Category: Bamidbar

On vacation, one of our time-tested ways to get the children to unwind before bed is to work on a trip journal. Nothing fancy, just a title and a drawing or two, and an opportunity to review the highlights of the day.

Now, the children have their own ideas of what to highlight, and a taste for drama. So a sample entry on a gorgeous day hiking in the Golan Heights is as likely to illustrate a dingy pizza shop closing before we got there as stunning wildflowers or Edenic natural springs.

Which brings us to this week’s parasha, Masai, which opens with nearly 50 verses of “And they [the Children of Israel] traveled to place-X and they encamped at place-Y.” The Torah tells us that “Moses wrote their goings out by their travels in accordance with God [al pi Hashem]” (Numbers 33:2).

What is God’s purpose in having Moses record the segments of the journey? Why aren’t the narratives in Exodus and Numbers enough?

Read the full article on The Times of Israel

Throughout the ages it has been accepted to retell Torah stories in the language of the times, Think Tzena u-Rena, the Yiddish accounts of biblical narratives. Here is my retelling of the daughters of Tzelofchad, for 2019.

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Milkah: Hey girls, we have a problem — with our father gone, with no brothers who is going to inherit our father’s portion of the land of Israel?

Tirzah: Let’s go speak to Moses.

Hoglah: Great idea.

Noah: Um, girls, we have a problem. Moses’ yeshiva is on that street with the huge sign, “No women on this sidewalk.”

Milkah: What if we wear our burkas?

Machlah: I think I know a back way in. It’s over a fence, but we can climb it and then go through two garbage dumps. Follow me!

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At the end of Deutronomy, we reach the end of Moses’ life and we see the great mourning of the people at this immesurable loss. In this context, the Torah tells us:

וְלֹֽא־קָ֨ם נָבִ֥יא ע֛וֹד בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל כְּמֹשֶׁ֑ה אֲשֶׁר֙ יְדָע֣וֹ ה’ פָּנִ֖ים אֶל־פָּנִֽים׃

Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses — whom the LORD singled out, face to face. (Deuteronomy 34:10)

On this tragic verse, Sifrei Deuteronomy (357) comments that while there was never a prophet like Moses in Israel, there was in fact one among the nations:

And there shall not arise in Israel again a prophet such as Moses”: But among the nations, there did arise. And who was he? Balaam the son of Beor. But there is a difference between the prophecy of Moses and the prophecy of Balaam. Moses did not know who was speaking to him, and Balaam did know, viz. (Numbers 24:16) “The speech of the hearer (Balaam) of the words of the Almighty.” Moses did not know when He would speak to him until He did so. Balaam did know, viz. “and the knower of the knowledge of the Most High.” Moses did not speak with Him unless he was standing, viz. (Deut. 5:28) “And you, here, stand with Me.” And Balaam spoke with Him when he was fallen, viz. (Num. 24:4) “The vision of the Almighty shall he see, fallen and his eyes uncovered.

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Parshat Hukat is the story of transitions. The narrative begins in Chapter 20, with the death of Miriam and Aaron, after the Children of Israel have completed 40 years in the desert. But the parsha itself begins in chapter 19, with the statute (hok) of the Parah Adumah, the Red Heifer. The law describes the process a person undergoes to transition from being tameh(impure) to tahor (pure), after coming in contact with a dead body. The process itself makes little sense. The kohanim (priests) prepare the Red Heifer’s ashes outside of the camp or Temple (Middot 2:4). During its preparation, those kohanim who burn the cow or gather its ashes become impure,  and must wash their clothes and ritually immerse themselves in a mikveh. The kohen who sprinkles the ash water remains pure. The paradox of this ritual is best seen in Chapter 19 verse 19:

A pure person sprinkles the impure person with the ash water of the Red Heifer and somehow the impure person becomes pure. But what exactly does this water do? What does this ash water do for the Tameh person?

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Long road trips don’t bring out the best in people, and the extended journey of the Children of Israel from Egypt to the Land of Israel is no exception. The Book of Numbers sometimes reads like a series of variations on “Are we there yet? How much longer?” — only with higher stakes and graver consequences.

In Parshat Shelach, we read of how the spies’ report leaves the nation begging to cut their trip short and turn back to Egypt. God punishes the people by making the journey substantially longer than planned, and a defiant attempt to infiltrate the Land early ends with crushing military defeat.

In this week’s parasha, Korach, the complaints in the wilderness reach a crescendo, as Korach foments outright rebellion. Korach’s particular concern, however, isn’t about the journey. Instead, he challenges the Torah itself.

According to the Talmud Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 10:1), a series of three sincere questions leads Korach to become both rebel and heretic.

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In Parshat Shelach, Moses sends 12 scouts to survey the land of Israel in preparation for their entry. It seems as if God commanded them to go, so why should they be punished for reporting what they saw?

The problem was that their perception was skewed based on their slave mentality. They imagined the natives were stronger than them and “the land was out to eat them”! Although they admitted that “the land is flowing with milk and honey,” it was irrelevant to them. As Robertson Davies says, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” This appears to be the root cause of the sin of the spies, for when it came to describing what they saw, they said,

There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, descended from the giants. In our eyes, we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.

They felt unworthy and incapable and projected their insecurities and fears onto the natives and the land. The biggest sin of it all was that they caused their own suffering due to their lack of faith in their G-d-given abilities to successfully conquer, inhabit, and enjoy a blessed land. The huge luscious fruit which should have been seen as a blessing turned into a self-made curse.

Read the full article on The Times of Israel