Mechon Hadar Online Learning

Parashat Naso is thematically structured in the form of two “exterior” chapters and two “interior” chapters.  A careful study of this design can provide insight into the larger significance of “מחנה ישראל - the Camp of Israel.”

While I love learning Torah, I have a very poor memory for it.  More often than not, when I re-encounter a piece of Torah that I have surely learned before, it’s as if it’s for the first time.  Given on the one hand, my love for Torah and a genuine desire to learn Talmud and Midrash, Hasidut and Musar, and on the other, the inevitability that I will forget all of this Torah I learn, I find myself wondering on this Shavuot, what is the point?  What is the point of staying up late all night long learning Torah that I know at worst by next year’s time I will have already forgotten and, at best, will just become a shady shift-shaping memory of something I once learned?  Often I have the experience of feeling the shadows of Torah I once learned shimmering on the peripheries of my brain, so close and so far, unable to be recalled into concrete existence.

The five books of the Torah—like the 54 parshiyyot—are by tradition each named after their first significant word or phrase.  In the case of the fourth book, the name is taken from half of a semikhut (construct) phrase: “בְּמִדְבַּר סִינַי - in the Sinai Desert” (bemidbar Sinai).  The custom has developed to use just the first of the two words: bemidbar, meaning just: “in the Desert.”  That leaves us with a particularly evocative title, one that casts us out into a vast unknown, and vaguely suggests impending danger.

I am blessed to have three kids, aged 9, 6, and 2—this means a lot of first days of daycare and school.  These first days are always exciting for us and for them.  We know that they will make new friends, have new experiences, grow and learn in unimaginable ways.  Yet they are also days filled with trepidation; they set off for new and unknown experiences for which we can’t accompany them.  On each of these days, we tuck a family photo in their backpack in a safe place.  With this gesture, we are trying to say:  “Take this with you.  We will be with you whenever you need us.  We hope that that photo can be a source of love and strength and comfort throughout the day.”According to the Zohar, the rainbow from the story of the Flood tried to look after Moshe in the same manner that we try to look after our children.

One of Rashi’s comments in this week’s parashah highlights the rabbinic tradition of interpreting a feature of Hebrew script known as “אותיות חסירות ויתרות” (otiot haseirot v’yeteirot), “missing and extra letters.”  The Hebrew alphabet has no vowel letters, and in most Hebrew writing, the vowel notations (nekudot) are not included; we know how to pronounce words based on context and tradition.  But certain vowels are sometimes “carried” by a silent letter, either a vav (ו) or a yod (י).  In writing words with those vowels, common practice dictates whether they are written with the silent letter or not.  When the writing deviates from common practice, we get the phenomenon of “missing and extra letters,” known in Latin as “defective” and “plene scriptum.”  For our Rabbis, who presumed every letter in sacred scripture to have been carefully and intentionally selected, an extra or a missing letter was understood to be an encoded message, waiting to be deciphered.

When my dad died in my early 20s, I remember being wowed by the ways in which grief came in waves.  One minute, I was crying and couldn’t imagine ever moving through my sadness and several hours later, I was surprised to find myself laughing—actually able to laugh—within the first days of my dad’s death.  With confidence, I realized, this was the way it was going to be.  Each time that I cried and each time that I laughed, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.  The grief and the joy—they would keep coming in turns, like waves rolling in and out in their own time.

One of the hallmark Rabbinic interpretive techniques is the identification of parallel wording in two different sections of the Torah. In legal interpretation, this is the foundation for the second of R. Yishmael’s “13 principles by which the Torah is interpreted”: the gezeirah shavah, or “the rule of equivalence.” This principle, first quoted in the name of Hillel the Elder, posits that if the same word or phrase appears in two distinct legal cases in the Torah, that is an indication that we can apply the parameters of one law to the other. The original and paradigmatic form of the gezeirah shavah was one in which the word in question appears only twice in the entire Torah.  When there is only one other location that a linking word takes us to, then the inference from one context to the other becomes especially strong.

I am lucky to live a life with no food sensitivities.  I can eat what I want and I’m happy to be an “easy guest,” quick to assure hosts that I have no special food needs.  However, several years ago, in an attempt to identify the cause of my migraines, I found myself a person suddenly with many food sensitivities I was told to avoid.  I went from being a person who could eat everything to a person who approached each meal with anxiety, wondering what food I would find to fill myself up. I was no longer the easygoing guest able to eat whatever was served to me.  Rather, in people’s homes, at conferences, in restaurants, if I was going to eat, I needed to advocate for myself.  I needed to speak up and ask for what I needed.  I found this experience very challenging: I felt uncomfortable identifying my list of food sensitivities; I felt awkward being on the receiving end of special accommodations.  “I would make do,” I thought, “I would manage.”  What happened to being the “easy guest” I pride myself on being? 

Every year, by good calendrical fortune, we read in Parashat Emor the commandment of Sefirat ha-Omer, the “Counting of the Omer,” during the period in which we actually count the Omer.  This moment of sync between reading and ritual presents us with an opportunity to recognize our contemporary practice as continuous from the words of the Torah.  Yet when we begin to read through those words, we quickly see that our counting ritual today looks very different from the original mitzvah.  

