You know, look at today is really on a bit of an overview in Parshat Vayatesh. Parshat Vayatesh, as we all know, is one parashat mis sorah, meaning, and if you open up the same frittalra, and you look at fonts, you will see that the word vayatesh is the beginning of a new parashat, sakshya parashat, stumah, which means it starts on the same line as the previous parashat, just a space of nine empty letters. And it ends with the word mahanayim and another parashat, stumah, but there are no breaks in the middle. I have to tell you, it's about Korea, that's kind of upsetting, because often you land the breaks either to give you a sense of where you're at, or stopping, or at least you remember Min-Tunali-yot, where to go, it's always in the middle of paragraph. One long paragraph. And Parshat Vayatesh is really one long story. It starts and ends the same way, Yaakov has an encounter with Malachim and renames a place. At the end of the parashat, Yaakov has an encounter with Malachim and renames a place. Everything that happens in the parashat is he encounters lavan and negotiates. At the end of it, he encounters lavan and negotiates, etc. That's all one huge chiasmus with the birth of the children in the middle, or maybe in the birth of Yosef in the middle, depending on how you structure it. In any case, the issue of parashat Vayatesh that I want to look at today is the problem of time, because Yaakov is with lavan for excellent amount of time. During that time, he marries, essentially, four women. During that time, he fathers twelve kids that we know of, and then he returns with that entire brood, and then a lot of flock, etc. to come back to his father, and he has the encounter with Asav, etc. Question is, how long was he in lavan's house? The simple answer to that is twenty years, because he says I was there twenty years. It's really not a whole lot to talk about. If you look at Source 2, when Yaakov is leaving, at the very end, there's the only negotiation with lavan, and he makes his claim, and he says, 'Is there a stream, Shana Anohimah?' In the blue, here it is twenty years that I've been with you. Well, that makes it pretty clear, he's been there for twenty years, and then he talks about how loyal he's been, and how good of a garden he's been for the flock, etc., and he repeats it in Pasuit-Mamalath. 'Zali Asu-Shanab Bevetachah,' which is seemingly the same thing as Asu-Shanaimah, 'Zali Asu-Shanab Bevetachah,' here for me, it's twenty years in your house, and then he details it. 'Arba Asu-Shanab Bevetachah,' fourteen years, three or two daughters, 'Mashi-Shanaim Bevetachah,' and six years, four-year flock, and you have changed my fee ten times, and his claim that Mavana's been cheating him all the time, and he's treating him, etc., etc., so it should be a slam dunk that Yaakov has been there for twenty years, but then we have to do a little math, based on what we know from the Torah, turn the page over for a second, and you will see that in Source 4, here there's a bunch of small sakim, but the truth is that we should be lapping with the Tanakh, there's huge pieces here, is let's try to figure out how old Yaakov is in Mavana's house. So the first thing that we know, we're gonna have to work backwards, the first thing that we know is that when Yaakov arrives in Egypt, he's 130 years old, he says so in Source 4. That still doesn't tell us anything, because we don't know how long passed between when he was in the Vana's house when he was in Egypt, except we do get a bit of a clue because we find out that Yosef, in Source 5, was thirty years old when he was taken out of prison and interpreted power of dreams, so Yosef and Shlushim Shana. So now we have two markers, that still doesn't tell us anything about when Yaakov was there, except for the following. When did Yaakov and the family come down to Egypt, relative to the family? So the answer in Source 6 is that Yosef says to the family when they're coming down, when he reveals himself and he has them bring the family down, he's Zesh Nautai Marav, the care of Aritz, the family's been around for two years and it's been another five years, which means that there have been nine years since Yosef got out of prison till this point, because Yosef said the plenty is starting immediately, that's seven years, plus two years of famine is nine years, and that means that Yosef was 39 when the family came down. If Yosef is 39 when the family came down and Yaakov is 131 when the family came down, that means how old was Yaakov when Yosef was born? 91. Okay, that certainly explains why Yosef is called a benzakunim, right, this is the son of an old age. That's fine, when does Yaakov leave? So the answer is that six years later, because once Yosef is born, Yaakov comes to take a look at Source 9, when Yosef is born, Yaakov