I said this on Zoom Shabbat 2020
This is a very short summary of this week’s Torah Portion Mattot -Mase’ei.
Here is some context. It comes right at the end of the Book of Bamidbar,
just before we start the Book of Devarim.
It’s the end of one thing and just before the beginning of another.
Its takes us right to the edge of the journey from the forty years in the desert to the next stage in our
adventure in the promised land.
You could title this combined parashah of Mase’ei Mattot:
‘we’ve come a long, long way together, through the hard times, and the good’
It starts with some ground rules, concerning with vows and oaths. If married women make vows, their husbands can annul them and if young girls make vows their fathers can annul them. But the good news is that vows of widows and divorced women hold. It says: “whatever she has imposed on herself, shall be binding on her too”
But before you get too excited about that, it goes rapidly downhill.
Moses makes an awful demand on his officers in his military campaign against the Midianites. He insists they kill all the women and children except for the virgins. Moses distributes the booty to the tribes including the cattle, the asses and the people who are virgins. I’m just going to leave that there.
The rest of Mattot discusses the very interesting story of the tribes of Reuven and Gad who don’t want to cross over to the Promised land. They don’t want to move across the Jordan with the other tribes. They like it where they are, thank you very much. Moses is furious.
He says: “Now you are a breed of sinful men, have replaced your fathers, to add still further to God’s wrath against Israel. If you turn away from Him and he abandons them once more in the wilderness, you will bring calamity on all this people”
But they come to an agreement. Moses makes them an offer they can’t refuse. Moses says: If you do this and agree to join the battle with the other against the Amorites and other local tribes, you can stay where you are in the land across Jordan. He says, if you don’t do this, know that your sin will overtake you.
The last Parashah, Mase’ei, starts with a recap of the 42 steps and encampments that made up our long, long journey from Egypt to where we are now in our story. So, as we go forward, we look back at where we’ve come from.
Then God gives Moses further instructions to give to the people before they go into the land of Canaan. He says, destroy their Gods, and dispossess all the inhabitants of their land because if you don’t, they will be stings in your eyes and thorns in your side. God then defines very clearly the boundaries of the land of Israel. North, South, East and West.
Having sanctioned bloodshed in war, God then goes on to forbid it very strongly and with lots of detail for the next 28 verses. This is more like it. There is a distinction made between unintentional murder and deliberate murder, with very different penalties. Unintentional murderers should flee to cities of refuge (Arei Miklat) where they should stay until the death of the High Priest. This is because we don’t want more blood spilled by avenging relatives. Straight-out murderers on the other hand, face the death penalty after a proper trial with more than one witness.
God says: “you shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land.”
“You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I myself abide, for I the Lord abide among the Israelite people”
וְלֹ֧א תְטַמֵּ֣א אֶת־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר אַתֶּם֙ יֽשְׁבִ֣ים בָּ֔הּ
אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֖י שֹׁכֵ֣ן בְּתוֹכָ֑הּ כִּ֚י אֲנִ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה שֹׁכֵ֕ן בְּת֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י
יִשְׂרָאֵֽל:
The very last law discussed in the very last chapter that takes us out of the desert is once again about women. It says that the daughters of Zelophehad can marry whomever they like but it must be within their tribe if they want to inherit their father’s estate. It names them. They are: Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah.
The parashah ends with: “These are the commandments and the ordinances that the Lord commanded the children of Israel through Moses in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan at Jericho”
אֵ֣לֶּה הַמִּצְוֹ֞ת וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר צִוָּ֧ה יְהֹוָ֛ה
בְּיַד־משֶׁ֖ה אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל בְּעַרְבֹ֣ת מוֹאָ֔ב עַ֖ל יַרְדֵּ֥ן
יְרֵחֽוֹ
As President Josiah Bartlet once said:
“What’s Next?”
Saturday 10 July 2021
Sunday 4 July 2021
Pinchas,
Pinchas, today’s Parasha, is one of three places in the Torah that describes Yom Kippur. It is described twice in Leviticus In Emor and Aharai Mot and once here in Numbers.
They all describe Yom Kippur as a day of self -affliction. Emor has most of the details about the day as a whole. Aharai Mot makes clear the punishment for not doing the self-affliction. PInchas contains the shortest description of the day.
Emor and Aharai Mot’s descriptions are close together, both being in Leviticus. The Pinchas Yom Kippur description is much further along in Numbers. This is what it says in today’s Parasha: “On the tenth day of the same seventh month, you shall observe a sacred occasion when you shall practice self-denial. You shall do no work. וּבֶעָשׂוֹר֩ לַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֜י הַזֶּ֗ה מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם כׇּל־מְלָאכָ֖ה לֹ֥א תַעֲשֽׂוּ׃
According to the Mishhnah, all three sources are read on Yom Kippur in the Temple by the High Priest. The Mishnah vividly describes the drama of the day… --- Enter stage left the synagogue attendant or the Hazzan He takes the Torah scroll and passes it along to the Head of the synagogue, And then he passes it to the deputy high priest who then gives it to the high priest. It’s a biblical pass the parcel. The high priest stands, takes the scroll and reads the two Leviticus sources to all the assembled people. The sources are close together so there isn’t too much rolling involved. Then he rolls up the Torah completely. He hugs the closed scroll to his chest and says, “More than I have read before you, is written here!” And then off by heart, he says the Torah portion about Yom Kippur that we read today. There’s no reading at that stage, just off by heart reciting. It’s not too long, so the High Priest is not required to have a great memory.
