Valle, Laban the Aramean.

The events narrated in this week's parisher, namely Jacob's flight to La Vann, his stay there

and his escape, pursued by his father-in-law, gave rise to the strangest passage in the Hagada.

Commenting on DeVarim chapter 26, the passage we expound on the Sederite, you know, Arami Ovedavi, it says as follows,

Aramid Ovidovi, sayulamad Mabikik, Shalob and Arami, go and learn what Laban the Aramean sought to do to

our father, Jacob, for Pharaoh condemned only the boys to death, but Laban sought to uproot everything.

Well, that's a key text in the Haggada and the

Sederite, but there are three problems with it. First of all, it understands the words Arami, Ovid,

to mean Laban and Aramean tried to destroy my father. But it can't be the plain sense of the verse,

because as Ibn Ezra points out, Ovid is an intransitive verb.

It can't take an object. It means something like lost, wandering, fugitive, poor, homeless,

or on the brink of perishing. So the phrase means something like my father was a wandering

Aramean. And the father referred to is either Jacob, that's how Ibn Ezra and

Svono read it, or Abraham, that's how Rushbaum reads it, or all the patriarchs, that's how Shadal

Lutzata reads it. As for the word Aram Arami, this was the region from which Abraham set out to

travel to Canaan and to which Jacob fled to escape the anger of Esau.

The general sense of the phrase is that the patriarchs had no land, no permanent home, there were vulnerable,

they were wandering Arameans, there were nomads. As for Laban, he doesn't appear in the verse at all,

except by a very forced reading. Secondly, there's no evidence that Laban, he doesn't appear in the verse at all, except by a very forced reading.

Secondly, there's no evidence that Laban the Aramian actually harmed Jacob to the contrary.

As he was pursuing Jacob, but before he caught up with him, it's written,

God appeared to La Van the Aramean in a dream by night and said to him,

...