This week's portion continues the description of the service in the Tabernacle. It goes on to describe the cloud that covered the Tabernacle, and how it signaled to the Israelites whether to stay in one particular place or to pack up and travel.
Moses begs his father-in-law to stay, and to join them en route to the Promised Land, but he leaves and returns to his own home. The people cry out for meat, and God sends them an excess of it, such that they regret ever having asked.
At the end, there is a famous episode in which Miriam is punished with the skin affliction called tzara'at -- often mistranslated as "leprosy" -- for gossiping about Moses's wife. She meant no harm, but it is dangerous to speak about others.
What stands out for me in this portion is the question of coming and going -- when to stay, when to go; when to join a group or a conversation, and when to leave it. Moses would later be barred from the Promised Land; perhaps his father-in-law's strength in resisting an invitation to join the Israelites on their journey will give Moses strength, later on, to absorb the pain of not being able to join the Israelites as they cross the Jordan River and complete their journey.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
