Truth and Peace

Journeying from mount Hor, the Israelites "spoke against God and Moses," aggravated from lack of water and from eating manna, which they call leḥem hakelokel (despised or rotten bread). In response, the people are set upon with fiery serpents ( neḥashim haseraphim ), "fiery" possibly meaning poisonous or referring to the burning sensation of the bites they sustained. [1] After a multitude die, the people approach Moses and ask for help: וַיָּבֹא הָעָם אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמְרוּ חָטָאנוּ כִּי דִבַּרְנוּ בַי-הוָה וָבָךְ, הִתְפַּלֵּל אֶל יְ-הוָה וְיָסֵר מֵעָלֵינוּ אֶת הַנָּחָשׁ וַיִּתְפַּלֵּל מֹשֶׁה בְּעַד הָעָם And the people came to Moses, and they said: We have sinned when we spoke against YHVH and against you; ' hitpalel ' to YHVH so that he will remove the serpent from upon us; and Moses ' hitpalel-ed ' on behalf of the people. (Num 21:7) The meaning of 'hitpalel' What exactly is lehitpalel ? The usual translation is "pray....

I had the privilege of participating in a "Bibliodrama" this week, led by Yael Unterman . Bibliodrama is an interactive, group role-playing activity involving a Biblical (or other) narrative. Participants take on the perspective of specific people/characters (or even, occasionally, objects) in the text, and in the process they illuminate aspects of the story, and aspects of themselves as projected into the narrative. The result is a sort of improvisational "modern Midrash." The topic of the Bibliodrama this week was Korach and his rebellion against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16-17). One of the questions posed toward the end was whether we resonated more with Moses' perspective or with Korach's perspective. Well, any "good" villain in a story will have motivations to which we can relate. And I do relate to Korach's vision of more of a "democratic" system of governance, as he says to Moses and Aaron regarding their leadership: רַב לָ...

Numbers 11 begins with a brief yet violent episode: וַיְהִי הָעָם כְּמִתְאֹנְנִים רַע בְּאָזְנֵי יְ-הוָה וַיִּשְׁמַע יְ-הוָה וַיִּחַר אַפּוֹ וַתִּבְעַר בָּם אֵשׁ יְ-הוָה וַתֹּאכַל בִּקְצֵה הַמַּחֲנֶה And the people became as evilly self-aggrieved in YHVH's earshot, and YHVH heard and he flared his anger, and a fire of YHVH burned upon them, and it consumed at the edge of the camp. Ravaged by fire, the people cry out to Moses, who entreats YHVH on their behalf and the flames subside. The place is then called Tav'era for the "burning" that took place. The whole incident takes up a mere three verses (Num 11:1-3), and we never hear about the reason the people were upset to begin with. Mit'onenim as "self-aggrieved" What did the people do which caused YHVH's anger to flare? They are described as " mit'onenim ra ." The verb hit'onen (התאנן) occurs one other time in the Bible, in Lamentations 3:39: "Why should a livi...

Ketef Hinnom "Priestly Blessing" amulet, c. 600 BCE In 1979, a pair of silver amulets were found in Ketef Hinom, a series of burial chambers southwest of Jerusalem's Old City. On them is etched, in Paleo-Hebrew script, a version of the Priestly Blessing of Numbers 6:23-27. Putting aside the textual discrepancies between the amulets and the Masoretic Text, these etchings represent the oldest surviving Torah verses ever discovered, dating to roughly 600 BCE, before the Babylonian exile. Which is significant, being that we have hundreds of examples of pre-exilic writing, most of them ostraca (potsherds with ink inscriptions) and none, other than these amulets, contain verses from the Torah. It's also significant that the blessing was used as an amulet, and that it was found in a burial chamber. Biblical scholar Baruch Levine writes about this in his commentary on Numbers: It was a widespread ancient custom to bury valuable or useful possessions with the dead, on ...

