The Pshat Heard 'Round the World

This week's parashah is about, pardon the expression, the anti-Moshe. Korach and his gang of fellow travelers and sycophants is set against Moshe as embodying precisely the opposite qualities as those which made Moshe fit for leadership. Both were wise, strong and wealthy, we are told, but while Moshe was the humblest of all men, Korach was full of himself. But before we jump to a satisfying dismissal of Korach, let's first allow him to speak and examine his claims – perhaps we'll be able to understand more deeply whence his self-immolating, doomed-from-the-start uprising. "All the assembly, all of them, are holy, and the Eternal is in their midst!", Korach intones. Truer words were never spoken. After all, didn't Hashem say, "They shall make Me a sanctuary that I might dwell amongst them " (Shemot 25:8)? And didn't Hashem exclaim, "You shall be holy, for holy am I, Hashem, Who sanctifies you"? So what was so wrong wi...

בס"ד So the people are on the brink of absolute despair. After having fallen prey to the trust-dissolving fear sown in their hearts by the spies and their evil reports of a land which devours its inhabitants, after hearing the unimaginably crushing words of Hashem’s measure for measure punishment of wandering and death for forty years, “A year for a day, a year for a day”, after seeking to regain Hashem’s favor by impulsively initiating a sortie to conquer the land, despite Moshe’s warning – “Hashem is not in your midst” and being summarily routed . . . what could possibly comfort and console them? What could possibly motivate them to pack up camp, hit the trail, and resume a journey to a promised land never to be seen, entry having deferred for a whole generation. I know! Bread and wine, that always does the trick! What? Are you crazy? A whole people is in existential crisis of the most profound and threatening nature, and you’re talking food ? But that...

Where does one start? This week’s parashah, Beha’alotecha, is packed with more narrative episodes demanding our careful attention than any parashah since perhaps way back deep in Bereshit. Independent stories, each, or at least seemingly, at first blush. It opens with yet another account of the lighting of the menorah, and continues with the dedication and investiture of the Levites, the event occasioning the law of Pesach Sheni, the description of the CPS (Cloud Positioning System) of guidance through the desert, the commandment to craft two silver trumpets to disperse the encampment or assemble the people (see last years pshat on the inner meaning of the trumpets), an account of first setting forth from Mt. Sinai as the people stretched out into marching order, the appeal to Chovav (Moshe’s father-in-law? Brother-in-law? Dispute between Ibn Ezra and Ramban) to guide them through the desert (what, divine clouds aren’t good enough?) …. STOP! All of a sudden, the storie...

Parashat Naso is the longest parashah of the Torah – 176 pesukim - curiously, the same number of verses as in the longest of the mizmorei tehillim – Psalm 119. AND the same as the number of pages in the longest masechet of the Gemara – Bava Batra. Usually Naso is read after Shavuot, and it's always either immediately before or after the chag . Thus the length has been explained as connected to the freshness of Matan Torah – we just can't get enough of that sweet stuff! But a look at the content of Naso, especially the latter portion, might call that into question. It's true, technically, that Naso is the longest, but it achieves its length by an apparently unnecessary repetition of the details of the sacrifices brought the the Nesi'im – the princes of each tribe. Twelve times we read exactly the same details – "His sacrifice: one silver bowl, one hundred and twenty [shekel] its weight…" etc., etc. While there are other passages which f...