No one who learns Pshuto shel Mikra will ever approach Chumash the same way again
As we begin the new Torah reading cycle, the time has come to reveal a secret I’ve been carrying with me for over half a year.
That secret is the late Rabbi Yehudah Copperman’s Pshuto shel Mikra (Mosaica Press), translated into English by Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein. Since I started learning the two-volume work, my favorite time of the week has become that spent early Shabbos morning learning Pshuto shel Mikra.
On almost every parshah, there are multiple essays, and each one has opened my eyes to a new aspect of parashanut about which I was previously unaware.
Rabbi Copperman’s central question in each of those essays is not what is pshuto shel mikra, but rather: When the pshuto shel mikra differs from the halachic drashos of Chazal, what does the pshuto shel mikra add? For example, Chazal inform us that “an eye for an eye” actually takes the form of monetary compensation. But if so, the question remains: Why did the Torah write the requirement of compensation in such a way as to imply that one who has destroyed another’s eye should lose his own? What was it teaching us?
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