Holy, Holy Women!

I am going to get to that dating blog very soon (most likely within the next 24 hours), but I just want to say 2 very quick but highly interesting dvar Torahs I heard today on two of the greatest women in Jewish History (I said this blog would have more Torah, plus this ensures that I wont forget all the really great lamdus I come across during my time here).

The Following Awesome Piece of Torah is brought to you by Mesechet Brachot 32:b- As you may or may not know Chana (mother of the Holy Shmuel), was barron. Her husband, Elkana, had a neither wife: Pnina. Pnina had many kids, and often paraded them to Chana (different opinions as to whether or not this was to make her jealous or inspire her to daven more). Anyways, Chana was an incredibly righteous woman, and did all she could to try and get pregnant. She davened passionately, did chessed, tshuva, anything she could, but of course nothing worked. So one day during her intense tfillah she finally said "Hashem please give me a child or else...." Now there are 2 different opinions on this but I'll say the one I like, causes it's really really cool. What did Chana mean by "or else"? Chana's brilliant plan was simply this: She was going to find some dude, get him to be alone with her, make sure Elakana saw this, have him accuse her falsely of course (Chana was one of the 7 women who had Nevuah- obviously she would never commit such a heinous crime as adultery), be taken to the Kohen Gadol, be forced to drink the Sotah potion, and since she was innocent of touching this man she would become pregnant! That's the smartest "Soap Operaish" plan I've ever heard (lord knows Sammy on Days of Lives couldn't come up with something that could....oy, why do I know who that is?....OK one big lahavdil on this whole sidepoint). Though there is another view that an innocent Sotah wouldn't get pregnant by the drink but that she would have a very easy labor next time around, and that the child would be improved (e.g. if her other kids were short , this one would be tall etc...). Although my question on this is kind of simple: lets say she simply didn't have children at that point? Then through the Torah laws she mustget pregnant, and thus one could give credit to the potion, and thus I agree with (like most) to the popular theory. Fortunately Chana did in fact get pregnant and didn't have to resort to this somewhat devious, but ingenious plan (maybe because Hashem didn't want barron women to keep doing this? That could be really really bad.)


And now VERY QUICKLY for Holy Woman #2 (although she lived a few generations before Chana): Rachav was the most famous prostitute/showgirl/lude woman (Something untznius, and most likely the former of the bunch) woman of her era. Yet after meeting Kalev and Pinchas and helping them (when they were spying out Yericho) she converted to Judaism (though some say this process started back in Egypt as that was her hative land and she witnessed all the miracles). She then went on to marry Yehoshua!! Talk about your inspirational turn arounds? This just goes to show that a person can be totally drowning in a life of immorality and do tshuva, turn around and become truly great. Rachav married the most eligible, sought after man of her era (which made all the Jewish mothers jealous, as Yehoshua was "a real catch"and "such a mentsch"), which goes to show how holy she must been. The Rabbis who told me this then went on to compare Rachav to women like Madonna. Madonna is probably the Rachav of our time in that she is world famous (As Rachav was), was sexually immoral, and had men everywhere trying to "be" with her. Though we laugh at it, he said that maybe her whole Kabbalah thing might actually, eventually lead to a Rachav like existence, and that we should try to look at her more positively than negatively, as the positive is always healthier for the soul. I for one agreed with this, and clearly like it, otherwise I wouldn't have blogged about it.