Pinchas

Oh, DOODY! I did not manage to post an entry on Pinchas. I did read Pinchas, and I did make some notes on it, but I was a little slower than usual last week because of a bizarre out-of-nowhere debilitating episode of depression.

Anyway, Pinchas is really not that interesting. God gives Pinchas some kind of special covenant for having killed that guy having sex with that Midianite or Moabite woman (not clear which). There’s a census plus some lottery for distributing land (maybe I recall wrongly though, there seems to be a census and land lottery every other freaking parsha ). The only interesting bit about that is that someone’s daughters show up and complain to Moses that they shouldn’t be permanently disinherited because their dead father left no sons. Moses asks God about that, and God agrees, so the inheritance laws set down in the Torah actually count daughters as inheritors, although only if all the sons are dead. Ladies, get ready for fratricide! Or something. Sorry, I’m a bit weird today, having some funky-ass responses to some meds.

The rest of Pinchas is verse after boring verse about appropriate offerings to be made to God in the form of sheeps, goats, bulls, grain, oil, aromatic spices, and whatever else people have on hand that is precious and can be burnt. Not quite as dull as the endless descriptions of how to build the tabernacle that we got back in Exodus (er, I think) but still. If I’d managed to write an actual d’var last week it would have been something about sacrifice, and the temple, and how Orthodox prayer books still include page after page of descriptions about what sacrifices we ought to be making at particular prayer services which we replace instead with prayer since we don’t have the temple anymore, and even non-Orthodox versions of the Amidah usually say something about rebuilding the temple speedily in our day, and really? We’re looking forward to temple sacrifice again? As a good thing?

Balak, Part Two: The Parable in Balaam's Mouth

Poor Balak. He’s just trying to save the land he loves, playing his very last card, hoping for some magic to pull him out of the hot seat. Reality is barreling down on him like a stampede of oxen, as he says. His world is changing, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. Like Treebeard said: “The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.” The Israelites are coming, and God, it appears, is on their side.

Three times he asks Balaam to curse the Israelites; three times Balaam blesses them instead, with the Word that God places in his mouth.

Balak, Part One, the synopsis

Balak is a king, and the people Israel come in a swarm to camp out near his land. He fears the ravening masses. They are wanderers. As far as Balak is concerned, these people are the barbarian hordes, come to topple Rome, come to destroy all he has built up, lay waste to his peoples’ land, his beloved home, the cities and temples of his world. And rape, and slaughter, and pillage, and destroy.

Balak feels helpless to stop it, so he calls on Balaam, a prophet. Balaam is a prophet of the One God, it appears, even though he is not an Israelite. Balak sends some men to convince Balaam to come and curse the Israelites for Balak, so that he can save his people and his land. Balaam says “I can only do what God tells me to do. Let me dream and ask God and give you my answer in the morning.” And God tells Balaam not to go with the men that Balak sent, and so he does not.

Chukkat, part two, the d'var

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai said, of the ritual of the red cow, two different things. To non-Jews, he said it was an exorcism. To Jews, he said “It makes no sense, it has no point, but God commands it, so we do it.” (from Midrash Tanhuma).

I read in my Chumash, also, that King Solomon himself labored to understand this ritual, and could not.

I don’t get that. The Torah is full of bizarre rituals, rituals that seem like magic. At the same time the Torah itself, and the Rabbis who followed, are careful to note that the rituals are NOT magic. Their effectiveness stems from God, not from any other forces called into service by the specific actions. It is commanded by God that this is what you do, and so you must do it exactly as God commands. But the fact that you do it precisely is not what makes it work. You do it precisely only because God commands you to do so. That is why the rituals are not magic. But why should the ritual of the brown cow be more mysterious than the others?

Chukkat, part one, the synopsis

Chukkat, a synopsis: (Numbers 19 - 21)

God tells the priests burn up a red heifer and mix it with water. This potion will purify people made unclean by contact with death. Many paragraphs explaining how to do this. Involves hyssop.

