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parsha bit: Mishpatim
There is a famous midrash in which God offered the torah to all other nations, but each asked "what's in it?" and found something to object to. When he offered it to Israel, they said "na'aseh v'nishma" -- we will do and we will hear, agreeing to abide by it even before knowing all the details. The talmud tells us that when this happened, 600,000 angels descended from heaven and placed two crowns on each man's head, one as a reward for "na'aseh" and one as a reward for "nishma". However, when Israel sinned with the golden calf, the angels desceded again and took the crowns back. (Shabbat 88a)
(Shabbat 88a is the source for the part with the angels. I don't know where the midrash comes from -- probably Exodus Rabbah, but that's just a guess. You'd think that, as famous as that story is, I'd have a citation to hand. Oops.)
(Shabbat 88a is the source for the part with the angels. I don't know where the midrash comes from -- probably Exodus Rabbah, but that's just a guess. You'd think that, as famous as that story is, I'd have a citation to hand. Oops.)
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this may sound dumb, but could you explain how it's pronounced?
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No dumb questions. All "a"s are short, like "ah". The "e" is short ("eh"); there is a longer "e" sound that I always transliterate as "ei" to distinguish. The apostrophe is actually overloaded here; the first is a glottal stop and the second is a shwa sound -- just enough of a sound to let you pronounce the "v" and then go into the "n". Accents are on the final syllables.
So, "na-ah-SEH v(e)-nish-MAH", where "(e)" is the shwa sound. (I don't know how to do the proper symbol in HTML and I'm too lazy to find out.)
The "v" at the beginning of the second word is "and". If you just want to say "we will hear", that's nishma, not v'nishma. Hebrew tends to paste what would be short words in English onto other words.
Oh, and this is the first-person plural; if you want to say "I will do and I will understand", that would be... err, irregular for the first word; let me confirm the conjugation at home tonight before I confuse you. The second is "esh-mah" instead of "nish-mah".
not irregular