterosis. 
Diversity making hybrids. Stronger but ther will be a % of the spotted animals

Rods may be a ruse...
What is the trickery here? 
Many attempts to show no trickery...
Is this how Jews survives?  Is this how humans survive?  Through our wits and intelligence.

How much of this is Jacob and how much is God? A bit ambiguous. 
Poem...Pied Beauty. by Gerard Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things— 
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 
All things counter, original, spare, strange; 
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) 
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.

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