A Special Handshake

Rav Hirsch challenges those who explain תקיעת כף  as clapping of hands, but rather it means clasping hands. The act of shaking or holding someone else’s hand is a highly significant one. The hand is usually an instrument for acquiring items for making items.

When we put our hand into the hand of another person, we ‘hand’ them a right or claim to our acts or possessions. The pasuk is a call by Klal Yisrael to other nations to enter into an alliance with us and promise us their friendship.

Alternatively, if this pasuk is to be interpreted as an expression of joy, it is a call from the Jewish people to the other nations to display a loud, public expression of joy at having found the truth at long last. This truth is to be found in the place where they would have lest expected to find it, in the historic phenomenon that is Klal Yisrael, who is the embodiment of the ideal that they have until now searched for in vein upon strange paths.


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