The first chapter of Numbers begins with the national census (vv 1-46). The tribe of Levi is noted as not being included in the census (v 47, 49), which allows the Torah a segue into discussing the task of the Levites. They are charged with carrying the Tabernacle, setting it up and taking it down (vv. 50-51), as well as an additional task:   וְהַלְוִיִּם יַחֲנוּ סָבִיב לְמִשְׁכַּן הָעֵדֻת וְלֹא יִהְיֶה קֶצֶף עַל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל And the Levites shall camp around the Tabernacle of the Testimony, so that there will not be frothing-anger at the Children of Israel (Num 1:53, see also v. 50b) Frothing at the Mouth First, a word about the translation "frothing-anger." (If technical linguistic details bore you, feel free to skip to the next section.) As we discussed in an earlier post on Biblical metaphor , the literal meaning of Hebrew words can shed light on their metaphorical connotations. The word qetseph (קצף) generally means "anger" in the meta...

Leviticus 27 discusses votive offerings to the Sanctuary: animals, houses, land, crops, possessions and people - a person could even offer him or herself, that is to say, their market value based on age and gender. The Torah (vv. 3-7) offers the following monetary assessments for persons: Age Male value in shekels Female value in shekels 1 month - 5 years 5 3 5-20 years 20 10 20-60 years 50 30 60+ years 15 10 So for instance, if I make a vow to offer my 9-year-old son, I am pledging 20 shekels to the Sanctuary. If I vow to offer myself, I am pledging 50 shekels. What is the basis for these valuations? Jacob Milgrom ( Anchor Leviticus, Vol. III, pp. 2,370-2) cites the explanation that the amounts reflect the average that various individuals (based on age and gender) would fetch in the slave market. These figures are reflected in Assyria's tax of 50 shekel per Israelite landowner (2 Kings 15:20), and the 20 shekel price for which Joseph is sold (Gen 37:28) (G. J. Wen...

The Torah employs a number of terms meaning "to curse," primary among them: qilel (קלל), arar (אראר), alah (אלה), and naqab/qabab (נקב/קבב). Two of these appear in this week's Torah portion, in a single verse: וַיִּקֹּב בֶּן הָאִשָּׁה הַיִּשְׂרְאֵלִית אֶת הַשֵּׁם וַיְקַלֵּל וַיָּבִיאוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל מֹשֶׁה "And the son of the Israelite woman cursed (or blasphemed, pronounced) the Name, and he cursed, and they brought him to Moses" (Lev 24:11) The context is two men in an altercation, one of whom is said to have an Egyptian father and an Israelite mother (v. 10). In the course of the fight, this individual utters a curse involving "the name" (probably the name YHVH, see Rashi). Did he actually curse God, or did he merely use God's name in a curse? There are in fact strikingly similar Mesopotamian laws against pronouncing a deity's name in a curse against another person, specifically in the context of an altercation (see Milgrom, Anchor ...

This week's Torah portion begins with a description of the Yom Ha-Kipurim service (Lev 16). The goal of this service is two-fold: To cleanse the people of sin. To cleanse the Sanctuary of impurity. What I would like to suggest is that one of the fixtures of the service, the ḥ atat offering, accomplishes both of the above goals simultaneously, by transforming sin into the very cleansing agent used to remove the Sanctuary's impurity. The meaning of Kapara / Kipur To begin with, what do we mean by "cleansing"? The Hebrew word in question is kapara , as in " kipur ," the definition for which ranges from "atonement" and "expiation," to "wiping" and "purgation" (see J. Milgrom, Anchor Leviticus Vol I, pp. 1079-84), to "ransom" (as in the phrase " kofer nafsho ," Ex 30:12). In post-biblical use, " kofer " also connotes the denial of religious tenets. I prefer the approach of the...

Pregnant Phoenician goddess, c. 7th C BCE This week's Torah portion opens with laws concerning childbirth and the ensuing status of impurity ( tum'a ) for the mother. One feature of these rules that begs explanation is why it should be that the duration of the mother's impurity should be twice as long following the birth of a girl (14 days, followed by an additional 66, for a total of 80 days) as for a boy (7 days, followed by 33, for a total of 40 days). Really, there are several questions here: 1. Why should childbirth render the mother impure? 2. Why should the birth of a girl double the duration of impurity? Which is all related to the meta-question: 3. What is the rationale for biblical impurity? If we can answer the third question, perhaps we can understand the logic behind the first two. The causes of biblical impurity In order to explore the rationale, we first need to know the cases. What does the Torah view as imparting tum'a ? Biblical ...