Friday, February 16, 2007

Megilla 10b - Cutting off Language and Writing from Bavel

The Maharsha explains that people communicate in 2 ways. 1. Sending letters with a signature to people who are far away. 2. Speaking to those who are close by and able to hear. "Shem" refers to the signature at the end of a letter which is "ksav". "Sh'er" refers to those who are close by and spoken to verbaly which is "loshon". The pasuk says that Hashem will cut of "Shem" and "Sh'er" from Bavel, which means he will cut off their influence both near and far. This will answer Tosafos question, that although Aramaic is still spoken, the influence of Bavel was lost.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I heard something cute on this The reason it is called Babylon is because after the tried to build the tower to fight Hashem They did not understand each other language hence they were babbling from there comes the name Babylon.