With today’s daf TB Moed Katan 29 we finish our massekhet! On this page we learn the appropriate parting words both to the deceased and to the living.
“And Rabbi Levi bar Ḥayyata said: One who departs from the deceased should not say to him: Go to peace (שָׁלוֹםלֵךְ לְ) , but rather he should say: Go in peace ( בְּשָׁלוֹם לֵךְ). One who departs from the living should not say to him: Go in peace, but rather he should say: Go to peace.
“One who departs from the deceased
should not say to him: Go to peace, but rather: Go in peace, as it is stated:
“And you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age”
(Genesis 15:15). (God tells Abraham at the Covenant of the Pieces his future
and the future of his descendants. And as the verse continues, Abraham will
live to a ripe old age.-gg)
“One who departs from the living should
not say to him: Go in peace, but rather: Go to peace, as David said to Absalom:
“Go in peace”
(II Samuel 15:9), and he subsequently went and was hanged;
whereas Yitro said to Moses: “Go to peace” (Exodus 4:18), and he went
and was successful” (Absalom told his father David that he want to go to Hebron to
fulfill a previous vow. Once there he had himself proclaimed King supplanting
his father. When Absalom’s troops were routed by King David’s troops, Absalom
fled riding a donkey “and as the mule passed underneath the tangled branches of
a great terebinth, his hair got caught in the terebinth; he was held between
heaven and earth as the mule under him kept going. {II Samuel 18:9} Defenseless,
Yoav, King David’s general, and some soldiers killed Absalom.
Yitro was Moses’ father-in-law. Before Moses left at God’s
command to redeem the Jewish people out of Egypt out of the house of bondage,
he took his leave of his father-in-law. Every Passover we celebrate Moses’
success.-gg) (Sefaria.org translation)
What is the semantic difference between Go to peace (שָׁלוֹםלֵךְ לְ) and Go in peace (לֵךְ בְּשָׁלוֹם )? Rabbi Shlomo ben Hayatom explains: “Go in peace” means go to the place where you will be in peace, the grave. “Go to peace” is a matter of direction and is also a good sign because the letter lamed (לְ) is the largest of all the letters. The Ran explains: the embedded in meaning of “Go in peace” is the idea that one doesn’t know after death where the person’s final destination will be. Consequently, no destination is mentioned in the salutation and is more suited for the dead. The Ritba explains: when the person dies he no longer has to worry about new sufferings or calamities in the future world. Everything that will happen to him in the World to Come is dependent on what he already did in this world. Consequently we bless them with “Go in peace” that his final journey will be one of peace and wholeness. Concerning the living who goes from place to place, his blessing should be “go to peace” to the place that he will ultimately journey to, the World to Come.
Even today we use these two blessings. When the coffin was lowered into the grave I say “May he go to his place in peace (על מקומו יבוא בשלום)” or makes the appropriate grammatical changes for a female. When we say goodbye to somebody who is going away on a trip, we say “Go to peace (צאתכם לשלום).
Tomorrow
we begin massekhet Haggigah!
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