Category: Judaism

Devarim: A Path to Follow

These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel, on the other side of the Jordan, concerning the Wilderness, concerning Arabah, opposite the Sea of Reeds, between Paran and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Di’zihab; eleven days from Horeb, by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.
— Devarim/Deuteronomy 1:1-2 (Stone translation)

“These are the words” launches Moses’ long rebuke of the people. The first verse, according to commentaries beginning with the Third Century Sifrei Devarim, uses place names as code for sins:
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Devarim: Something to Notice

“How [‘eikhah] can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden and the bickering!” — Devarim/Deuteronomy 1:12 (JPS translation)

Alter notes the unusual use of “the elongated form ‘eikhah, which often marks the beginning of laments” — instead of the simpler ‘eikh here. Plaut (The Torah: A Modern Commentary) lists two prophecies, in addition to this verse, begin with this elongated form: Continue reading Devarim: Something to Notice

Masei: Great Source

So the Prophet remains in the wilderness, buries his own generation, and trains up a new one. Year after year passes, and he never grows weary of repeating to this growing generation the laws of righteousness that must guide its life in the land of its future; never tires of recalling the glorious past in which these laws were fashioned. The past and the future are the Prophet’s whole life, each completing the other. In the present he sees nothing but a wilderness, a life far removed from his ideal; and therefore he looks before and after. He lives in the future world of his vision and seeks strength in the past out of which that vision-world is quarried.
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Lodging: Graveyard and Desert

One of the very few endnotes to Open Closed Open, the English translation of Yehuda Amichai’s Patuach Sagur Patuach, is provided for “My Parents’ Lodging Place.” It reads

[Moses] Ibn Ezra (c. 1055-1135): one of the leading poets of the Golden Age of Hebrew Poetry in Spain. The phrase “lodging place” in Ibn Ezra’s poem “My Thoughts Awoke Me” alludes to Jeremiah’s yearned-for refuge, a “lodging place in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 9:2)** — p.177 Open Closed Open (citation)

**For more on verse numbering, see below.
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Matot: Something to Notice

Eleazar the priest said to the troops who had taken part in the fighting, “This is the ritual law that YHVH has enjoined upon Moses: Gold and silver, copper, iron, tin and lead — any article that can withstand fire — these you shall pass through fire and they shall be pure, except that they must be purified with water of lustration [mei niddah]; and anything that cannot withstand fire you must pass through water. Continue reading Matot: Something to Notice

Pinchas: A Path to Follow

Our masters taught: The man gathering was Zelophehad. Thus is is said, “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks of wood upon the Sabbath day….and they stoned him with stones, and he died” (Num. 15:32 and 15:36); while elsewhere the daughters of Zelophehad said, “Our father died in the wilderness” (Num. 27:3). Just as in this instance Zelophehad is meant, so, too, Zelophehad [is meant] earlier. Such was R. Akiva’s opinion. But R. Judah ben Betera said to him, “Akiva, in either case you will have to justify yourself: if you are right, then you have revealed the identify of a man whom the Torah shielded; and if you are wrong, you are casting stigma upon a righteous man.” Continue reading Pinchas: A Path to Follow