Miriam dies. The people complain to Moses that they’re thirsty. No water in the desert, why’d you bring us here, will this wandering never end. Moses throws himself down on his face. God, could you help? Also, please, please make the whining stop. God says, “ Take your staff, stand at that boulder, speak to the boulder and water will come.” Moses goes to the boulder, says “Look how much God loves you even though you are all ungrateful wretches.” and hits the rock, twice, with his staff. Water springs forth, and everyone drinks it. God says “Moses, I didn’t tell you to hit the rock. Because of this neither you nor Aaron will reach the promised land.” (Moses does not point out to God that this punishment violates the clear meaning of ‘promise’, and what does Aaron have to do with it anyway?)

Korach

It is appropriate that I start with Korach. Last year, when I first began looking for God, I went to synagogue once and had a really lovely experience, and then I went again, and there was Korach.

This parsha reports, in the usual strange and muddled way, on a rebellion led by Korach, a Levite, against Moses and Aaron, during the time the Israelites wandered in the desert after leaving Egypt. Korach says that the entire nation is holy and who are Moses and Aaron to say that some israelites are more holy than others. Some other chieftans, Dathan and Abiram, chime in complaining to Moses for not having come through on his promises to bring them to a land of milk and honey.

What Happens When I Have Insomnia

So my daughter woke us up last night with what was, apparently, a bad acid trip. She screamed about bugs and how they were crawling all over her and we had to get them off her. She's three, so we're pretty sure it was just three-year-old brain farts rather than actual acid trip. (Seemed perfectly fine in the morning. Me, I'm tired! )Anyway, then I was awake, getting ideas. One of my ideas was that I'd like to write a d'var torah each week for a year and post them all on a blog.

I am not a Rabbi. I am a pretty ill-educated Jew. My d'vrei torah are unlikely to be at all illuminating to anyone except me. Also, I start a lot of projects that I don't have the time or inclination to finish. Oh, and I don't read Hebrew. You are better off getting your official Judaism from the wrapping on a box of Streit's Matzo than from me, that's for sure. I am busy and conflicted and I don't even think I've read the whole Torah before. And most of the people in my life are really not interested in religion at all, so it's not like anyone's going to be impressed or supportive of this particular weirdo project of mine.

Still, plenty of people devote a lot of energy to editing Lostpedia entries, and other people to memorizing baseball statistics or studying subway maps from around the world. Some people, and I say this without judgment, make time in their schedules for The Real Housewives of New York City. Reading and writing about the Hebrew bible has been a popular activity for a few thousand years. It may not be the word of god, good moral teaching, good literature; it may not make any sense; it may not be what it sometimes claims to be. But one thing it is: hella popular, historically speaking. So this is my halting attempt to join the conversation, and see what all the talk is about.


Two basic notes to start out with. I don't assume that anyone reading this knows anything about Judaism or has read the Bible in either its Jewish or Christian incarnations. So I'll try to explain myself when I use funny words I probably just learned (sorta) yesterday.

Parsha: Jewish tradition divides the Torah (aka The Pentateuch, aka the Five Books of Moses, aka the first five books listed in any bible, Christian or Hebrew, that you pick up) into different portions for a yearly reading plan. Each portion is called a parsha, which is short for something else I don't remember, look it up if you care. Actually there are 54 of them, because the Jewish calendar is both solar and lunar and super-confusing, so some years there are leap months added in. Or something. But I didn't find that out until I'd already settled on 52 parshas as a blog name. And everyone can figure out that 52 of something is either a card game or something split up weekly.

D'var Torah: A D'var Torah is a teaching about that week's parsha. (D'vrei is the plural). Maybe what I will do will turn out to be something other than D'vrei Torah, or already has some other more appropriate name that I don't know about. Maybe it'll be more like riffing on torah, or fanfic on torah or navel-gazing with torah as an excuse. Maybe lots of Jews will find it completely offensive and ridiculous that I thought for even a second that whatever I'm doing might be d'var torah, and call me horrible names in anonymous comments. I freely admit I'm not qualified to do teachings on anything. More like Learnings. Could devolve into rantings, evolve into poetry, go out with a whimper, end in a self-published book. We'll see...