אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג ל׳Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 30
א׳
1[90] What led this same Jacob, when Joseph brought to him his two sons, the elder Manasseh and the younger Ephraim, to cross his hands and place his right hand on Ephraim the younger son and his left hand on Manasseh the elder; and when Joseph was distressed by it and imagined that his father had made an unintentional mistake in so placing his hands, to say it was no error, but “I know, my child, I know, this one too shall be a people, this one too shall be exalted, but his younger brother shall be greater than he”? (Gen. 48:19).
ב׳
2[91] What, then, does it behove us to say but this, that two exceedingly necessary faculties were created in the soul by God, memory, and recollection? Of these memory is the better, recollection the inferior. For while the former keeps everything that it has apprehended fresh and distinct, so as to go wrong in nothing owing to ignorance, recollection is in all cases preceded by forgetfulness, a maimed and blind affair.
ג׳
3[92] But the inferior of these, recollection, is discovered to be older than the superior one, memory: [while recollection has many gaps of forgetfulness, memory is] unbroken and uninterrupted. For when we are being first introduced to the various arts we are unable at once to master their principles; so finding ourselves liable to forgetfulness at the outset, we afterwards recollect, until as the result of repeated forgetting and repeated recollecting an unfailing memory shall subsequently win the day. Accordingly memory, being late-born, is formed as recollection’s younger sister.
ד׳
4[93] So then Ephraim is the figurative name of Memory, meaning “fruit-bearing,” for the soul of the student has borne its proper fruit when it is able by means of memory to hold securely the principles of the art that is being learned. Manasseh, however, represents recollection, for the name is said to mean “out of forgetfulness” when translated, and he who escapes from forgetfulness necessarily recollects. Most rightly, therefore, does Jacob, the overthrower of the passions and the trained seeker of virtue, lay his right hand on Ephraim as fruitful memory, and count Manasseh, who is recollection, worthy of the second place.
ה׳
5[94] Moses also, to take another case, awards special praise among the sacrificers of the Passover to those who sacrificed the first time, because when they had separated themselves from the passions of Egypt by crossing the Red Sea they kept to that crossing and no more hankered after them, but to those who sacrificed the second time he assigns the second place, for after turning they retraced the wrong steps they had taken and as though they had forgotten their duties they set out again to perform them, while the earlier sacrificers held on without turning. So Manasseh, who comes “out of forgetfulness,” corresponds to those who offer the second Passover, the fruit-bearing Ephraim to those who offer the earlier one.