10 Feb MISHPATIM: ANTONYM OR SYNONYM?

Were The Sages
Using an Antonym
or a Synonym?
At the end of six
years of work, all
Jewish servants go
free from their masters. (A Jew becomes
a servant either by selling himself
because he is destitute or through being
sold by Bais Din [the Court] as a
punishment for stealing and being
unable to repay what he stole.) If a
Jewish servant does not want to leave
his master at the end of the six years, he
is taken to the door post and his master
bores a hole through his ear. He then
remains in servitude [Shemos 21: 5-6].
The Gemara [Kiddushin 22b] tells us
the significance of the fact that it is
specifically his ear that is pierced: “The
ear that heard on Sinai ‘you are to be
slaves to Me’ and nevertheless chose to
sell himself into slavery (acquiring a
different master for himself) and then
chose to remain in servitude when he

had the opportunity to go free is
deserving of punishment.”
The Talmud tells us [Megilla 9a] that
King Ptolemy wanted the Torah
translated. He took 72 elders of the
Jewish people, placed them in 72
different rooms, and commanded each
of them to translate the Torah from
Hebrew to Greek. A miracle happened
and when they translated the Torah,
they all made the exact same changes in
the text, without any prior consultation.
One of the changes that they made was
in this verse in Parshas Mishpatim.
They translated the word na’arei in
“And Moshe sent forth the youth
[na’arei] of the children of Israel”
[Shemos 24:5] to the word za’tutei,
meaning the important ones. The Sages
made this change because they felt that
the Greeks would think it improper that
Moshe sent children to offer sacrifices
to G-d. Therefore, the Sages changed
the reading to za’tutei (the important
ones).

The simple understanding of this
Gemara is that the Sages used an
antonym. Instead of ‘youth’ they wrote
the opposite, ‘the noble ones’. The
Mikdash Mordechai, however, writes
that this is an incorrect understanding.
The Sages did not use an antonym.
They used a synonym. The synonym for
the youth of the Jewish people is the
important ones amongst the Jewish
people. The importance of the Jewish
people rests with our youth. That is our
future. The Sages replaced ‘important’
with ‘important’. They simply used
another word for important. Instead of
Na’arei, they used za’atutei. The
purpose of the change was to prevent
the Greeks from misunderstanding and
ridiculing the Torah, but to us the
meaning is the same.
In the previous parsha when Pharoah
said “Let the elders go”, Moshe
Rabbeinu responded, “No, we will go
with our youth and our elders.” Pharoah
said, “Let the older generation go. They

are a bunch of old fogies, they will not
have much success; but let me keep the
youth.” Moshe Rabbeinu refused. The
Jewish people do not just consist of the
old people, but also of the youth. That is
where our future lies.
The Medrash relates that the coin of
Avraham Avinu had an old couple on
one side and a young boy and girl on the
other side. These are the components of
the Jewish people. It is made up of two
contingents — the tradition from the
past, represented by our elders, and the
importance of the future, represented by
our youth.