I was discussing the tragedy of the killing of 3 Israeli hostages today with a friend when I suddenly remembered the story of Jephthah, or Yiftach, in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament.
Yiftach is an outcast until the leader of the Jewish people ask him to help them defend themselves against invading enemies. He agrees, but also makes a fateful vow: to sacrifice the first creature that greets him on his return.
He is victorious, and when he returns home, to his shock and dismay his daughter races out of his home to greet him, rather than a farm animal, as he had expected. It is a tragic end to a heroic adventure.
The message of the story is unclear. Obviously one should not make careless vows, but Yiftach could not imagine that a human being would come out from his home, or farm, before an animal did.
The parallel to our present situation is that none of the soldiers in Gaza when the hostages were killed -- not even their commander -- understood that it was possible hostages would emerge in the open.
We are sometimes undone by our own expectations, by the way we choose to interpret reality. We need to be open to other possibilities and perspectives. If we are not, we may end up destroying ourselves.
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
