It’s Tuesday, and we have a brand-new #TuesdayTorahTutorsTidbit for you! Real Torah, from real TorahTutors sessions.
One of the great things about individualized learning is seeing how the same body of Torah can be adapted and enjoyed with so many different individuals, on different levels.
One tutor recently took two students – one a pre-teen, the other a mother who came to us wanting to improve her skills to help her kids with their homework – on modified versions of a journey through the Torah’s subtle nuances of wording.
The question is clear enough: Why all the words in Shemot 1:7 to tell us the children of Israel multiplied in Egypt?
While many answers have been suggested to this question, our intrepid tutor shared insights with her students – each on their level – based on finding earlier occurrences of the same Hebrew words.
For instance – “Bnei Yisrael paru” – they were fruitful.
Can you find where else that Hebrew terminology was used to describe human population increase in the book of Bereishit?
What about the other words in Shemot 1:7?
Can we trace any developments in the relationship between people (especially descendants of Avraham) and God through the recurring uses of these terms?
What might that tell you about what was going on in Egypt as Yosef’s generation died and the Israelite population grew?
With so much to explore in the words and meaning of the Biblical text – including the thousands of years’ worth of scholarship on that text – we can’t help wondering why we haven’t heard from you yet. 🙂
