TORAH SPARKS

 

Parashat Nasso (Outside Israel) | Beha alotcha (Israel)

June 3, 2023 | 10 Sivan 5783

Torah (Outside Israel): Numbers 4:21-7:89
Triennial: Numbers 4:21-5:10 Haftorah: Judges 13:2-25
Torah (Israel): Numbers 8:1-12:16 Haftorah: Zechariah 2:14-4:7

What s Mine is Yours

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah

For a people wandering through the wilderness, we have quite the assortment of stuff. There are a lot of us and each of us has brought along all sorts of goodies. Much as the Book of Numbers began with an attempt to organize us, to count and sort the people, our parashah ends with an attempt to catalog and redistribute the luggage we have been dragging with us.

 

As we ve already heard, the Levites are responsible for carrying the Tabernacle and the objects within it. But it isn t until the end of our parashah that they are given the means to do this. Each of the twelve tribes gathers up its goodies and brings them as an offering before God, placing them in front of the Tabernacle. But before we hear of what the goodies brought were, we hear of how they were brought. The tribes used wagons and oxen to transport their goods. Immediately, God has Moses take these means of transport and give them to the Levites, according to the Levites’ need to carry the Tabernacle.

 

A wagon is such a big investment that these wagons will be repurposed in order to carry the Tabernacle. These wagons have likely come all the way from Egypt. After all, the only place we have seen wagons before in the Torah is when Pharaoh has Joseph send wagons to fetch his father, Jacob, and bring him down into Egypt. It is the sight of these wagons that will revive the spirit of Jacob, finally convincing him that Joseph is alive and well. In a beautiful reversal, just as wagons once carried the twelve sons of Israel down into Egypt, now the twelve tribes of Israel donate their wagons to carry God out of Egypt.

 

The Levites need a total of six wagons in order to fulfill their role as carriers of the Tabernacle. Accordingly, when the twelve tribes come to donate their goods, only six wagons are used. This means that the tribes shared wagons, that there was one wagon for every two tribes. This ability to share is remarkable. There is no report of squabbling over ownership of wagons or disagreement over which tribe is contributing what. In fact, even though we are told that two tribes shared each wagon, we are not told about the groupings. We do not know what tribes went together. Moreover, the entire event (likely) took twelve days with a different tribe presenting each subsequent day. It is nice to imagine that the tribes who shared wagons were present, celebrating their fellow tribe on the day of their presentation. As commentator Sforno notes, there is something brotherly here. There is an exceptional ability to trust, an ability to share resources and believe in the fundamental goodness of the other party. We ve come a long way from the pettiness of Joseph s brothers, conspiring to kill him over a pretty coat. It is appropriate that, on the occasion of the dedication of the altar, we are united, finally acting as family.

 

 

 

 

 

Tailoring a Message

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah

Even among the many miraculous births in the Bible, the birth of Samson stands out. Not only was he born to a mother who could not give birth, his birth was preceded by a clear message by an angel. There is no mistaking the wonder of his birth.

Samson stands out among the leaders in the book of Judges as the only one that we meet even before conception. His barren mother receives a visit from an angel with a message:

Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Now, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, and not to eat anything impure. For you shall conceive and bear a son. And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. (Judges 13:3-5)

The (nameless) woman told her husband Manoach all about it. Almost. The biblical narrator could limit the retelling to a brief she told him all that transpired . However, the author of Judges shares her retelling, an indication to the reader to find the differences. A careful review of her account highlights that she omits three things and adds one: She does not mention the opening statement you are barren , nor the prohibition to cut the child s hair, and she does not share the purpose of all this: he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

The omissions are undoubtedly intentional. The deletion of any mention of her barrenness could be understandable. Who likes to discuss what truly hurts? The promise she received that it will be fixed has not happened yet. The discussion of the child s haircuts seems trivial before the child has even been conceived, it could wait until later. The difficult one to explain is her withholding from her husband the role this child will play in the nation s history.

The wife of Manoach (as she is known) adjusts the message to her husband s ability and willingness to comprehend. He cannot fathom that an angel would speak to his wife, so she transforms the angel to a man of God when talking to Manoach. If we have any doubts about her own comprehension, the angel confirms her solid grip on the situation when he returns again at Manoach s request to tell them what to do: Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful. (v.13). Accepting that his child would carry a national role could be beyond what Manoach is able to internalize. His wife trims the message to a content that Manoach could cope with.

There is one addition that Manoach s wife adds: the child will be a nazirite to the day of his death (v.7). It seems to merely put a logical terminating point to his involuntary nazirite vow, but even the wise wife of Manoach does not understand all that she says. Her words become a foreshadowing of events to come (in Judges 16.)

