Two Faces of Midian: Justice, Covenant, and the People We Label “Enemy”
This week’s parashah is a double portion, Matot–Masei. My focus today is on a story from the first of these, Parashat Matot, which opens with one of the most […]
Counting Courage: A D’var Torah on Parashat Pinhas
I have been reading Parashat Pinhas on Shabbat in the Synagogue almost every year since 1982. After so many cycles through the parasha, it feels only right to pause […]
How Big Was Israel in the Wilderness? Four Ways to Read the Numbers in Numbers
Modern readers often do a double take when they encounter the censuses in the book of Numbers. In Numbers 1 and Numbers 26, the text records around 600,000 males […]
The Torah’s Silent Years: What Happened Between Parah Adumah and Mei Merivah?
After Parashat Chukat’s opening laws of the red heifer, the Torah suddenly jumps. We move from the second year in the wilderness to the first month of the fortieth […]
Holy Chutzpah: When Moses Pushes Back
Moses in Numbers 14 doesn’t just beg; he practices what we might call holy chutzpah—a bold, risky way of speaking to God that almost looks like forcing God’s hand […]
Opening the Door, Guarding the Core: Non‑Jews at the Seder
On Pesach night, we sit at a table without a Temple, without a lamb on the fire, but with a Haggadah in our hands and an open door in […]
Birkat Kohanim: The Bridge to Holiness
Parashat Nasso is famously long and, at first glance, a little disjointed. We move from the census of the Levites, to laws of interpersonal wrongs and restitution, to the […]
Out of Sync, Still Together: Why Israel and the Diaspora Read Different Parashot
Every Shabbat, communities around the world read a fixed section of the Torah, the parashat ha‑shavua. Over the course of the year, that cycle lets us “walk” through the […]
Why Do We Eat Dairy Foods on Shavuot?
The custom to eat dairy on Shavuot is widely observed, but it is rooted in serious halakhic and symbolic ideas, not just in our love of cheesecake. The classic halakhic […]
Bamidbar: Turning Numbers into a Nation
The English name of the fourth book of the Torah, “Numbers,” suggests a dry accounting project: lists, totals, statistics. In Hebrew, though, the book is called Bamidbar—“In the Wilderness”—a […]