This week's portion continues Moses's valediction to the Israelites. He promises them that God will reward them if they obey His commandments, and reminds them of how good He was to them during years of want and desert wandering.
Crucially, Moses reminds the people not to believe that when they become wealthy, and when they defeat their enemies, that they have done so because of their own efforts alone. He tells them God is the determinant of success.
In doing so, he reminds them of how God had mercy on them after the sin of the Golden Calf; had He not been merciful, they would have been destroyed.
He also tells them that the Land of Israel is a land watered by rain -- not by the Nile, as Egypt was. The implication is that Israel requires faith, and frugality, and careful planning -- while Egypt could be lazy and still see its fields watered.
The prosperity of Israel would depend on the people's faith and their morality.
This is the seed of the idea, embraced by the Founders of the American Republic, that morality was the foundation of any successful nation -- that the best constitution would be undone by a lack of personal and civic virtue.
The additional reading, from Isaiah (49:14 - 51:3), is the second of the portions of comfort that are read between the end of Tisha B'av and the launch of the Jewish New Year. It promises that God will not long forsake His people.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