comes to LaVon and says, "Okay, I want to make some capital, we've got out of here, and LaVon says, 'let's stick around.'" And from then on, it's another six years, which is what Yaakov Yosef says at the end, "I was there six years for your flock," and that's the strike that has spotted in all events that happens for six years, which means Yaakov is 97 when he leaves. Okay, I'm not followed by that. What I am bothered is this, if Yaakov be fathered Yosef when he was 91, then let's work backwards based on the notion of 20 years and see when did he get there. So if he was there a total of 20 years, and the last six years Yosef was already alive, then that means that he arrived 14 years before he was 91, which makes him 77. Okay, I'm not bothered by a 77-year-old man marrying a young girl. I'm bothered by it legally, but I'm not bothered by it anthropologically. I'm not bothered by a 77-year-old man having a bunch of kids. What I'm bothered by is a couple other things. The first thing is, why isn't Yaakov getting married? And by the way, he didn't get married when he was 77. When did he get married? According to this. When he was 84, when he was 84, not back home. He got married when he was 84. So how come, oh yeah, that's me. How come back at home in Kanan, he doesn't, and if he's not supposed to marry a girl from Kanan, so let him leave. When are you supposed to get married? Well we don't know how old I was, we do know how old Yitzhak was, he was 40. We know how old A-sub was, A-sub was 40, and how old Yosef Yosef was, it was 30. These are relatively normal years within what we're familiar with. Yaakov is supposed to become the father of this great nation, well, it's sort of like the old joke with the rabbi who complains to God, and he comes to Shamaim, he said, "All those years I asked for one thing to win the lottery, and you couldn't give it to me?" And God says, "You've got to meet me halfway, and you never bought a ticket." How are you going to become a father of a great nation, and he's not even marrying. So why isn't Yaakov getting married? And here he is, we'll assume for a minute, we're going to push it back a little bit, we'll assume for a minute, now he's a man in his 70s, not yet married, and then he gets the Brakhah, and the 8th of gets mad, and he runs away, and he goes to Lavon, and now he's going to go there and get married, and then he agrees to wait, work for seven years, and then get married, which he's going to be 84. That's a little bit weird. There's several other weird things going on, well, this might be taking up any question. There's several other weird things going on. You think about it, that means that when Yaakov sets up this division, when Yosef is born, he says, "Okay, well, let's start negotiating for Flock." That means that his eldest son, Rovane, is six, and Shimon is five, we'll say. And Yaakov at the time says, "You know what, here's how we split it up. My sons will take my flock, and I'll take your flock, and then whoever," I said, "What are you giving a whole huge flock to a five-year-old flock?" That's crazy. It also means that when they leave, they're all under 10, when they're 12, when they leave. If that's the case, then who does the massacre at Shimon? A couple of little kids. And Rovane taking Bill Wat, Rovane's like 13, I mean, that's because it's very strange. I'll tell you what the big question is. All those things, maybe come on and answer with it, the real question is, and it's question number 10 on the page, on the second page, how does Yaakov have so many kids in such short a time? Because remember, he has all the kids, according to this, between the age of 84 and 91, because he arrives 2077, and for seven years, he works to marry Raquel. He marries Lea, a week later he marries Raquel, and then boom, boom, boom, we start with kids. Now, I've made a chart here of how it would have to work out, and the chart is actually based on something on page one. So if you look at page one, you can see the Midrash Seder Olam, that we've looked at numerous times. Midrash Seder Olam, which is second century Midrash, which is a chronography of Jewish history, meaning it takes the events regarding from creation all the way until the time of the Khurban and puts them into a date format. And Midrash Seder Olam is the famous Midrash where the idea of Sarad dying at the moment of the Akkadah and the free, it's Hagg being 37 at the Akkadah maybe, and we're coming born at that time, and the possibility that we've got three, all of those things, that's all Seder Olam. Whether it starts in Seder Olam, it's quoting an older tradition, but all of the dating stuff. So Seder Olam is a whole big development on this, and I put it in English also. And it starts by asking a different question. At the end of Parshar Haisara, we're