Shoftim

Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Breathing New Life into Ancient Teaching

One of the joys of Jewish life in the Land of Israel is the way ancient texts can be used in ordinary moments of daily life. A rabbinic colleague tells the story of a Jerusalem traffic jam: traffic had come to a complete halt, and drivers were leaning on their horns in frustration. The taxi driver (who was driving my colleague) finally stepped out of his car and reprimanded the driver behind him, with a full, verbatim quote of Exodus 14:15, in its original Hebrew:

"Why are you yelling at me? Speak to the people of Israel and tell them to move!" (The translation here is meant to reflect the use of the text.) Never mind that in the original context it is God speaking to Moses at the Sea of Reeds.

At another moment of Israel's story—a moment neither joyous nor quotidian—members of Israel's judiciary community brought a different Torah text to bear on Israeli society. It was 1982. Israel was in control of southern Lebanon when Lebanese Christian Phalangists attacked the predominately Muslim refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and many were killed. Huge protests in Israel against the killings forced the government to take action, resulting in its convening a commission to assess the responsibility of the Israeli government and army. The Kahan Commission,1 established by the Israeli government, was chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court. It concluded that the Gemayel Phalangists bore direct responsibility for the massacres in the refugee camps, and that Israel was to be held indirectly responsible. It is to this second charge, that of indirect responsibility, that we turn our attention.

Continue reading.

Follow us on    page.

R'eih

Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Food and Covenant

God blessed the first humans, told them to multiply and increase, and then instructed them: "Look, I have given you all the seed-bearing plants on the face of the earth, and every tree that has in it seed-bearing fruit; these are yours to eat" (Genesis 1:29). In the utopian vision of the Garden of Eden, human beings are created vegetarian.

The vision of the garden collapses, however. God created human beings to struggle with good and evil, but alas, they chose evil all the time. "When the Eternal saw how great was the wickedness of human beings in the earth, that the direction of their thoughts was nothing but wicked all the time, the Eternal regretted having made human beings on earth, and was heartsick. So the Eternal thought, 'I will wipe the humans whom I created from off the face of the earth—the humans, [and with them] the beasts, the reptiles, the birds of the sky—for I rue the day I made them' " (Genesis 6:5-7).

Following the flood, God again blesses human beings and tells them to multiply and increase. But this time, God does not set the bar so high regarding food. "God then blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. . . . Any small animal that is alive shall be food for you, like green grasses—I give you [them]' all" (Genesis 9:1,3). Human beings may now eat anything at all—with one proviso: "But flesh whose lifeblood is [still] in it you may not eat" (Genesis 9:4). Human beings are granted unrestricted access to the flesh; the life, symbolized by its blood, does not belong to us. In the Torah's framework, this law applies to all of humanity—to Noah and all his descendants.

Continue reading.
Follow us on    page.

Eikev

Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

"All the world needs is love." We hear that refrain in our music, in our theologies, in conversations prosaic and profound. While there is no denying the power of love as the essential and irreplaceable core of our lives, there are also other things we need: a home, sustenance (food), and meaningful work—among others. And even love is multilayered and often complicated.

While the Hebrew prophets often use the metaphor of love and marriage to describe the relationship between God and Israel ("I will betroth you to Me forever," Hosea 2:21), the Torah uses different metaphors to describe that relationship. Deuteronomy 5:2–3 provides one of many beautiful examples:

"The Eternal our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our ancestors that the Eternal made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today."

How this covenant is understood forms the center of the conversation about what it is to be a Jew. What is the nature of this covenant? Is it binding? Who is included? What are its obligations—upon us, and upon God? Are there consequences for violating the covenant, and if so, what are they?

Continue reading.

Follow our    page.

Shabbat Nachamu - Va-et'chanan

Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Do Not Make Yourself a Pesel, Lest Torah Become an Idol

In the next parashah, Moses will tell the Israelite people: "Thereupon the Eternal One said to me, 'Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets that you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark.' . . . . After inscribing on the tablets the same text as on the first—the Ten Commandments that the Eternal addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the Assembly—the Eternal gave them to me" (Deuteronomy 10:1-4).

Our parashah, Va-et'chanan, contains this second text of the Ten Commandments. One would expect a perfect replica of the first set, an exact repetition, as Moses and God both promise. It is startling and wonderful to see that the texts are not identical. Traditional commentary,1 encoded in L'cha Dodi, tells us that both versions of the commandment to observe the Shabbat are uttered in the same instant by God (shamor v'zachor b'dibur echad); the single Divine word shatters into countless sparks as when a hammer strikes the anvil. Biblical criticism 2 teaches that the (edited) text we have before us is made up of different versions of our sacred narratives. Either way, the Torah pushes back against the notion that there could ever be a singular version of Divine truth. Divine truth is always beyond human grasp; the pure light of the Divine is necessarily refracted by human experience into countless colors.

Continue reading.

Follow our    page.

