{"id":87194,"date":"2021-01-20T21:55:08","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T19:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=87194"},"modified":"2021-01-20T21:55:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T19:55:08","slug":"winston-churchill-boris-johnson-and-rashbam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/winston-churchill-boris-johnson-and-rashbam\/","title":{"rendered":"Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson, and Rashbam"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"87194","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34243,"related_cahpter":"660","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"And their love of the ascending tricolon\r\n\r\n","content":"

Rabbi Hayyim Paltiel, a 13th century Tosafist scholar of Northern France, made the following notation in his Torah commentary on Genesis 49:22: <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Joseph is a wild ass, A wild ass by a spring \u2014Wild colts on a hillside.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

The manner of the verse is to commence speaking without completion, then the completion follows, as in<\/span>:<\/span> \u201cThe ocean sounds, O LORD, the ocean sounds its thunder, the ocean sounds its pounding\u201d (93:3)<\/span>;<\/span> \u201c<\/span>Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power, Your right hand, O LORD, shatters the foe!<\/span>\u201d <\/span>(Exodus 15:6); and \u201cSurely, Your enemies, O LORD, surely, Your enemies perish; all evildoers are scattered\u201d (92:10).<\/span><\/p>\n

All this is from the work of Rabbi Shmuel [ben Meir]. Whenever his grandfather, Rashi, would reach such verses, he would call them \u201cShmuel\u2019s verses.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern biblical scholarship calls \u201cShmuel\u2019s verses\u201d staircase (or climactic) parallelism, defined, like Rabbi Paltiel, by an opening address, its repetition, elaboration, and then its conclusion. The staircase effect distinguishes it from ordinary parallelism\u2014usually of the synonymous variety, although there are also instances of antonymous parallelism in Tanakh\u2014by ascending to a climax in the third part.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a rhetorical device that was used to considerable effect by many orators, including Winston Churchill, who, after the 1942 British-Allied victory at El-Alamein, wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

Now this is not the end,<\/span>
\n<\/span>It is not even the beginning of the end,<\/span>
\n<\/span>But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

The connection to Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, comes via his book \u201cThe Churchill Factor,\u201d in which this citation illustrates a chapter entitled \u201cHe Mobilized the English Language.\u201d It is cited there as an example of \u201ca classic ascending tricolon,\u201d yet another name for one of Shmuel\u2019s verses. As Johnson explained: \u201cI dwell on these rhetorical tricks, because it is important to recognise that all great speeches to some extent depend on them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

*I am grateful to Gideon Schor, a <\/span>hevruta<\/span><\/em>, for the Johnson reference.<\/span><\/p>\n

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