told how long Yishma'el lived. And the obvious question is the big question you ask whenever you learn anything in Torah, which is who cares. Why do I care how long Yishma'el lived? I say, we find out how long Yishma'el lived in order to be able to figure this out, because Yishma'el lived to 137, and how old was Yishma'el in Yitzchak, he's 14. Yishma'el was 14 when Yitzchak was born, which means that when Yishma'el dies, Yitzchak's 123. How old was Yitzchak when his twins were born, he was 60, which means the boys are 63. And then based on some other details in the Pasuk, they conclude that Asav married Mahalat, the very last Pasuk and Parshar told him, married Mahalat right when Yishma'el died, based on something about the Pasukah at the marriage, which means that Asav was 63 when he married Mahalat, which is okay, because he married to those other girls in his 40, now he's 63. Now remember, if Asav was 63, I got news for you, so is Yaakov, it was twins. The Yaakov was 63, which means Yaakov was 63 when he ran away. And then the big problem Seder al-Aamiz has is, if he's 63, he runs away, how come he's only 77 when he gets there? It's not a 14-year walk to Haran. And the answer is that for 14 years he went to Yishma'el Aver, and he was studying there, and I had a very famous Agadah. And then it goes on to say, to address our problem, and it says, "How was it that the kids were born in such short of time?" And the answer is, they were all born at the seven-month gestation, they're all preemies, but it's not just that they're preemies, you've got to now presume the following. You've got to presume A. The Laiah gets pregnant right away, which the Pasukah seems not to indicate, because the Pasukah indicates that Vayyara Adonai ki snualayah by Taqah Rahmah. God sees that Laiah is not favored by Yaakov, so he has compassion, opens a Rahmah, which means it sounds like there's been a relationship for a while, in which Laiah is being disfamed over it, and then God has compassion, and opens up a Rahmah. So Laiah has to get pregnant right away, and after seven months, have Rubain, and immediately get pregnant at the end, and I have Shimon, and immediately get pregnant at the end of Laiah, and immediately get pregnant at the end of Yoda, all within seven-month pregnancies and all without a break between pregnancies. And of course, no miscarriages, it's not even on the table. Take a look at the chart, and you'll see a chart in and out. Now this assumes one thing, which isn't necessary, but seems to be the way the text goes, is that the births were not overlapping, the pregnancies were not overlapping. In other words, after Laiah had four kids, is when Rahal turns to Yaakov, and says, "Give me kids, otherwise I'll die," Yaakov gets angry at her, she says, "Take Bill Ha, she has Bill Ha, done," and at that point Laiah says, "Hey, that's a good idea, take Zilpa, and then that's God in a share." And then after that, Rubain brings his mom, the dudayim, and Laiah asks for the dudayim, and they can swap, and Laiah then gets a night with Yaakov, and then Yisakhar is born, Yisakhar, and then Zvaluna is born, and then by the way, Dina is born. And after that, Yosef is born. And you realize, looking at the chart, how difficult it is, from a big chart, how difficult it is to imagine this birthing sequence, you also have a different problem, which is that if Yosef is born seven months after Dina, then he's not really much of a benzakunim, because benzakunim typically refers to somebody who's born after a long period of no kids. Either people got married very old, and they have one kid, or else people have kids, and then they don't have kids for a long time, and then much later they have kids, and that's their benzakunim. So as the other kids grow up in a house with vibrant working parents, this kid grows up with retirees, or whatever. Now, true, benzakunim has different interpretations, as the rambana at the beginning of a vayeshav has a different interpretation, right? Uqul says bhachim, true, but the simple way to benzakunim is these children of an old age. The rambana even asks this, says how could Yosef be called a benzakunim when Zvalun is not much older than it is, not much older than he is, right? It's not like there's a big gap. I'll tell you about a benzakunim. There was a fellow in Karimbiabna with me, a little bit older, who came from our banasha family, and I assumed, of course, he had lots of siblings, and I assumed, of course, you know, all the things that we assumed erroneously. And then finally, I met his father who was a big ruff, and his father was really old. As I realized, there was a huge gap that his father had to be in his 50s or 60s when the kid was born. And then I figured, well, that the kid probably had, he was probably the youngest of 20 