Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Isaias 27:13

crooked An expression of ‘double,’ since he is the second one. (I.e. the bend in the serpent indicates duality, thus the number two.) And I say that these are three important nations: Egypt, Assyria, and Edom. He, therefore, stated concerning these as he said at the end of the section (v. 13), “And those lost in the land of Assyria shall come, as well as those lost in the land of Egypt,” and since the nations are likened to serpents that bite.

Background
There are so many questions on this opening verse of the Maggid. Who was the Aramean that the Torah speaks of and what did he seek to do to our forefather Jacob? Rabbi Lorberbaum offers a daring explanation of this passage that parts ways with most commentators and with the plain sense meaning of the passage in the Haggadah. The problem is that the Haggadah has already parted ways with the plain sense meaning of the verse Arami Oved Avi. Most contemporary translations render these words “My father was a wandering Aramean,” instead of “An Aramean sought to destroy my father.” But as you will see, Rabbi Lorberbaum searches for a way to hold on to the traditional understanding of this verse without doing violence to the plain sense meaning of the words. Does he succeed? I will leave that for you to decide.
At the same time Rabbi Lorberbaum solves another problem: why are we talking about Laban in the first place? What does he have to do with the story of the Exodus from Egypt? Rabbi Lorberbaum finds an ingenious connection between Pharaoh and Laban that allows the reader to explore the feminine and masculine aspects of the Exodus. Laban is a danger to Israel spiritually and not physically.
Go and learn: Why does the Haggadah choose to blame the descent to Egypt on Laban and on this passage which begins, “My father was a wandering Aramean...”? What does the expression Arami Oved Avi mean?
Laban sought to destroy Abraham’s descendents by severing Jacob’s connection to his covenant as well as to his family. Like many Biblical personalities, he tried to accomplish this by using ‘imaginative actions’ (Poel Dimayon) as a way of predicting his family’s destiny. ‘Imaginative actions’ are acts that are meant to reflect a deeper reality through symbolism and sympathetic magic. The performer carries out an act which mimics or foreshadows what he hopes the destiny of another may be. Jewish and non-Jewish prophets alike performed such acts. For instance, Jeremiah throws a stone into the river as a way of illustrating that Babylon will sink and be destroyed. The imaginative and symbolic action is predictive of a future reality. Pharaoh also used such ‘imaginative actions’ as a way of destroying Israel. Since Israel is connected to the male side of divinity, by casting the male children into the Nile, he believed that he would weaken Israel’s connection to the divine.
Laban went one step farther than Pharaoh. He threatened to destroy both the men and women in the family of Jacob by inciting them to leave their faith in the true God and thereby destroying any connection to the divine – not just the male aspect of the divine as Pharaoh would do, but the female aspect as well.
It wasn't so much that Laban wished to physically destroy Jacob and his family as he wished to destroy their spiritual connection to God. The verse then should be read, “My father, Laban, was a “lost Aramean” who lacked a basic belief in the true God, and he wished to seduce Jacob and his family into adopting idolatry.
Why does the Haggadah use Laban as an example of the previous statement in the Haggadah that people have risen against us in every generation to destroy us?
The reference to Laban in the Haggadah is not about the physical destruction of the Jewish people, but about the possibility of their spiritual destruction. The Haggadah returns to the theme it mentioned earlier: why was it necessary for the children of Israel to go down to Egypt in the first place? We learned that the exile to Egypt was necessary because Abraham came from a family of idolaters. It was necessary for him to undergo a process of purification in the furnace of Egypt before his people could become worthy of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. This passage continues this theme. Not only did Abraham come from a family of idolaters, but the Matriarchs, Rachel and Leah, came from such a family as well. In theory Jacob should have been exempt from undergoing such a process of refinement and purification since Abraham had already gone done to Egypt, but because he spent so much time in close proximity to his father-in-law the idolater, Laban, even he was forced to go down to Egypt with his children who still needed to be purified from the impurity of idolatry!
The two passages, “At first our ancestors worshipped idols,” and “What did Laban seek to do to our father Jacob” both focus on the theme of Israel’s questionable origins of the Jewish people and the need to be purified of idolatry. It would appear that the children of Israel came from idolaters both paternally and maternally, and this was why it was necessary for them to go down to Egypt. The statement about Laban is not meant to be a proof text for the statement that “In every generation there are those who rose up against us to destroy us.” Rather it refers back to the earlier discussion in the Haggadah prior to this. Why do we need a statement about anti-Semitism and the suffering of the Jewish people at all? Haven't we witnessed this fact in our own lives? A better example of such hatred against the Jewish people from the Bible would have been Haman who also sought to destroy the entire Jewish people in Shushan.
The challenge here is correct. This statement about Laban is not meant to be an example of how people rise up to destroy us in every generation. Rather, as we have seen it is but an example of Israel’s humble origins from idolatry and an explanation of why the descent to Egypt was necessary in the first place. This verse does not clearly state that Laban wished to destroy the people of Israel. Why doesn't the Haggadah use the verse from Genesis that clearly states this: “Is it not in the power of my hand to hurt you…?” (Genesis 31:29).
It wasn't so much that Laban wished to destroy Jacob and his family (after all they were his family, too). Rather he wished to incite them so they would abandon God and embrace idolatry. This is the implications of the word Oved in the verse in Deuteronomy. The word Oved is not a verb, but an adjective. Laban was an Arami Oved. Oved means lost; Laban was lost from this world and the world to come because he lacked faith in God. Similarly, we find the word Oved used in this sense in the verse, “The ones who are lost in the land of Assyria….” (Isaiah 27:13) – The ones who are lost are those who had given up their faith. In reality didn't Pharaoh also wish to destroy the entire people of Israel? By killing the male children, wasn't it his intention to see to it that the Israelites would fail to propagate?
Yes, he did. However Laban’s imaginative action was more devastating than that of Pharaoh since Pharaoh focused on the male aspect of our connection to divinity while Laban’s attempt was to destroy both the male and female connection to divinity. According to this interpretation, both men focused on severing the spiritual connection between the descendants of Abraham to God and not their physical well-being or survival.Deuteronomy Chapter 26 is actually the passage that was recited when the people if Israel brought the first fruits to the Temple on the festival of Shavuot. Why was it necessary to use this notion of the destroying Aramean and the descent to Egypt in relation to the practice of the bringing of the first fruits? What is the connection between this practice and this passage?
So why did we make a declaration about Laban on those occasions when we brought the first fruits in ancient times? The process of purification was essential to our inheriting the land of Israel, which is a holy land. By speaking of Laban and then our descent into Egypt, the people would understand why slavery was necessary (to remove Laban from our system) and where we come from originally.

