Wednesday, March 28, 2007

A Question About the Chomesh Resettlement Hint

Of course I am in favor of yishuv eretz yisrael. I am less in favor of finding hints in the parasha to modern events, given that there is so much parsha to work with, as well as haftara, as well as daf Yomi, coupled with the human rationalization power which is exceptionally creating at making connections, even where there are none, and coupled with the fact that many other events occur which to not find a match in the parsha, such that finding a hint to some event is quite possible, nay, even probable, even if it was not intended.

But now I have a question. Yeranen Yaakov:
This week's Perasha:


כג וְהָיָה, כִּי-יֶחֱטָא וְאָשֵׁם--וְהֵשִׁיב אֶת-הַגְּזֵלָה אֲשֶׁר גָּזָל אוֹ אֶת-הָעֹשֶׁק אֲשֶׁר עָשָׁק, אוֹ אֶת-הַפִּקָּדוֹן אֲשֶׁר הָפְקַד אִתּוֹ; אוֹ אֶת-הָאֲבֵדָה, אֲשֶׁר מָצָא.

כד אוֹ מִכֹּל אֲשֶׁר-יִשָּׁבַע עָלָיו, לַשֶּׁקֶר--וְשִׁלַּם אֹתוֹ בְּרֹאשׁוֹ, וַחֲמִשִׁתָיו יֹסֵף עָלָיו: לַאֲשֶׁר הוּא לוֹ יִתְּנֶנּוּ, בְּיוֹם אַשְׁמָתוֹ.



Arutz Sheva:

(IsraelNN.com) Nationalist activists have announced plans to resettle the evacuated northern Samaria town of Homesh - and the IDF issued a warning Thursday evening not to do so. They said that Israelis may not enter the town without express permission.

Several organizations have called upon their activist members to be prepared by Monday to enter Homesh, which was uprooted by IDF forces as part of the 2005 Disengagement Plan.

Today's news, courtesy of Jameel at the Muqata:
I had SMS exchanges last night with people in and around Chomesh about what time the forced evacuation was to take place. We decided it would be in the early daylight hours of the morning...and the text message I received "Pinuy [evacuation] is NOW!" came at 6:38 AM.

Everyone knew this was coming, yet no one regretted going to Chomesh, even if it was only for a few precious days.

Read it all there.

So how is this now וְהֵשִׁיב אֶת-הַגְּזֵלָה אֲשֶׁר גָּזָל and וַחֲמִשִׁתָיו יֹסֵף עָלָיו?

I don't want this to sound like gloating, and in fact my sympathies lie with them. But I did not want to pass up the opportunity to point out the pitfalls of the "current parsha predicts current events" meme.

3 comments:

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

Hi Josh -

I'm totally perplexed by your current event/parasha association. What exactly are you implying? That Chomesh was "stolen" because we entered without permission? Please elucidate...

Thanks!

--Jameel

joshwaxman said...

no, that's not what I meant. sorry for the confusion. yaak (whose post I was responding to) took this to mean that what was "stolen" when the government evicted the Jews from Chomesh will now be "returned" to them. Thus, they will return what was stolen. And Chamishato appears in the next pasuk, which can be taken as a reference to Chomesh. He made this deduction beforehand, when the plans were in the works at resettling, and thus found proof, I guess, that it would work.

I think that, as meritorious as all this was, proof of this and of its success was not to be found in the parsha. That is, I was trying to debunk the derasha from the pasuk.

All the best,
Josh

yaak said...

Josh, I just noticed this post, so I'll respond now.
My point wasn't to show that it would work right now.
My point was that it will work sometime in the future, whether before Mashiah comes or during his coming. Of course, I'm not a Navi, and I don't really know how to Darshan Pesukim, but I found a Remez to something that I already know to be true from other sources, so I posted it. That's all. The juxtaposition of the Parsha with the march was enough of a reason to post it.
You'll probably hate my latest (April 19th) post too.

:)

Nahara Nahara Upashtei.

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