Q&A - A Portion in the Torah, Intermarriage, Purpose - Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Okay. Today is Q&A. The floor is open. >> [snorts] >> Yeah. >> What are the implications of Ham's curse? >> Implications of? >> The curse of Ham, I think. >> Oh. >> [snorts] >> Well, the verse says two things. Really, it addresses Canaan as one explanation is that was Ham's fourth son. And what Ham did was prevent Noah from having a fourth son. So, there's a kind of symbolic connection there. Um What's said is that he will serve his brothers. That's what's said there. Um Now, structurally, Ham is 1/3 of the world's population. Canaan is one small slice of that. Uh 1/3 of the population. Um And it would have to do with the character of Canaan particularly. Um Perhaps I should just mention a kind of background idea, which is found in the Midrash Tanchuma. Um When you're dealing with a divine interaction with the world, that divine interaction might be based on features of the world that aren't observable to us. And if you try to explain it only in terms of what we see, it'll be very difficult to explain what the principles are that they generate that conclusion. Um And here we're talking about a divine curse, which was revealed through prophecy. So, to read it as if it were a human interaction, where like in a courtroom you have only what you see to go on, would be a mistaken background. But, I don't know what more to say to you that that I mean, I don't know the oral literature on it to to to a great extent. That's what the verses say. The idea of associating it with black-skinned people, I think is needs study. From our understanding, the people who lived in Canaan were not

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