midrash session 8 (and a hardware update)

[cellio]

This session was actually a few weeks ago (things have been hectic).

(1) And he said: here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the offering?" -- (2) Then (lit "in the hour's coming"?) a great fear fell upon Yitzchak [1], as he did not see in Avraham's hand anything to sacrifice, and he felt (suspected?) something and he said: (3) "where is the lamb for the offering?" (4) He said to him: the Holy One blessed be He chose you. (5) Yitzchak said: if he chose me (harei?) my soul is given to him but my mother is grieved for me. [2] (5) Nonetheless (?) "the two walked together": (6) This to bind and this to be bound, this to slaughter and this to be slaughtered.

[1] I"m not sure what to do with "pachad" here.

[2] "Tzar" (same root as "tzuris", a word you might know) doesn't look like future tense, but clearly the gist of this is "ok by me but what are you doing to mom?".

Question: "he chose you" is "bachar bakh", similar to the phrase in the torah blessing "bachar banu" (chose us). But why is it "bakh" and "banu" instead of "otakh" and "otanu"? "You" and "us" are direct objects; using the beit as modifier seems to call for a preposition, but no one ever translates that way. ?

(7) "And they came to the place" -- two bringing the stones, two bringing the fire, two bringing the wood; (8) Avraham acting like one that made a wedding [3] for his son, and Yitzchak acting like one that made a chupah for himself. (9) Yitzchak said to him: father, quickly do the will of your maker and burn me well (lit. "beautiful"), and my ash take to my mother and leave them (?), and all the time that my mother looks at them she will say: (10) this is my son that his father slaughtered. (11) Father, what will you (plural) do in your old age? (12) He said to him: my son, we know our death is close. (13) The one who comforted us until now he will comfort us until the day we die.

I cannot tell, nor do I know if that ambiguity is deliberate, whether Yitzchak is sincere or sarcastic here.

[3] The word is "chatnut", from "chatan" (groom). A better way to render this might be "made his son a groom". Yitzchak makes a "chupah", the wedding canopy, and that's the word I'm more used to seeing when talking about the wedding ceremony (e.g. an invitation will say "chupah at 4PM").

Mac update: I can't connect the printer to one machine and print from the other (either direction), but at least they're close enough together that I can move the USB cable as needed. There's also a weird, loud chirping noise when it's in sleep mode; word on the net is that this happens sometimes when peripherals are plugged in, which seems weird. I normally have USB connections for keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and printer, and am not really interested in changing any of that. A couple nights ago I left my iPod plugged in to charge and it didn't chirp; weird. I'm not sure plugging in the iPod every night is really good for its battery, though. But pulling the speaker cable and plugging it back in when using the machine is also a hassle.

Oh, and if anybody can get me Windows-style file sorting in Finder (directories then files, but alphabetically within those two groups), I'll be in your debt. "Sort by kind" violates the second part of that. The common motif on the net seems to be "this isn't Windows", which is true but unhelpful. My legacy file structure evolved the way it did in large part because of how it sorted.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

(2) b'oto sha'a = in that same hour

Also, pachad is generally also translated as fear, but with another nuance that I'm not remembering. It's also used as part of a way of referring to the Deity: Pachad Yitzchak (which I think is seen more in R"H/Y"K davening than other times of the year).

(4) ... but about my mother it hurts me. (her pain, her lack of choice, her not being informed, all sorts of possibilities here)

(5) af-al-pi-chain I think of as even so or nevertheless; nonetheless also works.

[cellio]

Pachad: could it be an intensifier? The torah sometimes doubles words to do that, but two different words with the same general meaning feels like a different case. (And this isn't torah; rabbinic Hebrew could be different.)

Thanks for the other notes!

[magid.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's an intensifier, but I'm not at all sure about that.