Relevancy
"I totally agree with all of the points-but the point about"nevuah l'dorort" often confuses me-aren't all nevuot somehow directly realtedto some social/ethical/political quandary that we can realte to today? Another thing I was thinking about...Perhaps we only began to keep neviim as they began to get more sparce, when they became mreo special. Kind of like the special attention we give to endangered species. And if perhap the people themselves werent' sparc3e, perhaps there were few nevuahs with "eternal" meaning. (This can be compared to hashem's CONSTANT interfrence with bnei yisrael in the desert and their failure to be "impressed" with it-perhaps it was the overabundance of miracles that densensitized them from G-d's wonders..?)"
posted by Yoni Krestt at 10:09 PM
15 Comments:
in terms of neviim ldorot, if u look into all nevuahs there is clearly a reason hashem went to that person and thus there is a lesson that can be taught. as we discussed on like the first day of school hashem gives nevuah with the intentions to help OTHER PEOPLE/ a reason therefore since no nevuah is given for just a single person we can learn lessons from each one. so, getting back to neviim l'dorot, i think the endagered species is a good analogy b/c back when nevuah was very common, it wasnt considered anything special,. just liek endagered species, when there r a lot it is nothing special however as certain animals begin to die down and become extinct, we are more aware and concious. same thing happens with nevuah. as nevuah strated to become "extinct" aka less common we realized that the gift of prophecy would eventually deteriarate therefore found meaning in the reamining prophecies, making them applicable to further generations, thus writing them down which then became known as neviim ldorot
i forgot my password but its luna
neviim ldorot makes me really sad because you realize that bnai yirael didnt really appreciate what Hashem was doing for them. I wrote about this in my college essay. sortof. when something happens, or in this case doesnt happen, you realize that you were blind to the greatness of it until its gone. in my stern essay i wrote about my epilepsy and how it made me realize how lucky i am to be healthy and it taught my the complexity of life. it makes me really sad to think that maybe if i didnt have epilepsy i wouldnt be like that. when neviim were becoming "endangered" bnai yisrael saw how lucky they were, most probably realizing that they had been blind to it before. everyones really stressed right now, applying to college and even juniors have a ton of work. i think everyone need to take a step back and look at their life as a whole and realize what amazing things they have in their lives, before its gone.
Debbie K
I don;t think we just started keeping neviim because they became more special. Consering there was....120 thousand (not sure that is the right number) we, naturally would need many more than 24 books to discuss other neviim. Some Navi's could have prophecties that really only related to thier families. Or thier points are made with other navi's.
Additionally, we went over in class that the Navi's we know of somehow relate to today(which is why thier doings were recorded and put into the tanach). But there could be many other Navi's who are also relate to today) whom are lost because they were written in the Kings Annals, which are lost books.
Therefore I do not believe Navi's were sparce, they are simply not in our records
I think we read about neviim not to just help us with a modern day problem, but to teach us somthing. what you were saying about how nevvim wernt tAken seriously untill they were sparce should give us a wake up call, not just with the jewish aspects but with everything. reading about the nevuot should remind us not to take things for granted, our parent, siblings friends etc... So even though we can learn how to solve problems from the nevuot, they should all teach us to appriciate the things in our life before they are gone.
The difference between the role of the nevuot and nowadays, is that back then the community could rely on one person to give them insight into the future. the nevuah was given special attention and treated with great care and respect (relation to endegared specie....) nowadays socially if someone even truly got a nevuah from hashem and was legitamte, they would be called crazy and not taken seriously. so not all nevout are "directly related to some social qaundary" today.
I think that nevueot werent just kept because they apply to the generations, but rather because they teach us a life lesson (and no, im not referring to the lesson of appreciation). For example, Yonah's nevuah teaches us about the importance of listening to Hashem, and that Hashem is truly omnipotent. And when Hashem said to Avraham "lech lecha meartzecha....etc" its teaching us about returning to eretz yisrael. Some of the many nevuot which were not kept probably didnt have such an important message. Maybe someone had an especially deep relationship with God, and God spoke to them specifically. That nevuah might not have a lesson significant enough for it to be kept. While some nevuot which were kept might not seem to have such an important message, maybe we just havent yet found its meaning.
Later Alligators,
RayDott
Well, I don't think we can all relate to every nevuah. I asked this question in class (i think) and I recall hearing that not every nevuah is relevant.
In Neviim theres the story of shaul/david (im not sure which) journeying to a navi to ask where to find his sheep/cattle. (i guess it is david). When david gets there, he finds a banquet reception there with many people waiting to hear answers to their questions. However we do not know what the other people were asking because we do not have a need to. Only the nevuahs that relate to posterity or to explaing an event or happening were written down. and if they werent, surely they were recorded in briatot (equivalent to mishna but not written down, passed orally). I can't think of an example of a nevuah that was found in a briata but I am sure its there.
Good question! and an even better comparison. i love it!
~Suz
I know this is my second on the same but shhhh...
