Pinchas

Numbers 25:10−30:1

The Eternal One spoke to Moses, saying, "Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion." - Numbers 25:10-11

• Evolving Justice
  By Lisa Edwards
  I was recently called to jury service in Los Angeles. As imperfect as this complicated, human system of law may be, the jury selection made me proud to be an American, especially as the judge instructed the potential jurors about the meaning of “presumed innocent.”

  At the beginning of jury selection, when the judge in the courtroom asked the thirty-four potentialjurors how many of us thought the defendant was probably guilty, a majority raised their hands. He told us this is a common answer and understandable, but explained that in the United States every judge, every jury, must learn to presume innocence. Of course, we can easily find reminders of the difficulty of presuming innocence—from Guantanamo Bay to political scandals to the halls of justice everywhere—especially when fear and anxiety play a role.
  Continue Reading

Balak

NUMBERS 22:2−25:9

Balaam: A Case Study in True Prophecy

D'VAR TORAH BY: KRISTINE GARROWAY

This week's Torah portion centers on the story of Balak, King of Moab and Balaam, a foreign prophet. In Numbers 22:3 we learn that Israel had become numerous, which made the Midianites and Moabites nervous. Balak wished to wage war against Israel, but needed a "go" sign before engaging them. He sought out Baalam to curse the Israelites because he knew that whomever Baalam cursed would be cursed and whomever he blessed would be blessed (Numbers 22:6). Unfortunately, when Balak sent for Balaam, he did not get the favorable prophecy he wished for. Balaam wound up blessing, not cursing Israel, uttering the famous line: Ma tovu ohalecha Ya'akov, mishk'notechah Yisrael, "How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel" (Numbers 24:5).

Who is Balaam and why did Balak think he could-and would-curse Israel? These questions can be answered from a number of perspectives: Balaam's profession, extra-biblical sources, and finally, his actions.

Balaam: Job Title and Extra-Biblical Sources
The text describes Balaam's profession in a vague manner. He is a non-Israelite hailing from Trans-Jordan who curses and blesses people. Based on his interactions with God, we can assume he is a prophet. But this does not tell us much about him. Our next stop is the extra-biblical materials. From these we learn of a seer named Balaam, son of Beor, who prophesizes about the end of the world. The text in question hails from the plaster walls of a wayside shrine at Deir 'Alla, Jordan (ca. 840-760 BCE). It references knowledge gleaned from El and the Shaddai gods. These titles recall God's biblical epithets El, Elohim, and El-Shaddai. The Deir 'Alla text presents Balaam as a prophet who divined future events based on information gleaned in visions from the gods. While it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that the Deir 'Alla Balaam is the same as the biblical Balaam, his mode of operating, as will be discussed momentarily,is seemingly in accord with that of the biblical Balaam.

Balaam's Actions
We learn something about Balaam's methods of prophecy, that is, his actions, in response to each of Balak's requests (Numbers 22:11; 23:11; 23:27; 24:10-11). In each response, Balaam inquires of God after constructing altars. He does this at three different places: Bamoth-baal, (Numbers 22:41-23:9), Pisgah (Numbers 23:14-26), and Peor (Numbers 23:27-24:9). In Numbers 24:1 we learn an additional piece of information: Balaam had been seeking omens to make his predictions. What kind of omens did Balaam seek? The text is unclear, perhaps intentionally so. However, a brief tour of biblical prophecy demonstrates that omens were sought in many different ways.

Continue reading.

Chukat

Numbers 19:1−22:1

The Gift of Grief

D'var Torah By: Lisa Edwards

In an almost imperceptible yet seismic shift, this week’s Parshat Chukat jumps us a few decades ahead in the wilderness journey of the Israelites. Maybe we need a movie screen caption that reads, “thirty-eight years later.”

Perhaps the time shift is difficult to notice because not much else has changed. Early in the portion, seemingly from out of nowhere, we read: “Miriam died there and was buried there,” (Numbers 20:1). Although she was the sister of Moses and Aaron, and a leader herself in the Israelite community, no more detail is given of what happened when Miriam died. No cause of death is given, no age at death, no description of mourning. We don’t even know who buried her. “Died and buried” is all Miriam gets for her long years of service.

