All Your Rabbits Are Disciples of the Lord

(A guest post by Rav Shalom Bonayich)

Here is my article for this week, from the NJ Jewish Link, for Nazir 66, finishing masechet Nazir.

I discuss the famous derasha of al tikrei banayich elah bonayich, typically translated as “read not sons but builders”.

The general outline:

1. Is this indeed a derasha? Of the many places this sugya appears, only one contains the derasha.

2. There are hidden derashot we don’t realize, and here is one I invented. Perhaps the Stamma or a Rishon innovated a derasha, which may even be how Rabbi Chanina, arrived at the conclusion, and this was copied into the Talmudic text.

3. It likely isn’t builders but understanders.

4. Hey look, from the Qumran Great Isaiah Scroll, they spelled the second banayich with a vav, inserted into the word, slightly above the word.

Good stuff.

They put it in the Pesach section, and there’s indeed a Pesach tie-in, in the opening discussion of the minhag of Roman Jewish women on erev Pesach.

Anyway, here is the article in flipdocs, or in html.

Here are the two text images I show in the article. First, the Venice printing of Tamid 32b:

which like the Vilna printing has the anomalous citation of Rabbi Eleazer ben Azarya saying the derasha, rather than Rabbi Eleazar (ben Pedat) citing Rabbi Chanina.

Second, here is the Isaiah scroll from Qumran:

I underlined, in red, the start of the pasuk and the second instance of the word בניך. Note how the scribe inserted a vav into the word, over and between the bet and nun. Look elsewhere in the image and see other inserted letters.