Saturday, October 20, 2007

DVAR TORAH S2: Lech Lecha (A Yoda like Yoda)

(translation: one who knows like Yoda)

This week's Torah portion should be very familiar... too familiar... to members of my Biblical Grammar class. We are taking apart chapters 12, 13, 15, 16, and on of Genesis and parsing each word for its grammatical construct, resulting in sever Yoda-like speech. Yoda was wise beyond his 900 some-odd years but spoke in sentences that didn't make sense in English. But Hebrew is not english.

"And afflicted He God Pharaoh affliction great and his house over the matter of Sarai wife of Abram. And he called, Pharaoh, to Abram and he said 'What is that you have done to me, why not did you tell me that your wife she is?'" (Genesis 12:17-18)

Fun stuff. "Lech lecha". "Go for yourself" Never thought you would translate it that way, did you?

Nothing much to say now in the limited time I have at this moment, but I will possibly update this later. Just a note that the facebook edition of this note will probably not reflect the potential updates so if you want to read it please click the link to the original post.

Shabbat Shalom

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