וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
There is a beautiful place in the Ayalon Valley - west of Jerusalem - just 25 km away. It is called Latrun. The name Latrun may have been derived from “Le Toron des Chevaliers,” the name of a Crusader castle that once stood there. In modern times the hill is best known as the site of an important battle during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.
There’s a cartoon I once saw where a guru in a loincloth sits cross-legged at the top of a mountain. Before him is a matronly-looking woman in Western clothes who has climbed almost to the summit. The caption: “Murray, darling, when are you coming home?”
Many of us have the idea that a life of holiness means a life of privation. What does Judaism have to say about this?
In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Nasso, we read about the nazir. This is a man or woman who “explicitly utters a nazirite’s vow, to set themselves apart for G-d.” (Num. 6:2)
Having made this vow, the nazir takes on three restrictions:
1. No wine or strong drink,
2. No haircuts, and
3. Not being near someone who has died.
Three people in Tanakh seem to have fit the description of a nazir:
– Samson, whose mother was told by an angel: “You are going to conceive and bear a son; let no razor touch his head, for Read More >
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
What’s Your “Work Work”?
A D’var Torah for Parashat Naso
By Rabbi Rob Scheinberg
The original sacred ritual space of the Jewish people, the Mishkan, was portable. Whenever the Israelites moved from place to place in the wilderness, the Mishkan would be disassembled and transported to its next location. The Levites were the ones in charge of its porterage, and the different families of the Levites each had different holy objects to carry whenever the Mishkan would travel with the people from place to place.
This is the context for one of the more unusual verses in the Torah, a verse in the beginning of the book of Numbers (Parashat Naso), that describes the Levites’ roles. After specifying that the Levites were to work from age 30 to age 50, the Torah (Numbers 4:47) divides the labors of the Levites into two categories, referred to Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Naso
By Rabbi Matthew Goldstone
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
Our parasha this week, Naso, contains a passage recited daily as part of the traditional liturgy, which many parents also use to bless their children each Friday night: The priestly blessing (Num. 6:22-27):
The Lord spoke to Moses:
Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. Say to them:
The Lord bless you and protect you!
The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you!
The Lord bestow God’s favor upon you and grant you peace!
Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.
There is a lot to unpack in this text, but for the moment I want to focus in on the last line of the trifold blessing: “The Lord bestow God’s favor upon you and grant you peace!” In light of the recent events Read More >
When It Really Is About The Patriarchy
A D’var Torah for Parshat Naso
By Rabbi David Markus
Dedicated to the family of George Floyd, and peaceful change makers everywhere.
I open this week’s Torah portion (Naso), and I cringe. I read of ancient ways to serve in the Mishkan – all tribal men of a certain age. I read of Sotah trials, humiliating women to placate jealous husbands. Even the Threefold Blessing, phrased free of gender, was harnessed to aim first at Kohanim – only men (B.T. Hullin 49a, Rashi Num. 6:27).
Thankfully we’ve become adept at redeeming Torah from patriarchy. Some see Torah as socially developmental, meeting our ancestors only just a bit ahead of their Bronze Age context so that Torah would be practical. We might note that Torah itself responded to the Sotah trial by restoring an innocent Sotah woman’s power: a false-accuser husband never could divorce her (Deut. 22:19). We Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Naso
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover (’11)
Last week’s Torah portion, Bemidbar, started with a lot of counting of Israelites. This week’s Torah portion, Naso, also begins with counting. The word “Naso” means “take up,” as in “Take up a census of the Gershonites also” (Numbers 4:22). The counting in this Torah portion is of different clans of the Levites who have responsibilities to pack up and transport different parts of the Tabernacle when the Israelites decamp and move on through the wilderness.
We are told the final counts: There are 2,750 Kohathites between the ages of 30 and 50—which are the years when the Levites are responsible for the work of the Tabernacle; there are 2,630 Gershonites; and there are 3,200 Merarites, for a total of 8,580 Levites. This seems like rather a lot of people for the task of packing and moving the Tabernacle around, but the Torah Read More >
A Puzzling Law, Seen in Context
A D’var Torah for Naso
by Rabbi Len Levin
“I will not punish their daughters for loose behavior,
Nor their daughters-in-law for infidelity,
For they themselves turn aside with whores
And sacrifice with prostitutes” (Hosea 4:14).
Sometimes the Torah speaks to us as a timeless document, whose proclamations (“love your neighbor as yourself”; “you shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” — Lev. 19:18, Deut. 10:19) are as relevant to us today as when they were first uttered.
At other times, its laws seem situated in a culture and society so remote from ours, that to tease the universal message from its particulars is a frustrating and complicated task. The law of the ordeal of the bitter waters for the wife of the jealous husband is one of those cases.
The history of Read More >
by Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky
This week’s parashah contains one of the most detailed descriptions of a Biblical ritual in the entire Torah. Numbers 5:11-31 contains a description of the Sotah ritual. When a husband suspected his wife of being unfaithful she was subjected to an ordeal that would prove either her innocence or guilt. In addition to the description of the Sotah ritual found in the Torah, there is a very detailed tractate in the Mishnah (early 3rd century) that goes into even further detail.
The Sotah ritual has been subject to much scholarly research, some compared this ritual to other Ancient Near Eastern ordeals while other focused on unavoidable questions regarding gender and patriarchy. I would like to discuss the approach to the Sotah taken by Ishai Rosen-Zvi in his book The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple, Gender and Midrash.
Rosen-Zvi begins by asking the following questions:
Why does the Mishnah reformulate a ritual that has Read More >
by Hazzan Marcia Lane
[We would like to bring to people’s attention the difference between the traditional Diaspora and Israeli Torah reading cycles for the next few months. Since this year the eighth day of Passover, which was observed by many in the Diaspora, fell on Shabbat and had a special Torah reading, the Israeli Torah reading cycle moved one parashah ahead of the traditional Diaspora cycle. The AJR divrei Torah will follow the traditional Diaspora cycle and will catch up to the Israeli cycle at the beginning of August.]
The Text is Context
Parashat Naso begins with a census of the Levitical priests and ends with a series of repetitive paragraphs outlining the gifts that the chiefs of each tribe bring to outfit the Tabernacle. But in the middle of the parashah (Numbers 5:11-5:31) there is a curious description of a ritual that shall be carried out in the case of a man who Read More >
by Cantor Sandy Horowitz
יְבָרֶכְךָ יְיָ וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ.
יָאֵר יְיָ פָּנָיו אֵלֶֽיךָ וִיחֻנֶּֽךָּ.
יִשָּׂא יְיָ פָּנָיו אֵלֶֽיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם.
Numbers 6:24-26
The Ohel David Synagogue in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), home to a small group of Baghdadi Jews, was once visited by Nathan Katz, as he relates in his book Who Are the Jews of India? When Katz walked into the synagogue one Shabbat morning, he didn’t realize he was about to set off a major halachic conundrum. As it so happened he was the tenth man, fulfilling the requirement for a minyan. As it also turned out he is a kohen, descendent of the biblical kohanite priests, and therefore required to participate in the ritual of duchan, offering of the priestly blessing. But Katz was wearing short sleeves, which went against the custom of this community for performing duchan – even in tropical Mumbai. Hence Read More >
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