Or is it? The very next verse tells us “the community was without water” (20:2). This juxtaposition is to teach us, writes Rashi (France, eleventh century), that the Israelites “had water for the whole forty years from [Miriam’s] well on account of the merit of Miriam.” Abraham ibn Ezra (Spain, twelfth century) disagrees, noting an absence of water long before Miriam died (Exodus 17:1, for example).

Whatever the reason, it seems to be their thirst, rather than Miriam’s death, that brings the Israelites to whine and argue with Moses and Aaron. “Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place?” (Numbers 20:5). Poor Moses, Aaron, God, and us as well, we’ve heard all this before—almost forty years ago and from a different generation. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”1

Perhaps this is why Moses grows so angry, losing patience once more. And the same goes for God. When God tells Moses and his brother Aaron to take the rod and “order the rock to yield its water,” Moses does so in similar fashion to the way God instructed him decades before—he strikes the rock, but this time he does so twice, saying “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” (Compare Numbers 20:6-12 to Exodus 17:5-6).

Continue reading.

Korach

Numbers 16:1−18:32

“He Stood between the Dead and the Living”

By: Lisa Edwards

In the middle of Parashat Korach comes a short story that I find to be one of the most moving in all of Torah. It arrives unexpectedly in the midst of yet another chilling story of rebellion. The parashah begins with more than 250 "Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute," who, under the leadership of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and On turn against Moses and Aaron, saying: "You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Eternal is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Eternal's congregation?" (Numbers 16:1-3).

In their accusation, the leaders of the rebellion might seem to echo God's own language at Mount Sinai, calling the Israelites "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (goy kadosh)" (Exodus 19:6). Their logic, that when all are holy, none is above another, sounds right. But if the "rebels" merely echo God's earlier sentiment, why does their rebellion anger God so much that the earth opens up and swallows them?

Twentieth-century Jewish theologian Martin Buber1 explains God's remarks at Mount Sinai by calling our attention to the "if" clause: " If you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession . . . you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," (Exodus 19:5-6). Korah's error, teaches Buber, is in thinking that holiness is a given rather than a state that each of us must strive toward, working in partnership with God.

Continue reading.

Sh'lach L'cha

Numbers 13:1−15:41

“Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself”

D'VAR TORAH BY: LISA EDWARDS

This year marks Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's twentieth anniversary on the United States Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg likes to tell her version of a story that has many versions:

"What is the difference," she asks, "between a bookkeeper in New York's garment district and a U.S. Supreme Court Justice?" The answer: "One generation."

So much can change in a generation as we learn from this week's Torah portion, Sh'lach L'cha, in which God, fed up with the lack of faith shown by the Israelites, condemns a whole generation to die in the wilderness.

What was their crime? Moses, at God's behest, had sent twelve scouts into the Promised Land to see "what kind of country it is" (Numbers 13:18). Forty days later, ten of the twelve scouts came back with reports not only of the Land's plentiful milk, honey, and fruit, but also of fortified cities and powerful inhabitants so big that "we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them" (13:27-28, 33).

Their report brings the whole community to tears. And by the next day their fear elicits an odd request, as they shout at Moses and Aaron: "If only we might die in this wilderness! Why is the Eternal taking us to that land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be carried off" (14:2-3).

God is incensed. After all God has done for them, have they so little faith? Perhaps their own low self-esteem ("we looked like grasshoppers"), carried over to their trust in God as well. The midrash wonders if they were losing faith in themselves or in God. When the faint-hearted spies say, "We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we" (13:31), the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 35a) and, later, Rashi, note a grammatical ambiguity-the last word of that verse, mimenu, can be read either as "than we" or as "than He." Are the ten scouts suggesting that the people in that country are stronger than He-than God? No wonder then that God devises a punishment to fit the crime: "I will do to you just as you have urged Me. In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. . . . [But] Your children . . . shall know the land that you have rejected. . . . You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days-forty days-that you scouted the land: a year for each day" (14:28-34). God holds the adults accountable, but the children, too young to have known slavery, will live to enter the Land.

