This week is the Sabbath known as "Shabbat Shuva," the Sabbath of Return (NOT "shiva," which means "mourning" ). It is a special day between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
The portion, one of the last of the Torah, deals with Moses's final valediction to the Children of Israel. He lays out the moral choice between good and evil, and -- this is crucial -- he tells them that they will fail, and they will be punished.
This is, at first, confusing: why set people up to fail? But Moses is doing the opposite: he is setting them up to succeed by telling them that even though they will stumble, they should not give up, because they will win eventually.
When you listen to recovering addicts describe their story, most of them admit that they have failed -- "fallen off the wagon" -- at least once or twice. It is important to see that as part of the recovery, rather than the end of recovery.
The point is not to excuse lapses, but to place them in an appropriate context -- one in which the overall trajectory is positive, and in which mistakes become less frequent and less damaging. The key is commitment over the long term.
Success requires courage, above all. As Moses says, repeating an earlier blessing he gave to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous!" (Deut. 31:6). And sometimes emotional courage is just as tough as any physical courage you can muster.
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
