Parasha: Bamidbar

These Things Happened as Examples

Tags:  examples, harvest, provision, remember, revelation

The book of Numbers opens with the words, "The LORD spoke to Moses bamidbar (in the wilderness) ..." The word bamidbar (במדבר) means "in the wilderness." The Hebrew name of the book is Bamidbar. "In the wilderness" is a good description of the stories in the book of Numbers because this fourth book of the Torah records events that occurred over the thirty-nine years of the wilderness wanderings. Wilderness is...
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Parasha: Bechukotai, Behar

Study to Learn; Learn to Do

If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out ... (Leviticus 26:3) The Torah portion of Bechukotai begins by saying, "If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out ... " (Leviticus 26:3). Isn't that a bit redundant? What is the difference between (1) walking in the statutes, (2) keeping the commandments and (3) carrying them...
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Parasha: Emor

God's Day Planner

Tags:  appointed times, atonement, booths, calendar, commemorate, eschatology, moon, Passover, Pentecost, sabbath, shadows, Sukkot, Trumpets

Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, "The LORD's appointed times which you shall proclaim as holy convocations—My appointed times are these." (Leviticus 23:2) In Leviticus 23, God gives a calendar to His people. This biblical calendar is different from the one to which we are accustomed. The biblical calendar is lunar: It is based on the phases of the moon. The waxing and waning of the...
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Parasha: Acharei Mot, Kedoshim

What 'Holiness' looks like

One of the laws of holiness states, "You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another" (Leviticus 19:11). Have you ever been ripped off by a religious person? It's not surprising when we are cheated by people of the world. But it is disconcerting when a professing Christian or an observant Jew deceives or financially abuses us. We expect more from the religious person than a secular...
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Parasha: Metzorah, Tazria

Baptisma

Tags:  baptism, covenant, death, immersion, infants, mikvah, presence of God, purification, repentance, resurrection, ritual, sprinkling

He shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water and be clean. (Leviticus 14:9) Before a cleansed leper could return to a state of levitical purity, he needed to go through a ritual immersion in water. The Hebrew word for a gathering of water suitable for ritual immersion is mikvah (מקוה). Immersion into a mikvah is a standard ritual for most purification ceremonies in the Torah, not...
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Parasha: Shemini

Straining Gnats and Swallowing Camels

Tags:  dietary laws, eating, kosher, tithe, weightier commandments

Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these, among those which chew the cud, or among those which divide the hoof: the camel, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you. (Leviticus 11:4) Though the Master kept the biblical dietary laws, He seems to have avoided the type of minutia arguments that so typically divide people and communities. In Orthodox Judaism today,...
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