PARSHA-PIX Parshat Bo

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Parsha Pix
BO has the three last plagues, represented here by the locust, the black rectangle, and the sword.
There are two ways of looking at MAKAT B'CHOROT. The standard way is that the 10th and final plague was the smiting of the first-borns. This fits the name of the plague - all the others have the name of that which plagued Egypt, blood, frogs, lice, etc. Only the 10th is called MAKAT B'CHOROT (as opposed to B'CHOROT), because the first borns were not the plague, they were the victims of the plague. On the other hand, there is an opinion that they were also the plague. Actually, part 1 of the plague. They died.
But before that, say our sources, they took up sword and killed many Egyptians. They were angry and upset (to put it mildly) that this Moshe person was threatening in G-d's name to kill the first borns of Egypt and Par'o seemed to be resisting. This idea fits with the words in T'hilim 136 - L'MAKEI MITZRAYIM (for smiting Egypt) BIVCHOREIHEM (WITH their first borns).
The Yo-Yo at the bottom is an apt image for Par'o's treatment of Moshe and Aharon - get out, come back to me, leave and don't let me see your face again, quickly come to me...
The clock shows "around 12:00", not at exactly midnight. G-d said to Moshe that He will act at exactly midnight. Moshe transmitted this message to the people as KACHATZOT, around midnight, so that people should not jump to foolish wrong conclusions about G-d based on their inexact reading of the time.
The lamb in the doorway stands for the Korban Pesach, which was taken into the home and whose blood was smeared on the doorposts.
Matza is Matza.
And T'filin are T'filin.
The dog is barking - unlike his counterparts in the Jewish areas of Egypt on the night of Makat B'chorot.
The canned food could be seen as dog food to reward the dog for its “Kiddush HaShem”. But the better explanation of the can is that canned food is called SHIMURIM in Hebrew. As in Leil Shimurim.
In the lower right is a bow - for Parshat BO and for the “gifts” that the Egyptians gave Bnei Yisrael.
The baby, goat, and donkey represent the three different types of B'CHOR in Jewish law.
The bull with an O between its horns is PAR-O.
The bone is not to break in KP, and also the repeated term B'ETZEM HAYOM HAZEH.
The sword is also from the haftara, as are the axes.
That leaves three elements of this ParshaPix as this week's visual TTriddles, a.k.a. PPP (ParshaPixPuzzle).
Note to parents: ParshaPix is good to use with children and guests around your Shabbat table. Many other elements work on diffferent levels and can be used for different ages and backgrounds. Enjoy ParshaPix and all of Torah Tidbits.

TTRIDDLES...
are Torah Tidbits-style riddles on Parshat HaShavua (sometimes on the calendar). They are found in the hard-copy of TT scattered throughout, usually at the bottom of different columns. In the electronic versions of TT, they are found all together at the end of the ParshaPix-TTriddles section. Some TTriddles are also presented for call-insolutiononTorahTidbitsAudio(Arutz-7, Thursday night). The best solution set submitted each week (there isn't always a best) wins a double prize a CD from Noam Productions and/or a gift (game, puzzle, book, etc.) from Big Deal

Last issue’s (VA-EIRA) TTriddles:
[1] Bad for most of the world, bad for Egypt, good for the people of Israel - VAT eye drop
[2] Sara, Avraham, Yishmael, who AND?
[3] The reptile reptile switch
[4] one, many, thirteen
[5] One guy writing; one gal reading
[6] The Maftir opener leads to another Shabbat Rosh Chodesh connection besides Yeshayahu's
[7] plus one element from the Parsha Pix Puzzle and a separate PPP
[8] Not a TTriddle but: We take out two Torahs this Shabbat. Before you look for the answer, try to guess it on your own. How many times this year do we in Israel read from exactly two Torahs?