במשך היובל, “during the long blast of the shofar.” The plain meaning of the verse is that when a long blast of the shofar would be heard this would signal the departure of the Shechinah from Mount Sinai. At that time the rule restricting the Israelites from touching or ascending the mountain would be relaxed. The word היובל is a reference to the ram’s horn, according to Rashi the horn of the ram Avraham had sacrificed instead of Yitzchak. What Rashi meant was that although that ram had been burned up as an עולה, a burnt-offering which is completely burned up including its horns, G’d had resurrected it to its original condition. In Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 31 we read the view of Rabbi Chanina ben Dotha who held that the ram in question had been created at dusk of the sixth day of creation (Avot 5,6) and that none of its parts went to waste. The ash of the flesh was used in constructing the golden altar inside the Sanctuary. The tendons became the ten strings of David’s harp. The skin became the belt used by the prophet Elijah to gird his loins. He bases this on Kings II 1,8: ”a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist.” “That is Elijah the Tishbite, he said.” The right horn of that ram served as the horn which will announce his coming in the future as we know from Isaiah 27,13 ”and in that day a great ram’s horn will be sounded and the strayed who are in the land of Assyria and the expelled who are in the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord in Jerusalem on the holy mount.” The left horn was the one used at the revelation of Mount Sinai in our verse. Thus far Rabbi Chanina ben Dotha.
Our sages in the beginning of the first chapter of Masechet Yom Tov use this verse to prove that anything which had been forbidden by a court comprised of a certain number of judges cannot be permitted again by another court unless it comprises a greater number of judges than the previous court (Megillah 2). This is also what is meant in Beitzah 5: “seeing the Torah had already written that ‘also sheep and cattle shall not graze facing the mountain’ (34,3), why was it necessary to write that when a long blast would be sounded on the ram’s horn this would signal the “all clear?” [We have a principle מתוך לאו אתה שומע הן, “from the conditions attached to a prohibition, you can judge when such a prohibition does no longer apply.” Ed] The Torah wrote the verse only to teach us that unless specifically permitted by a competent authority even a temporary prohibition unless it had a specific time limit to start with needs to be specifically permitted again.”