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Remember the days when you turned in your first high school research paper? It had to be typed (as in, on a typewriter), footnoted, and of course conform to all the rules of grammar. That meant checking Strunk and White’s Elements of Style periodically to resolve any grammatical issues.
Our sages didn’t have a style manual, but it’s fair to say they were attentive to issues of grammar. Let’s consider an example from this week’s portion, Vaera, and see how the rabbis turned the usage of a singular rather than a plural into a novel way of understanding the most famous of the plagues, that of the frogs (2nd plague).
In Exodus 8:2, we read: “Aaron held out his arm over the waters of Egypt, and the frog came up and covered the land of Egypt.” Notice that I have highlighted the word frog because in the Hebrew the singular is employed (tzefardea) rather than the plural (tzefarde’im). Now before you interject that the former could be viewed as a collective singular, let me say – you’re right! But what fun would that be? So let’s see how they managed to learn new information about this plague from this simple switch from plural to singular.
In Shmot Rabbah 10:4 (1200 CE), we read:
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It is taught: Rabbi Akiva says: It was one frog, and it spawned and filled the entire land of Egypt. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya said to him: ‘Akiva, what are you doing engaged in aggada (legends); stop your statements, and go engage in the laws of leprosy and impurity of tents. Your expertise is in matters of halacha, including the most intricate topics, but not aggada (legends). There was one frog that whistled to [the others], and they came.’
Rabbi Akiva has a simple, but elegant, explanation – one very large frog came up from the Nile, but quickly spawned numerous other frogs. In a parallel version, Rabbi Akiva claims that it multiplied into many frogs when the Egyptians struck it with a stick. (Tanhuma Vaera, 9th century).
Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, a contemporary, starts by telling Akiva to stick with what he knows – law, rather than lore. He therefore offers another explanation, there was one frog which acted as a sort of general or commander, summoning numerous other frogs away from their home in the Nile and onto dry land, where they would interfere with the daily lives of the Egyptians.
Which of these explanations is authoritative? The answer is that, in matters of aggada, it isn’t necessary to resolve these differences. On the contrary, many times multiple explanations are allowed to stand, even when they contradict one another.
It’s safe to say that Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah and Rabbi Akiva would both have received an “A” in terms of their grammar. Whether they were as punctilious about typing and footnoting remains a mystery.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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