California's high-speed rail project was always a loser. People already have so many affordable ways to get from San Francisco to L.A. and vice versa. The "bullet" train was never going to reach the advertised speeds, and was going to cross the most sparsely populated part of the state, for much more than the cost, per passenger, of an airplane ticket. So when Gov. Gavin Newsom canceled the project upon taking office in 2019, it was a rare moment of sanity.
But then Trump did the unthinkable: he demanded that federal taxpayers be given back some of the billions of dollars they had spent on the boondoggle. After all, in the world of real estate development, if you cancel a contract to build something, you don't get to keep the money.
Now Biden is giving California nearly $1 billion back -- even though the state is flush with cash, including over $75 billion in budget surplus funds and nearly $30 billion in "COVID relief" from the federal government. The high-speed rail, even with that money, is no longer going to connect major cities, but rural communities.
Yet another reason Californians, and Americans, should miss Donald Trump.
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