And the envelope, please...
[1] VAT is Value Added Tax, or MA’AM in Hebrew for MAS ERECH MOSAF. The Hebrew acronym usually sounds like MAM (like the English mom). “Eye drop” is a misleading play on words for TEAR. Together that makes MAMTIR, to rain down. That’s THE word for this TTriddle, but the TTriddle could be solved without the VAT eye droppart. Bad for most of the world was the Flood, okay for only No’ach and family and the animals with him in the TEIVA. Bad for Egypt were the Plagues, specifically, the plague of HAIL. In both cases, the termMAMTIR is used: For in another seven days, G-d said to No’ach, I will cause the rain to fall for forth days... G-dsends to Moshe to tell Par’o that ...on the following day, very heavy hail will fall, hail the likes of which have never been seen... The only other occurrence of the word MAMTIR is in reference to the MAHN (manna) - G-d says to Moshe that He will cause “bread from heaven”...
[2] SH’NEI CHAYEI... The years of the life of someone. Only three people’s names follow those words in Tanach (all in the Torah). Sara Imeinu, Avraham Avinu, and Yishma’el. Three other people’s names follow USHNEI CHAYEI... That’s the meaning of “who AND?” from theTTriddle. They are all mentioned in Va-eira: LEVI, K’HAT,and AMRAM.
[3] This one’s a maybe. When G-d gave Moshe the arsenal of “signs”, the first one was throwing down his staff and turning it into a NACHASH. A snake. When G-d sends Moshe and Aharon to Par’o, Aharon throws the staff down and it turns into a TANIN. Rashi says that TANIN means the same as NACHASH. But others disagree andsay a TANIN is crocodile, as it is in modern Hebrew. See TT 603 p.7 Aliya-by-Aliya Sedra Summary for more on this. If TANIN is crocodile and NACHASH is snake, then we have a reptile reptile switch.
[4] FROG(S). The word TZ’FARDEI-A in various forms occurs in Tanach 13 times - 11 in the p’sukim about the second plague and twice in T’hilim referring to the same plague. The plain understanding of the Torah is that there was a plague of countless frogs that inundated Egypt. Based on the use of the singular form of TZ’FARDEI-A,Rashi quotes a Midrash that there was originally one massive, huge, humongous, enormous (get the idea already?) frog that appeared and when it was struck by the frog disposal crew of Egypt, it split into many, and kept multiplying... Hence, the TTriddle: one, many, thirteen.
[5] This refers to a K’RI & K’TIV in the haftara for Shabbat-Rosh Chodesh. The word is written ALEF-CHET-DALET but is to be read ACHAT. In TTriddle language, that’s ONE GUY (masculine form of the word for ONE) writing (K’TIV) and ONE GAL (feminine form of ONE) reading.
This TTriddle was in the same box as the visual TTriddles (a.k.a. PPP, ParshaPixPuzzle) but was not part of the PPP. Except that the PPP elements all came from the haftara too. See further.
[6] The MAFTIR’s opener is the two-word phrase UVYOM HASHABBAT, and on the Shabbat day... Curiosity about this phrase led to a computer search of Tanach which resulted in just one other occurrence of the phrase. That occurrence is in Yechezkeil 46:1, which tells us that the inner gate of the courtyard (of the Beit HaMikdash)was closed during the six days of the week, and was opened on Shabbat and on Rosh Chodesh. This is another connection between Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh besides the one in Yeshayahu’s penultimate (next to the last) pasuk, which we reread after the last pasuk, which speaks of Shabbat to Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh to Rosh Chodesh.This pasuk, of course, is the main reason for the choice of Yeshayahu 66 as the haftara for Shabbat Rosh Chodesh.
[7] The visual TTriddles...
Let’s start with the one that was the unexplained elent of the ParshaPix from page 3. NIM is “a game in which players in turn remove small objects from a collection, such as matchsticks arranged in rows, and attempt to take, or avoid taking, the last one”. (Definition courtesy of GuruNetm a wonderful, convenient, usefulmultipurpose reference tool for your computer - check it out at www.gurunet.com - highly recommended.) One popular starting arrangement of NIM is to have three rows or piles of three, five, and seven objects (or lines of tick-marks on a piece of paper). Two players alternate in removing (or crossing off) any or all ofone pile/row at a time. Player required to take the last piece/mark loses the game. Shown in the ParshaPix is the opening set-up of a game using keys (coins, toothpicks, matches, jelly beans, peanuts, paper clips are all more common, but you can play the game with keys). This version of the game is called KEY-NIM. Getit? Plague number 3, KINIM, lice. KEY-NIM. Like it? Want to play? (It’s actually pointless to play this game if both players know how to play. In this version, the person who goes first can always win. But the value of the game is in playing it with someone who doesn’t know how to win, and watch the thought process developgame after game until a winning stategy is discovered. After that, for math-people, you can show the mathematics behind the game.)
Now we move the the PPP from page 38 (TT 603). There are seven different elements, all from the haftara. All of them are fairly easy to get. We’ll take them in the order of haftara. HaShamayim KEY-C (66:1). The next one appears in 66:6 and is a play on words with an interesting ALEF-AYIN switch. KOL SHA’ON MEI-IR, the soundof a clock that wakes (people) up, an alarm clock. Except that SHA’ON in the pasuk is spelled with an ALEF rather than an AYIN, and MEI-IR means something else. In the pasuk, it means the sound of an uproar in the city. 66:17 mentions a mouse (not the computer kind, but...), 66:19 mentions a place or nation called PUL(pool, rightmost picture), RECHEV, in modern Hebrew, a car, and horses are mentioned in 66:20 (chess knights are often called horses, and in Hebrew SUSIM), as are covered wagons, TZABIM, which are turtles. That’s it. Seven items in all.
[8] This non-TTriddle turned out to be trickier than expected when it first came to mind. This past Shabbat being a two-Torah Shabbat, naturally sparked the question as to how often there are two-Torah days. The answer given on page 10 (bottom of left-hand column) in mirror writing is 22, which includes each of two daysof Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, first day Sukkot, (there was no Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkot this year), (not Simchat Torah because its a three-Torah day), 4 so far, Chanuka added another four with the two Shabbatot Chanuka and the two weekday Rosh Chodesh Tevet days of Chanuka. That’s 8. Pesach is another 7 days with two Torahs.and Shavuot is another. 16 so far. (Remember the question mentioned Israel. There are three more in Chutz LaAretz, one for each of the Shalosh Regalim). Then there is Sh’kalim, Zachor, Para, and HaChodesh. That’s 20. Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Sh’vat, the one that started the whole question. And Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Tammuz.22 this year. Rest assured, IY”H & B”N, we’ll have fuller stats on this issue in the future. Alas, the question is flawed. The words “in the morning” needs to be at the end of the question to make it work. As stated, regular Shabbatot and fast days qualify as days we read from two Torahs, and days like this past Shabbatdo not, since we read from a third Torah at Mincha. On second thought, maybe saying “how many times, rather than how many days, does not allow Mincha Torah reading to be included, and the question as stated is unambiguous. Perhaps. Anyway, you see the intention. Since this TTriddles report is being written on Motza’ei Shabbat, we don’t have reader response on this issue yet. If anything interesting comes in, we’ll share it elsewhere, space-permitting.

This week's TTriddles:
[1] No less appropriate for its, than the next
[2] Cuore par'o and whom?
[3] negative for women & Egypt; positive for Avraham & Yishmael
[4] Avraham, Yosef, Par'o, Moshe, David, Sha'ul, and...? Quick - what's the answer
[5] This week, it's too early, but next week, it's exactly what G-d said to do.
[6] Twice this Shabbat morning; 22 times after Shabbat
[7] plus three elements from the Parsha Pix

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