Naso

The families of Gershon and Merari are assigned to carry parts of the Mishkan. A range of laws are then described, including when someone is sent outside the camp, the laws of one accused of adultery, and the laws of the Nazir, those who voluntarily accept upon themselves a range of restrictions. The parsha concludes by describing the sacrifices brought by each tribe at the altar's inauguration.

Another Voice

Life! Life! - Danny Siegel

Danny Siegel is an author, poet, and lecturer living in the Washington, DC, area. He has attended two Limmud conferences and has loved every minute of his experience at both.

A Good Person (Tzaddik) is called "Life". (Avot DeRabbi Natan 34)

The good things a Good Person (Tzaddik) does is the very force-of-Life. (Proverbs 10:16)

Tzedakah saves from death. (Proverbs 10:2)

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
Instruct the Israelites to remove from camp anyone with an eruption or a discharge and anyone defiled by a corpse. Remove male and female alike; put them outside the camp so that they do not defile the camp of those in whose midst I dwell. (Numbers 5:1-3)

Wend your way through the maze and complexity of tum'ah, ritual impurity: how you 'catch' it, transmit it, how to rid yourself of it, rid the sanctuary of it, rid the people and the land of it, how not to cause so much of it to accumulate that it drives God's Presence from the people. Study meticulously in and out of parts of Exodus through Deuteronomy, and you will surely get lost in confusing details, and, most likely, you will not even know what tum'ah is ultimately all about.

All of us surely need a text-Rebbi to teach us, and mine is Professor Jacob Milgrom. Master of every detail, Tanach-thinker of great authority, genius - The Good Professor teaches us that the real meaning is this: tum'ah is all about death and things that even resemble death, and tohorah, ritual purity, is all about Life. With incredible insight, he demonstrates that The Torah is on a rampage to detoxify impurity, to de-demonize the world, to purge us of any irrational, pagan fear of The Unknown, and to teach us Jews:

  1. what is pernicious, toxic, and potentially lethal, and - of equal or greater importance - what is not noxious, tainted, or polluted in any way;
  2. what to fear in Life and about death, and what is irrational, figment, psychopathology, or destructive superstition, and what not to fear because there is but one God for Whom there is no rival for power and against Whom no magic formulae can work their evil wonders;
  3. what is your fault and what is not your fault;
  4. what hurts only you, and what may wound everyone and damage everything around you;
  5. and what is irreparable, which is not as vast a Torah-category as what can be fixed, and how and when it can be fixed by washing the hands, by immersing oneself in water, by waiting until evening, by sacrifice/offering, and (rarely) by brief periods of quarantine (which is not the same as ostracism);

More - that there does, indeed, exist a way to a Life of Tohorah, physical and spiritual purity.

Most of all, the Torah is teaching that Life prevails over death ... always.

And even more than "most of all" — as Jews,
we are all about Life,
the Life of purity,
the Good Life, which is a Life of Menschlichkeit,
which is the Life of caring, of giving Life to others with that most divine gift, the sacred power of Tzedakah.

Lechaim!

*See Professor Milgrom's Jewish Publication Society commentary to Numbers, and his three-volume Anchor Bible commentary to Leviticus.



Another Voice

In the midst of the longest parashah in the Torah, when many of us might be tempted to doze off, come three familiar verses:

May the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord deal kindly and graciously with you.
May the Lord bestow His favour upon you and grant you peace.

These are the words the kohanim (priests) used to bless the people daily. In Israel, kohanim still reenact the Priestly Blessing every day; but in the Diaspora, this reenactment is limited to High Holidays and Festivals (and primarily to Orthodox congregations).

So, why are these verses familiar to many of us? Rabbis and cantors frequently invoke them for b'nai mitzvah, at weddings, and as a closing benediction. It's also customary for parents around the globe to bless their children every Shabbat eve with these same words.