While I was writing my previous post I thought of a question. The writer said that "perhaps when they became to get more scarce we appreciated them more" (roughly) I want to know where the choshen plays in. (thats the breastplate with the stones that lit up right? if its not thats what i mean)
Like, where does that play in? Is it nevuah? when was it used? When we read the stories of the ten marytrs on Yom Kippur, they say give us three days and go to ask the cohen gadol if indeed this was decreed from Hashem. It was. So is the choshen a more direct form of communication? Is it true that during the time when we had a cohen gadol we also had navis? if so, why use a choshen? it couldnt be used for posterity down the line when nevuah leaves the people, could it?
Sorry if this rambles!
~Suz
Suzanne-
My knowledge of the choshen is that it lit up to reveal certain letters which in turn had to be put into words which revealed a message from G-d. Because there was so much room for interpretation in the arrangment of the letters, I would imagine it was a far more indirect form of communication than prophecy. I am also pretty certain that there is no reference to the choshen as a form of communication in the text (somebody please correct me if I am incorrect). This seems very much like a Rabbinic invention, a method to explain why so many people come to strong conclusions based on incomplete information. For example, Eli believes that Chana is drunk when she walks in to the Temple to pray for her son. This seems like a pretty big leap to make because somebody comes in and cries and moves her mouth. He is so convinced that she is drunk that he attempts to send her away. We learned in Mrs. Spolter's class that Eli had in fact misread the letters spelled out in the choshen. The letters had said that Chana was behaving properly, but he misread them to read that he was drunk. It was then, believing that Hashem was angry with Chana that Eli tries to remove her from the Temple.
To answer one of Suzanne's many questions, I do not think that the choshen (whether or not it actually served the aforementioned purpose) was intended for future generations. I have no proof to back this statement, except that we would be using it now if that were the case. If we don't have a Temple then we don't have a choshen. Right now we don't have a Temple (or prophecies) so there is no choshen. From this I conclude that the choshen could not be used for the time when we don't have prophecies.
Just some thoughts. (Oh, and by the way, I have a free period now so that is why I am writing at such an unusual time.)
-Rebecca
While its possible that the nevuot that were saved were more special or rare, it could also be that the ones that had more information to help give people insight on what to do in a specific time or situation that would be eternal were the ones that were saved. in contrast with nevuot that were made which had an eternal message but not all that useful, these nevuot with a message and useful knowledge for situations in the future that would be extreemly useful could be the ones that were saved. For example as we are learning yonah, when yonah tried to escape his prophecy and his fate, he ended up in a really bad situation and learned that he cnat escape nevuah or his fate. Not only could this message help alot of people make decisions in the present time on a lesser degree (ex: ones parents want their kids to take out the garbage and the child goes in his room and thinks his parents will forget doesnt mean he wont ever need to take out the trash again), but it could have helped other nevi'im by letting them know that its not possible to escape a nevuah. This message of Nevuah actually helps someone in a situation rather than just tecahing sumthing that could be relevent to today, but probobly not. This could solve the issue that those kind of nevuot were the ones saved rather than ALL the nevuot that could be relevent to today.
I do not think that nevuot began to be collected at the point that they were getting sparce because there was a rediculous amount of neviim, which means that there were SO many nevuot that we had to FILTER all of them and only preserve the ones that pertained to generations to come. So in that sense i agree. Yet what i would like to explore is the relevance of nevuot. Yes, they were related to us ethically, socially, and politically. Yet most were applicable only to that specific time period's politics, ethics....etc. It's kind of like schools of thought, like emerson. Though the nevuot's goals at the time were to solve an immediate problem, some could be referenced to years later. Emerson's philosophy on life can still be related to the way we see life today even though he wrote many years ago. He was writing in response to the emergence of romanticism, and thus responded with theory about keeping our souls, in a sense, pure. For example, he believed that we must find ourselves through nature. We still adhere to a similar philosophy today when we disconnect ourselves from our daily scheduals and take time to pray in order to eliminate any superficiality and create a connection with Hashem solely with our souls. We thus resort to our simple selves. Similarly, though a nevuah was in response to a particular event, we can still, even till today, find their relevance to our current time.-arella
Thanks for pointing out that source, Rebecca. Im gonna go look it up!
~Suz
I dont think we started keeping nevuot because they were getting more sparce I think now that we dont have nevuot we definetly look much closer at the kept nevuot then we perviously might have and appreciate them more but i think even before nevuot were lessened that we kept them
-rachel stern
i agree with rachel. Maybe naevuot were alwasys kinda sparce, like yea there were definatly more then we have now, but not cause they became less, i think its becuse these were chosen because they will always have meaning. and also, even if some were similar to the ones we kept, maybe we kept these specific ones to proove a point that the other ones that werent kept, werent able to prove as well. but i dont think that we kept them jsut becuase they were less common. like for example, if i say a comment on some pasuk and rashi had already siad the same thing, but in better words, we wouldnt also put my comment on the pasuk, cause that would be repetative and unnessicary.
- esti
i kinda agree with esti...and everyone else? i think that nevuahs were kept for many reasons...i believe they were kept to teach us general life lessons, and to help us in certain situations. i do not agree, however, that the ones kept wre kept just bc they were sparce/scarce whatever, i believe they were kept solely because they have meaning in our lives. umm i will say that i have no idea what esti's talking about with the pasuk comment/rashi thing? what do you mean? anyhoom, i believe that the quantity of nevuahs or miracles is irrelevant. we learn about miracles and nevuahs bc we learn lessons from them, they help us.
peaaace
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