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It all starts in the Book of Numbers, Bamidbar (Numbers 19:2), with the words: “This is the statute of the Torah that the Lord commanded, saying: Speak to the children of Israel, a...
It's not just about the big stories, but the tiny details, the way things are phrased. The Bamidbar Rabbah (Numbers Rabbah), a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbe...
The Book of Ecclesiastes puts it perfectly: “All this I attempted with wisdom; I said: I will become wise, but it is distant from me” (Ecclesiastes 7:23). This feeling, this yearni...
And what do these four seemingly disparate things have in common? They're all described as chukim – decrees or statutes – things we do simply because God commanded them, even if th...
Like good people suffer, and… well, you know the rest. That feeling isn't new. It’s a feeling that echoes through the ages, a question that’s been wrestled with in our texts for mi...
It’s a question that echoes through the story of Moses and the waters of Mei Meriva – the waters of dispute. "These are the waters of dispute, where the children of Israel quarrele...
This week, we're diving into a fascinating passage from Bamidbar Rabbah 19 that touches on exactly that feeling, exploring a moment of high diplomacy – or rather, a diplomatic bric...
to a fascinating exploration of just that, drawing from the ancient wisdom of Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers. Our starting point is the ...
The Book of Numbers, in the Torah, gives us a powerful story, one unpacked beautifully in Bamidbar Rabbah, a classical midrashic collection (a midrash is an interpretive work drawi...
