Kayin and Hevel - Understanding Chumash Series Part 1

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, this I hope will be the beginning of a series. A kind of hands-on experience in reading and coming to understand, at least on some level, Chumash. Um and my suggestion Others may suggest differently, but my suggestion is if you want to learn this skill >> [snorts] >> is to try to start with a mental set, let's say, of a 12-year-old who knows very little. He's sitting down looking at the book and he wants to make sense out of it. Make sense could be in any number of different ways that it should make sense. The words should make sense. The sentence structure should make sense. The idea should make sense. If a person's being described, the psychology should make sense. His values should make sense as much as the text is describing. How this text fits with other texts. And uh try to look at it without preconceived notions. Just look at the words on the page and see what they say. And if there's a difficulty treasure it. A difficulty in your mind is the key to the next level of understanding. Because if there's a trivial difficulty in your mind it typically means something in the verse hasn't been understood. And when you ask, you get an answer. You'll understand it much better. >> [snorts] >> And now I'll just make a distinction between two types of questions and then we'll dive right into a text to work on it together. >> [clears throat and cough] >> Sometimes it's just not clear what the text means. >> [snorts] >> Sometimes you can say if I were writing the text, I wouldn't write it that way. I think that's a good test. For example, let's say a word looks extra. As I could tell, you could erase that word, it would say the same thing. Okay, that's a valuable question.

Jump to a moment

1. 0:05Okay, this I hope will be the beginning of a series. A kind of hands-on experience…
2. 4:14prizes questions. So, you should be um should be open-minded to ask whatever occurs to you.…
3. 8:40of them are. >> [clears throat] >> So, um in verse one, where it says she…
4. 12:56Havel, that's Havel. Havelim, plural. I'm a Koheles, how do you say that? Havel Havelim, that's…
5. 17:54offering and Abel also brings. So, it's the same thing twice, one one right after the…
6. 22:12stolen? So, from the fact that God accepts Hevel's offering and not Cain's, you cannot deduce…
7. 26:32>> Yes. >> Now, we get Cain's reaction to being rejected. I think maybe the editor…
8. 31:25he wasn't critiquing himself. He was critiquing the critique. >> But then, you wouldn't be asking…
9. 35:43So, listen to what Rashi says. Rashi says four words in Hebrew which open up a…
10. 39:53today so Hashem said to kind where is your at Abel your brother now I want…

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