Naso

Number 7:1-41

Back to the penalty box with me – I’ve been bad again, so the next few posts will be summaries. This was my bat mitzvah portion, so one would think I would have had something brilliant to say about it, but evidently we dealt with the fourth aliyah, which had all sorts of wonderful things in it, like the priestly blessing, the nazirite vow, etc.

The fifth aliyah, on the other hand, is about the consecration of the Tabernacle after its completion and includes, in mind-numbing and repetitive detail, a list of the tribal leaders and their offerings, at least through the fifth day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Toldot (Gen. 28:5-9)

Mahalat is the daughter of Ishmael whom Esau marries in an attempt to please his parents Isaac and Rebekah after the whole blessing fracas and the flight of Jacob. This "dvar torah" was actually written in 2007 when my congregation was studying the seventh aliyah. MAHALAT Pulling me by the hand, his smile confident and pleading at once – Esau brought me to his parents as a peace offering. Wounded and bewildered by Jacob’s betrayal he came to my father Ishmael, refuge of his family’s pain – my father – also the first-born, passed over by his father and his father’s God. Night after night I heard them thrashing it out by the fire – the anger, the hurt – my father’s assurance, “The pain will lessen, though the scars will never fade.” Esau looking up, our eyes meeting as I peer out at him from my mother’s tent – is his smile at a pretty girl the beginning of healing? No – he saw a bargaining counter – a channel back to his parents’ good graces. His thoughts ran thus: I marr
Read more

Tol'dot

Gen. 26:30-27:27 REBECCA: Foolish old man! Thank God he has a healthy appetite for game, even in his old age. He provided me with the perfect opportunity to prevent the disaster that would come if he allowed his doting love for Esau to blind him to reality. I had the idea of substituting Jacob for his brother when it first became obvious that Isaac could not tell one son from the other in the dim light inside the tent, but the problem had always been how to make the switch. Now Isaac himself had solved it for me. Please don’t think that I don’t love my older son, but he is a simple, uncomplicated man who acts on a whim, definitely not suited for the responsibilities that should by custom fall upon him as the eldest. Jacob, on the other hand, takes after me and my brother Laban. Even his hesitation came more from his fear of being caught than from any scruples about what I was asking of him. He feared appearing as a trickster to his father, not being one. On my side of the family, we a
Read more

Va-yishlach

Gen. 34:1-35:12 Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and was buried under the oak below Bethel; so it was named Allon-bacuth. - Gen. 35:8 I have lived a long life and seen three generations of my young mistress’ family grow to adulthood, but never have I been so grieved and ashamed as I have been by the actions of her grandsons Simeon and Levi. And the howls of despair and grief that come from the women’s tent as my youngest lady, Dinah, bewails her lost husband, are enough to break this old heart in two. The young fools! If she had been taken unwillingly, at least their sister would have been an honored wife, mistress of a household – and what is left for her now? But young men do not think of these things when their blood is up and their honor is wounded. How I remember my first nursling, young Rebecca, running breathlessly home, her eyes alight with excitement and the bracelets that Abraham’s manservant had given her jangling about her wrists. Her brother Laban was no prize, but what i
Read more