Continue reading.

B'haalot'cha

Numbers 8:1−12:16

By Lisa Edwards

Oy! There's a lot of whining in this week's Torah portion, B'haalot'cha. It has such a promising beginning-the training and blessing of the Levites for their special role among the people Israel, including the lighting of the golden seven-branched menorah; the poetic and comforting description of the cloud by day and fire by night that will signal when to make camp, and when to break camp and journey on; and the silver trumpets sounding to gather the people and God together in bad times and in good-"an institution for all time throughout the ages" (Numbers 10:8).

What happened? Why all the complaining? (Not that complaining is new to the Israelites.)

Some of the complaining proves legitimate. God appreciates it when some of the men, unable to celebrate the Passover sacrifice at its proper time, ask for another opportunity to do so. If the reason for delay is legitimate, says God, then offer it a month later on the same day of the month (9:6-13)-and the idea of Pesach Sheini is born, a second Pesach, this one, importantly, not imposed by God, but desired and requested by the people.

In this parashah the Israelites, at God's instruction, take their leave of Mount Sinai: "They marched from the mountain of God a distance of three days" (10:33). The commentator Rashbam (twelfth century, the grandson of the more-famous commentator Rashi) theorizes that the cause of the Israelites' complaining was the unexpected difficulty of the three-day journey.1 Given all the organizing beforehand, and the presence of the cloud and Moses to guide them, they were expecting an easier time of it.

It's such a wary time for God, for Moses, and for the Israelites. They want their bonds to deepen; they want all that comes next to go well. Yet they barely seem to understand one another. Some commentators suggest the Israelites ran from the mountain, eager to get away lest God give them still more laws to follow, "like a child running from school," says Ramban (Nachmanides, thirteenth century) leading him to wonder if the words, "they marched from the mountain of God," suggest a spiritual distancing in addition to a physical one (10:33).

Continue reading.

Naso

Numbers 4:21−7:89

We’ve Got to Stop It

D'var Torah By: Lisa Edwards

The sign read, "We've got to stop it," and under it a woman sat alone at a table in the grocery store parking lot. The sign also contained the words "domestic violence," so I walked over. She greeted me warmly, "I'm trying to put a face to it. To say it could happen to anyone. Because," she explained, "before it happened to me I wasn't very sympathetic. I would hear about battered women and think to myself, 'just put one foot in front of the other and walk away.' I had no idea how difficult that could be, how entrapped people can become in this cycle of violence. Are you a survivor?" she asked me.

"No," I said, "but I worked at a battered women's shelter for six years, so I well know what you're saying."

"Jealousy, for no reason, can start it all," she said. "But it can be anything-just that desire to control something-someone-in a world that feels so out of control."

One of the strangest passages of Torah occurs in this week's Parashat Naso-the ritual of the jealous husband and what comes to be known in Mishnah as the sotah wife (sotah from the word used in our parashah, tisteh, meaning "gone astray" or "turn aside"). "If any wife has gone astray and broken faith with her husband . . . [and] a fit of jealousy (ruach kinah) comes over him and he is wrought up about the wife who has defiled herself; or if a fit of jealousy comes over one and he is wrought up about his wife although she has not defiled herself, the husband shall bring his wife to the priest . . . . " (Numbers 5:12-15). The priest is instructed to subject the wife to a bizarre ordeal, including drinking "bitter waters" made of sacred water mixed with dirt from the floor of the Tabernacle and ink from the writing of the punishment she will face if guilty. If the drink causes her womb to swell, she is judged guilty; if not, she is innocent. If guilty, it is left to God to punish her-presumably by the miscarriage or infertility that will result from her swollen belly.

We're not the only ones troubled by this passage. The Talmud includes a whole tractate about it, Sotah, and examines this ordeal in great detail, including added restrictions that greatly reduce the likelihood of using it. But even if we stay just with the Torah's cryptic version, chances are the woman will not suffer physical harm either from the "potion" or at the hand of her husband.

Continue reading.