“What’s God?”—and Other Questions Kids Ask
Aug 2, 2024 By Chaim Galfand | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
This week’s double Torah reading specifies 42 locations where the Israelites camped between leaving Egypt and entering Canaan. While the list could be seen as pro forma, a beloved teacher of mine—Dr. Eliezer Slomovic—always insisted that God is not a blabbermouth; everything in Torah is imbued with meaning, even a list of 42 place names. Toward the end of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer famously reveals the Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything to be the number 42. The numerical parallel to the 42 Israelite encampments provides a serendipitous opening to consider how the seemingly mundane might be the gateway to a wider awareness of something greater than ourselves.
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Upgrading the Torah—and the World
Jul 14, 2023 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
Is God’s law perfect? Most of us would assume that anything created by an omniscient and omnipotent being must have no flaws. But a story in today’s parashah suggests otherwise—in a manner that shows a surprising similarity to a key concept of Jewish mysticism.
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Do Women’s Vows Count?: A 21st Century Problem
Jul 29, 2022 By Stephanie Ruskay | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
In Parashat Mattot Chapter 30, we learn that if a woman makes a vow, her father or husband can invalidate it on the day on which he hears about it. If he does not invalidate it that day, he is culpable if she breaks it. The only women who can make their own vows and not have them invalidated by a man are divorcées and widows. At other moments in my life, I would have glossed over this section, determined to focus on something more inspiring, and less offensive. Now, I am leaning into it.
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Who Gets the Last Word?
Jul 9, 2021 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
Mattot and Masei, the last two portions of the book of Numbers (30:2–36:18), are usually read one after the other on the same Sabbath. Are these portions linked by something other than the quirks of the Jewish calendar?
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Restorative Justice from Numbers to Now
Jul 17, 2020 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
What does restorative justice look like? The Torah pauses Israel’s journey toward the Land to consider this complex question. Forty years of desert wandering have come to their end, and only the thin ribbon of the River Jordan divides the Israelites from their promised land. As the distance remaining falls to footsteps, urgency mounts to establish values and norms for sovereignty and justice.
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Boundaries on the Move
Aug 2, 2019 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
Every week, we read a parashah from the Torah during our Shabbat morning service, and then the beginning of the next parashah during our Shabbat afternoon service. The result of reading from two parashiyot on a single day can be surprising. This week, as we read first from Masei, the last parashah of Numbers, and then from Devarim, the first from Deuteronomy, we can hear an ancient debate about an issue that remains deeply contested: where to draw the line.
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First and second haftarot of rebuke
Jul 6, 2018 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Masei | Mattot | Pinehas | Tishah Be'av
Chapters 1 and 2 of Jeremiah constitute the first two haftarot of “calamity” or rebuke. In them, the prophet anticipates disorienting but necessary societal upheaval; he is called “to uproot and pull down, destroy and overthrow,” and also “to build and to plant.”
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Always Attaining Spiritual Maturity
Jul 13, 2018 By Joel Alter | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
The US Constitution provides that one must be 35, 30, or 25 years old to be president, senator, or representative, respectively, and the 26th Amendment provides that a US citizen gains the right to vote at 18. In the United States, the right to drink alcohol is established at age 21. One must stay in school and cannot give consent for sexual activity until age 16–18. For a driver’s license, one must generally be 16. So I grimace when we proudly proclaim 12-year-old girls and 13-year-old boys “Jewish adults.”
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