Not Supermen
The people in Tanach are humans, and as humans they are fallible. The avot are not perfect and they're not supposed to be, Moshe Rabbeinu is not perfect either, nor is Dovid Hamelech, nor is Rachel Imeinu. Clearly they are way above our level, but they also made mistakes and the Torah doesn't hide those mistakes from us. Tanach is filled with the missteps and faults of our greatest leaders. And that's ok. In fact, in a large sense that makes them more real. We can read the Torah and ackowledge that the people described are people, they are not superhuman, and they don't have to be. They are real people who through hard work and dedication to Torah scaled great heights.
We are not supposed to emulate the people in Tanach, we are supposed to emulate God, and God is perfect. But the people in Tanach, the people are oh so inspiring!
posted by Eli7 @ 3:47 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
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Wow! Very inspiring.
If they were/are so great, then why all the downfalls? What made them our greatest?
Because they were also living on a knifedge.
Karl, what made them so great is that they overcame their faults and reached great heights and worked hard to became better Jews. One interpretation of the story of Dovid and Batsheva is that it's necessary just to show the rest of us the power of teshuva; the power of working on yourself and being able to return and overcome even a terribly bad deed. Our job is not to be perfect it is to constantly work on ourselves.
See the Rashi/Ramban argument about this topic ... quite fascinating. Of course I agree with you, but what does that say about your reliance on Rashi?
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