It’s almost as if the ritual in the temple is being given significance by demonstrating that it is all anchored in the Torah. It’s the words describing the actions of the day. Once the actions are no longer possible, once the Temple is no longer in business, the words are all we have left. The words and the story are what remains. But the story continues…
The Mishnah’s description of reading the parts of the Torah about Yom Kippur in the Temple on Yom Kippur is passed along and passed along to the later generations of rabbis of the Gemara.
They wonder about why the High Priest has to say the last source, our Pinchas source today off by heart, without reading it from the scroll. They have a few theories but don’t come to a conclusion. They worry that it will look like there’s a mistake in the Torah script. They wonder if it’s because of wasted blessings. They wonder if it’s a more practical reason which is that it will take longer to roll the scroll to the correct place and that the waiting for them to find the right place will be an afront to the assembled congregation. (We’ve seen it happen a few times at Assif. I can tell you it’s not the end of the world)
The Talmud ends the discussion with a lovely story ….it says after the High Priest concludes his reading, each and every person present brings a Torah scroll from his house and reads from it for himself in order to show its appearance to the community.
By the time the Torah scroll reaches us today, we have interpreted some of the meaning of the text out of existence. In some places, we’ve defined things more clearly like the biblical law of self-affliction on Yom Kippur becomes the Mishnah’s laws of don’t eat or drink, wear shoes, wash, use lotions or have sex. Sacrifices and Temple practise are long gone. The Zealotry of Pinchas has been rejected by the Sages of Talmud. As Rabbinic Jews, we’ve changed the Torah’s literal meaning in many places with an army of legitimate interpretative devices and yet it still remains our beloved and holy Torah.
We still stand today like the High Priest, clutching the Torah scroll as tightly as ever, two thousand years later. We still show the words of the Torah to the assembled congregation and we sing: Vzot haTorah asher sam Moshe lifnei b’nei Yisrael
This is the Torah that God gave to Moses who gave it to the Israelites.
This is the Torah that the High Priest received from his deputy who received it from the shul president who received it from the shul attendant.
This is the Torah we bring from our houses, making it our own.
This is the Torah powered by our love to transcend the literal, to hold a multiplicity of shared meaning.
Zot HaTorah. ---
They all describe Yom Kippur as a day of self -affliction. Emor has most of the details about the day as a whole. Aharai Mot makes clear the punishment for not doing the self-affliction. PInchas contains the shortest description of the day.
Emor and Aharai Mot’s descriptions are close together, both being in Leviticus. The Pinchas Yom Kippur description is much further along in Numbers. This is what it says in today’s Parasha: “On the tenth day of the same seventh month, you shall observe a sacred occasion when you shall practice self-denial. You shall do no work. וּבֶעָשׂוֹר֩ לַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֜י הַזֶּ֗ה מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם כׇּל־מְלָאכָ֖ה לֹ֥א תַעֲשֽׂוּ׃
According to the Mishhnah, all three sources are read on Yom Kippur in the Temple by the High Priest. The Mishnah vividly describes the drama of the day… --- Enter stage left the synagogue attendant or the Hazzan He takes the Torah scroll and passes it along to the Head of the synagogue, And then he passes it to the deputy high priest who then gives it to the high priest. It’s a biblical pass the parcel. The high priest stands, takes the scroll and reads the two Leviticus sources to all the assembled people. The sources are close together so there isn’t too much rolling involved. Then he rolls up the Torah completely. He hugs the closed scroll to his chest and says, “More than I have read before you, is written here!” And then off by heart, he says the Torah portion about Yom Kippur that we read today. There’s no reading at that stage, just off by heart reciting. It’s not too long, so the High Priest is not required to have a great memory.
It’s almost as if the ritual in the temple is being given significance by demonstrating that it is all anchored in the Torah. It’s the words describing the actions of the day. Once the actions are no longer possible, once the Temple is no longer in business, the words are all we have left. The words and the story are what remains. But the story continues…
The Mishnah’s description of reading the parts of the Torah about Yom Kippur in the Temple on Yom Kippur is passed along and passed along to the later generations of rabbis of the Gemara.
They wonder about why the High Priest has to say the last source, our Pinchas source today off by heart, without reading it from the scroll. They have a few theories but don’t come to a conclusion. They worry that it will look like there’s a mistake in the Torah script. They wonder if it’s because of wasted blessings. They wonder if it’s a more practical reason which is that it will take longer to roll the scroll to the correct place and that the waiting for them to find the right place will be an afront to the assembled congregation. (We’ve seen it happen a few times at Assif. I can tell you it’s not the end of the world)
The Talmud ends the discussion with a lovely story ….it says after the High Priest concludes his reading, each and every person present brings a Torah scroll from his house and reads from it for himself in order to show its appearance to the community.
By the time the Torah scroll reaches us today, we have interpreted some of the meaning of the text out of existence. In some places, we’ve defined things more clearly like the biblical law of self-affliction on Yom Kippur becomes the Mishnah’s laws of don’t eat or drink, wear shoes, wash, use lotions or have sex. Sacrifices and Temple practise are long gone. The Zealotry of Pinchas has been rejected by the Sages of Talmud. As Rabbinic Jews, we’ve changed the Torah’s literal meaning in many places with an army of legitimate interpretative devices and yet it still remains our beloved and holy Torah.
We still stand today like the High Priest, clutching the Torah scroll as tightly as ever, two thousand years later. We still show the words of the Torah to the assembled congregation and we sing: Vzot haTorah asher sam Moshe lifnei b’nei Yisrael
This is the Torah that God gave to Moses who gave it to the Israelites.
This is the Torah that the High Priest received from his deputy who received it from the shul president who received it from the shul attendant.
This is the Torah we bring from our houses, making it our own.
This is the Torah powered by our love to transcend the literal, to hold a multiplicity of shared meaning.
Zot HaTorah. ---
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