I have always found it difficult to find an observance of Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzma’ut that feels meaningful and authentic as a Jew living in the Diaspora.  In Israel, the observance of these holidays is effortless and all-encompassing: you simply have to be present and you are in it, flowing from the intensity of Yom HaZikaron to the joy of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut.  It’s the music on the radio, it’s the tzfirah (siren) in the streets that brings everything to a halt in a moment of silence, it’s the communal get-togethers on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut.  In America, I feel far from all of these observances.  In my home, on these days, we tune into Israeli radio, we stop for the tzfirah, we try to make that tricky transition from grief to joy as Israel moves from a spirit of mourning to celebration.  But, I am distant.  Short of a couple of pieces of liturgy on Yom HaZikaron and hallel and a special Haftarah for Yom Ha’Atzma’ut, there is little to mark these days outside of Israel.  If I’m honest, my observance of these days

The style and content of Parashat Kedoshim remind us immediately of an earlier reading: Parashat Mishpatim—back in the Book of Exodus, just after the revelation.  Both parashiyyot are composed almost entirely of dense legal code: one law after another, for chapter after chapter.  And both open with a framing statement naming a value category that characterizes the laws that follow.With this structural similarity, the Torah places the two primary values named by the two codes—justice and holiness—into dialogue with one another.  We see this in our parashah, whose initial focus is on holiness, but very quickly veers into justice.  But the reverse process we can already see in Parashat Mishpatim, which begins with principles of justice, but eventually turns to holiness, with language that will anticipate Parashat Kedoshim.

For many of us, the past six months have been an education in powerlessness.  From where I sit in America, I felt powerless hearing about the brutality and depravity of October 7.  I felt powerless sitting comfortably in my home while day after day people were held hostage in underground darkness, uncared for and unseen.  I felt powerless as the death toll of Palestinians civilians rose and Gaza’s population fell into immense suffering.  I could do my one minute a day to call my representatives to demand an immediate release of those held hostage.  I could check in with friends and family in Israel with messages of love.  I could donate to organizations getting aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.  But, at the end of the day, what power do I have to stop a war, free the hostages, and end the suffering of so many people?  I feel powerless.

With the mishkan operational and the priesthood now in place, Parashat Aharei Mot begins with a description of the service that will be the pinnacle of that system: the Yom Kippur Avodah.

We Jews, who have been perennial outcasts, ought to read the Torah’s account of the leper with particular care.“Leper,” we should note from the outset, is not really an accurate rendering of the Hebrew, מצורע (metzora).  The biblical affliction of tza’arat is clearly different from what we today call “leprosy,” most obviously so because it can only be fully cured by spiritual means.  Yet the King James translation is helpful in its way, not only because it reminds us of similar symptoms, but also because it gives us a familiar historical point of comparison.Toward the end of last week’s parashah, Tazria, the Torah begins to catalog all manner of skin afflictions and finally comes upon tzara’at—what we’ll call leprosy for the time being.  Then, in Parashat Metzora, we move to the process for curing the leper.  

Ever wondered why we have to drink four cups of wine at our Seders? This class explores the history and the symbolism of this idea and how it transforms from something more functional to the framing around the entirety of Seder night. Fittingly, there are at least four different ways to think about these cups! Recorded on 4/10/24. Source sheet: https://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/Tabick4Cups2024.pdf

From the very beginning, the Torah imbues certain numbers with great significance.  The first chapter of Genesis carefully divides Creation into seven days.  Seven then becomes the most significant number in nearly all Jewish time rituals—not just Shabbat, but Pesah, Shavuot, Sukkot, as well as the seventh month, the seventh year, the seven cycles of seven years—all of which are then imprinted with the themes of that first seven: creation, rest, and rejuvenation.An awareness of the Torah’s “numbers of distinction” and their significance can help us decode  the complex structure of the birth ritual that opens Parashat Tazria, and the mysterious set of numbers it contains:

There's a catchy song that tells us what we're supposed to do during the Seder and when (Kaddeish Urhatz). But when you dig a little deeper, the song is a little simplistic for the actual Seder structure. How can the giant Maggid section be covered by a single word? And why is Hallel actually split into two? Rav Elie discusses the overall structure of the Seder. Recorded in March 2022 and available as part of a video series on the Haggadah (https://hadar.org/torah-tefillah/resources/seder-really-so-ordered) and our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4xWZqaeIg).

Throughout our history, one of the central institutions of a Jewish community has been the mikveh.  Immersion in this ritual bath was required in Temple times in order to purify oneself after coming into contact with various types of tumah (ritual impurity).  Since then, the practical need for a mikveh has been relegated primarily to the laws of sex and conversion.  Yet the mikveh has taken on a greater significance in Jewish life than its specific halakhic applications would suggest.

In this panel discussion given at the February Learning Seminar 2024, Hadar’s rashei yeshiva, R. Ethan Tucker and R. Aviva Richman, reflect on their approach to Jewish law and how our quest for God can be lived through the details of our halakhic lives.

For the most part, Parashat Tzav repeats much of what we learned last week in Parashat Vayikra.  Again, the Torah details the choreography of the sacrificial system—only this time from the perspective of the priest.  All of the offerings from last week show up again.  But there is at least one thing that is unique to Tzav: a shalshelet.