Category: Tanakh (Hebrew Bible)

Ki Teitzei: Something to Notice

“It’s very clear our love is here to stay.
Not for a year, but ever and a day.
The radio and the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies and in time may go.
But, oh my dear, our love is here to stay.
Together were going a long, long way.
In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar may tumble, they’re only made of clay.
But our love is here to stay.”
— Ira Gershwin, “Love is Here to Stay”
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Re’eh: A Path to Follow

This portion uses the phrase elohim acheirim asher lo-y’datem: “other gods” (Alter, Fox, JPS translations) or “gods of others” (Stone) “which/that you did not know” (Alter/Stone), “whom you have not known” (Fox) or “whom you have not experienced” (JPS). (See below for citations*.)
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Re’eh: Language and Translation

“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced [asher lo-y’datem].”
—Devarim/Deuteronomy 11:26-28 (trans. from JPS/Plaut

Throughout Devarim/Deuteronomy, Moses has reminded the people, in essence, “you were there”: You saw. You heard. You covenanted. Etc. This portion introduces an additional idea: You “knew/experienced/[yod-dalet-shem]” God.
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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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Chukat: Great Source(s)

Miriam’s death (verse 20:1) is juxtaposed with another water crisis:

The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron. The people quarrelled with Moses, saying, “If only we had perished when our brothers perished at the instance of YHVH!…” (Numbers/Bamidbar 20:2-3)

This juxtaposition is one of the sources for the concept of “Miriam’s Well,” a movable source of water that followed the Israelites due to Miriam’s merit. (The cloud of glory, accompanying the Ark, was in Aaron’s merit; the manna, in Moses’ [Talmud tractate Ta’anit 9a].) For more on Miriam’s Well — including 15 traditional sources and one modern study — see entry #496 in Tree of Souls by Howard Schwartz (Oxford University Press, 2004).
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Korach: Something to Notice

…the ground that was under them split apart, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households and every human being that was Korah’s, and all the possessions. And they went down, they and all that was theirs, alive to Sheol, and the earth covered over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.
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“Thus they pass, the Psalms”

Yehuda Amichai’s poem, “One I Wrote Now and in Other Days: Thus Glory Passes, Thus Pass the Psalms,” includes — not surprisingly — much language that comes directly from or alludes to the Psalms. For the stanza which begins “Thus glory passes. Thus they pass, the psalms,” the following references might be helpful. (See Temple Micah’s webpage for Hebrew and English text citations and more information.)

Ashrei ha-ish — happy is the man — Psalm 1:1
[only such reference, I think: other references I found are to a happy “adam,” rather than an “ish“]
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(Re)counting: Amichai’s Perfect Rest

Temple Micah’s Hebrew Poetry group (aka Amichai Study group) is currently reading “Once I wrote Now and in Other Days: Thus Glory Passes, Thus Pass the Psalms” from the book Open Closed Open. (Visit Temple Micah’s webpage for links to the text, the group and more.) This past Shabbat, we read the stanza beginning “I want to live till even the words in my mouth are nothing but vowels and consonants…” (#7 in the English; #8 in the Hebrew), and I found the connections to Psalm 19 striking.
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Naso: A Path to Follow

This portion closes (Bamidbar/Numbers 7:89) with a note about God speaking to Moses from between the Cherubim on the cover of the Ark.

There are cherubim set up to block the entrance to Eden at Breishit/Genesis 3:24. We first learn of the cherubim on the Ark cover in the Exodus chapter 25. The Ark and its cover are mentioned again in First Kings (cf chapter 6), 1 Chronicles 13, 2 Chronicles (cf. chapter 5) and in Psalms 80:2.
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