Shabbat Hazon - D'varim

Deuteronomy 1:1−3:22

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Deuteronomy: Becoming the Master Storytellers

The Passover Haggadah famously distinguishes between the wise and wicked children by the singular choice of the wise child to identify with the story: "It is because of what the Eternal did for us [me] when I came out of Egypt." At the very core of the Jewish enterprise is the willingness to take the story of our people as our own personal story.

The decision to frame the people's narrative as our very own is the way the Book of Deuteronomy opens. The Torah speaks through the voice of Moses: "The Eternal our God spoke to us at Horeb" (Deuteronomy 1:6); "We set out from Horeb" (1:19); "When we reached Kadesh-barnea (1:20), and so on. Were we to read the text on its surface (p'shat) level, we would have a problem here. We already learned that the people who stood at Horeb (Sinai) perished in the desert. Those who escaped from Egypt, who stood at Mt. Sinai, who traveled to Kadesh-barnea, who complained day and night, and who finally decided to go back to Egypt following the doom and gloom testimony of ten of the twelve scouts—that generation died out in the desert (1:34-36). To whom is Moses speaking? Presumably, he is speaking to the next generation. This generation did not stand at Sinai; they were not at Kadesh-barnea. The Book of Deuteronomy has taken the fantastic leap into Jewish storytelling: Yes! We did stand at Horeb. Yes! We were at Kadesh-barnea! Yes, yes, yes! This story is ours.

Continue reading.


Want to know more about Biblical Figures? Follow our board    page.

Mas-ei

Numbers 33:1-36:13

Death, Thou Shalt Die

D'var Torah By: Rabbi Richard A. Block

The end of the wilderness sojourn of the wandering Israelites approaches as the Book of Numbers reaches its conclusion. In Parashat Mas-ei, the Torah looks backward and ahead. Summarizing forty years of marches and encampments since the Exodus from Egypt requires almost a full chapter. This travelogue is detailed, but without elaboration. Moses's version of the events that transpired in those places and his attempt to distill their lessons will be the main endeavor of Deuteronomy. Here, only the death of Aaron at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty-three years is mentioned.

The bulk of the portion anticipates the Israelites' entry to the land of Canaan and lays out initial steps to be taken as they establish their national home in that land of promise. This includes defining the land's outer boundaries and apportioning it among the ancestral tribes, except for the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who had elected to settle east of the Jordan River, and the landless Levites, for whom special provision was to be made. The latter were assigned forty-eight towns and the surrounding pastures to be carved out of the other tribes' allotments in proportion to their relative sizes.

The Torah turns next to a core aspect of criminal law: homicide. Six of the Levite towns were to be designated as "cities of refuge to which a manslayer who has killed a person unintentionally may flee" and therein find protection from "the blood-avenger . . . so that the manslayer may not die unless he has stood trial before the assembly" (Numbers 35:11-12). The Torah is well aware that not every killing is premeditated and it recognizes a moral and legal distinction between murder-taking a life with intent or reckless disregard of the consequences of one's actions, and manslaughter-a death resulting from an accident or negligence.

Continue reading.

Follow our    page.

Mattot

Numbers 30:2-32:42

“There Is Safety in Numbers”: Reception History and Cities of Refuge

D'var Torah By: Dr. Kristine Garroway
In Numbers 35:9-15, God commands the people to create cities of refuge in the Promised Land. The notion behind the cities of refuge-where one could claim asylum or sanctuary-is a construct that has found itself reinterpreted throughout the ages. What follows below is a brief exploration into the way the biblical text has been (re)interpreted from the Rabbinic period up until the present day. Examining the way a text has been received and interpreted is called "reception history," which is a form of higher criticism.

In the biblical text, the cities of refuge act as a sanctuary for one who had committed murder (rotzei-ach), but who had done so unintentionally ( makeih-nefesh bish'gagah). The issue here is blood vengeance. Numbers 35:16-21 explains that a person committing murder should be put to death (as murder violates the sixth commandment). Furthermore, a member of the family of one who was intentionally murdered has the right to act as the executioner. The kinsman carrying out this duty is called the go-eil hadam, the blood-avenger. However, if the murder happened by accident, then the murderer is allowed a trial, and the assembly shall decide whether or not the manslayer should die (Numbers 35:22-24). If the assembly finds in the person's favor, the manslayer shall live in one of the cities of refuge until the High Priest dies.1 At this point the man is free to return to his home (Numbers 35:28). If the manslayer sets foot outside the city before then, he opens himself up to the retribution exacted by the blood-avenger.2 So ends the biblical law.

The Rabbis had much to say about the cities of refuge. Of particular concern to them was how a person running from the blood-avenger would be able to find one of the cities. According to B'midbar Rabbah 23:13, God told Moses to set up road signs inscribed with the word "manslayer" that would point the person in the correct direction. So too, R. Avin stated every mile along the way there would be a station with a person pointing toward the city of refuge.3In case this was not enough, the roads leading to the cities of refuge should be extra wide, 16 cubits, not the regular 4 cubits. 4 The Rabbis were also interested in what a city of refuge would look like: a mid-size city, near water and markets, of a decent size population, and free of traps, nooses, and weapons.5

Continue reading.


Follow our    page.