kids, right? Turns out he had one sister, and the sister was 30 years older than he was. So what happened? His father was a ruff in Europe, and eight kids, the natsing jumaksma murdered the family, except for him and a daughter. So he and the daughter made al-Iyan, and he married a younger woman and had a son, that's the guy I was in jibul, benzakunim. So it's very hard to have it as a benzakunim here. The whole picture is just very difficult. And I listed 10 questions here, which really kind of illustrate how difficult it is to work with this description. I think it's also a valid question to ask. Why is Yakov waiting so long to get married if he's really supposed to be the father of a nation, or just stop as a person? Why is he waiting so long to get married? So I'd like to suggest that maybe we should look at this story a little bit differently. If you take a look at Source 7, you'll see that at the end of that whole story of Yitzchak and flesh it, there's a new parashah, and it says that Asab was 40, and he married these girls, and Tiyyamul Ruach. And immediately after that, although it's a new parashah, you have the pashuk, Vaheen, and I put a samachan there, left a samachan there, because you can see it, Vaheek is a ken Yitzchak, and the whole scene where Yitzchak is old, and he thinks he's going to die, and he calls his sons together to, he calls Asab, and says, "hunt for me," and et cetera. One half, let's just for a moment to imagine, humor me if you don't mind, that this scene happens right after Asab gets married. It follows it in the pashuk, like Yitzchak, so let's say right after Asab gets married, or within a couple years, this happens. Let's say that Yitzchak is 100, 100 is pretty old, and his eyesight is shot, so he thinks he's going to die. That means if he's 100 years old, that means Asab and Yaakov are 40, Asab just got married, Yaakov's not married yet. And the whole scene with the brahah takes place in one day, evidently, where Asab goes to hunt, that's not a camping trip, he goes to hunt for that day, and Yaakov brings the goats, and Reif compares the goats, Reif compares the out mid-disguise, and Yaakov goes in against the brahah. It's all happens in one day, and on that day, Yaakov, Asab says to himself, "I'm going to kill Yaakov," and Reifka says to Yaakov, "Get out of dodge," and then Reifka tells Yitzchak, "If he marries a girl like Asab Marat, I'm planting the oven," and Yitzchak says to Yaakov go to Lebanon and marry his daughters, one of his daughters, and Asab then marries Mahalat. So let's say that Yaakov is 40, or 41, or 42, normal age to get married, and he goes up to Haran, and he meets Rahel. He says, "I'll work for you for seven years for Rahel." That, by the way, tells us what we've talked about before, Rahel probably is about five or six. She's probably about seven years before marriage age. So he marries Rahel at age of, we'll call it, 50, except it's not Rahel. It's Lao? Right? No, not when he's 50. Fifty? No, you said he waits seven years for the first time. Yeah, that's clear. That's clear. That's clear. That's the case. That's the case. Wait, wait, wait. Eight, seven years gets married, right? So he marries, we'll call it 50, and he marries Rahel, it's not Rahel, it's Lao. So a week later he marries Rahel, that's very clear it's a week later. It marries Rahel a week later, and they are living, until he's 57, he's got a pamphlet Rahel. So he's got, he'd be great, seven more years to work for Rahel. And while he's there, he's doting on Rahel, and he's kind of ignoring Lao, and after a while Lao is very sad, and after a while I'll show him his compassion on her, and we'll say he's 53. I'm making up an eight. I'm just making up an eight, and Ruben is born. Beautiful. And Lao says, "Now my husband will pay attention to me, I shall be seen in my poverty, in my pain." Okay. But it'll work. Two years later she'll be born. Okay? A year later Lao is born, and now, by the way, Yaakov is finished. So what should Yaakov do after he's finished his 14 years? What should he do? He should lead. But there's two problems. Problem one is that when Rifka sent them away, what did she say, Asa's gonna kill you. You go, and when Asa comes down, I'll send for you. She hasn't sent for him. Second thing is, it's fairly clear that at this point in the game, there are either no sons or no sons old enough to make an issue in Lao's household. Yaakov is really the one who stands to inherit. So he's staying there. But he doesn't stay working with Lao-Von. He stays living there because Lao-Von is the head of the family, but he goes into work for himself for, I don't know, 20, 30 years, however long it is. He does whatever he does, maybe he's somewhat successful, maybe he's not. And in the meantime, Lao-Von is having Yudah and then suddenly