 

 

 

Herod and Hands: Hiding and Revealing God’s Glory
Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the Parashah

The Temple in Jerusalem, at least as it was built by Herod in the first century C.E., was a spectacular site; today even its ruins are a feast for the eyes. Hazal say (Bava Batra 4a): One who has not seen Herod s building has never seen a beautiful building in his life. With what did he build it? Rabbah said: With stones of white and green marble. There are those who say that he built it with stones of blue, white, and green marble. He considered covering it with gold, but the Rabbis said to him: Leave it, and do not cover it, since it is more beautiful this way, as it looks like the waves of the sea.

 

Today, on Shabbat and hagim, I daven in the gym of a local school. I might say, one who has never seen this local gym, has never seen a shabby gym in his life. But maybe, in some way, this shabby gym is a more Jewish space than Herod s Temple. Maybe.

 

Our parashah contains one of the most famous liturgies in all of Judaism, the priestly blessing. Originally, this blessing was a Temple ritual, and is alluded to in Leviticus 9:22, Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he stepped down after offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of well-being. But with the destruction of the Temple, this blessing was brought out of the Temple and became part of the daily Amidah (see Mishnah Sotah 7:7). In Israel, this blessing is recited by kohanim every day of the year, but outside of Israel, in Ashkenazi custom, the blessing is recited only during Musaf of the festivals (see the words of the Rema in Shulkhan Arukh, YD, 128:44).

 

The birkat kohanim can be a spectacle. Imagine thousands of priests gathering together, lifting their hands over their heads and blessing the people of Israel. If you google priestly blessing at kotel you will see impressive looking videos and pictures of this event. But, at least during tefillot themselves, this is not what is supposed to occur. Shulkah Arukh 128:23, warns both the kohanim and the other Jews being blessed that this is not what birkat kohanim is about. R. Yosef Karo writes: The congregation should be attentive to the blessing, and their faces should face the kohanim, but they should not stare at them. The people should not look at the kohanim while the blessing is being recited. To this, R. Moshe Isserles (the Rema) adds, And the Kohanim should also not stare at their own hands; therefore, it is customary for them to wrap their tallis on their faces and keep their hands outside the tallis. And there are some places where they have the custom that their hands are kept within the tallis, so that the congregation does not stare at them. As an additional precaution, today some members of the congregation cover their heads with a tallis as well, all to protect them from seeing the hands of the kohanim, which cannot be seen anyways because they too are already covered with a tallis.

 

In Hebrew, we might ask about all this, ? Why do we go to such extraordinary lengths to avoid seeing the hands of the kohanim? This is explained in Yerushalmi Megillah 4:8. R. Yose, in response to a mishnah which prohibits kohanim with either deformed or painted hands from offering the blessing, states that it is prohibited to look at the hands of the kohanim while they are blessing. R. Hagay responds that this is due to the distraction, but he has enough self-control to avoid distraction, so he can look. The rest of us, who are not so good at avoiding distractions, are not allowed to look. As the Rema explains, the custom of putting the tallit over the face or hands is to avoid seeing the hands, which can be distracting. In the end, the tallit itself can still be a distraction, and thus the custom for the congregation to look down during this blessing. But what are we worried about becoming distracted from?

 

Contemplating this question can offer us two clues towards understanding Jewish prayer. The first is that prayer is an introspective activity, one that occurs mostly in what ancient people would say is the heart and we would say is the mind. During the regular hours of the day, we might, and indeed we should, admire the magnificence of God s creation, but during prayer, we turn inwards. We do not look outward, we examine our inner selves. The gym in which I daven is not a beautiful cathedral, but God can be found in the gym of a school just as easily, and perhaps more authentically, then in the grandest of cathedrals.

 

And the second point flows from this God s blessing pours out from the hands of the kohanim, but the kohanim are merely a vessel and should not be confused with the source of the blessing. Indeed, the tosafist Rabbenu Yitzchak does not understand why a non-kohen cannot offer the blessing (see Tosafot Shabbat 118b). The blessing is also recited by Jews on other occasions, and not just by kohanim. The rabbis inherited a world in which the Temple was central, and with it the kohanim. But that is not the world we inhabit. The priestly blessing is a vestige of this world, but ultimately we are to understand that blessing comes from God, not from other human beings.

 

Herod s building was indeed beautiful and remains impressive to this day, even in its destruction. But this can all be a distraction, and so when the kohanim offer their blessings, we hear and listen with intent, but we do not look.