Bilhah is having done enough toli, and then Lao-Von has gotten a share, and then Lao-Von in her old age has, is willing Sahar and Dina. And Raquel significantly old now has Yosef. When Yosef is born for reasons that we've talked about before, he comes up to Lao-Von and says, "Okay, now I'm ready to make money for my family and to leave." Alright, Bilhah capital. And that's Lao-Von says, "Well, what do you mean man? You've been the husband, blessed because of you, stay here." So he ends up staying six years, and finally when he realizes things are going bad, because Benet Lao-Von show up and all of the stuff with the inheritance, he runs away. And now he's 97. And indeed Yosef is born when he's 91. But maybe he hasn't been in only 14 years, maybe he's been there a lot longer. And he hasn't had kids at a normal pace. And maybe Shimon and Lao-Von are already older teenagers or young men in their 20s who could therefore do a massacre. Maybe Ruvain's already a man in his 30s who therefore it makes sense that he's going to take Bilhah and do what he does with Bilhah, for whatever reason. It's a bad move, but still we understand he's a young adult. And maybe the sons are old enough, even when Yosef is born, to be able to put the flock in their hands. In other words, suddenly we're talking about a family that's been growing solely in a natural way over time. So the problem, of course, is the Pasuch is about a page one, in the middle of page one. How am I going to explain the Pasuch when Yaakov says I've been here 20 years and say no, you've been here 50 years. I'm going to have to disagree with Yosef, Yaakov, how long he's been there. But take a look very carefully at the Pasuch game. I've been with you for 20 years, not consecutive, I've been with you for 20 years. And then he lays them out, and that's why I put different colors. I've been with you for 20 years, and then he lays them out, and that's why I put different colors. I've been with you for 20 years, and then he lays them out, and that's why I put different colors. So I worked for 14 years as a partner with you, or working for you, to pay off your daughters, pay off the debt that I've married your daughters, and then there was 20, however long it was. And I came back and I worked for six years, so a total of 20 years, I've been with you. And that whole 20 years, I've been loyal, and I've been a good shepherd, and all the things he says. But I didn't say, yeah, he didn't move back, he always moved on the household. But he came back to partner with Levon, when Yosef was born, for reasons that have a lot to do with Bredben and Batarim, and the birth of Yosef, that's all what developed, they're right. So he does that at the end of this long period of working on his own, in order to now sort of make a claim on or have a kalek in Levon's estate by getting some of Levon's flock the way that the whole thing plays out. Which means that going back Yaakov marries at a normal age, normal for their day, Yaakov has kids at a normal pace, Yaakov's kids are old enough to do the things that they do in this process, right? Yosef really is a benzakunim, because the kids are significantly older than he is, and all of the things we've pointed out along the way seem to fall by the wayside. The only catch in this really is, are we able to look at that Pasuk where he says, "I've been here for 20 years in your household, 14 years for your daughters and six years for the flock, and see them as distinct statements where he's putting a cumulative 20 years, even though it's been maybe a lot longer than he's been haran, could be. We don't know. But if we accept that notion, then that means that all the questions that we raised, about this whole period suddenly fall by the wayside, and also that Pasuk vayates suddenly is a much longer period of time, and then we also understand a little better when Yaakov comes back all those years later and says, "You love on Garti, what does Garti mean?" I sojourned, I was not settled, that the longer you are somewhere, and you say Garti, the bigger of a finish it is. To be in my lake towel for four days and say Garti is a big deal, you're there for four days, you're left. To be somewhere for a year and say Garti, "Okay, so you're living in a guesthouse for a year while you're doing finishing a doctoral fellowship, whatever, a postdoc." But to be somewhere for that long and say Garti, I mean even for 20 years it's a lot, but to say Garti, to make the point is, I was never really at home without a Garti, and I'm coming back, is itself a big finish, but I think the real issue here is how are you willing to look at Yaakov's years there, and the thing that I think is the biggest problem is having all those kids in such a short amount of time, and now suddenly that becomes released. [BLANK_AUDIO]
