Masei
Numbers · 9 articles
Parashat Masei - Seventh Aliyah
The book of Numbers closes with the daughters of Zelophehad: this time they are not the speakers but the subject. The heads of the Manasseh families fear the transfer of the inheritance, and Moses answers in the name of Adonai. A quiet ending to an entire book, on how to combine personal desire with public value.
Parashat Masei - Sixth Aliyah
Six cities of refuge, three across the Jordan and three in Canaan, and alongside them all the laws of the murderer, intentional and unintentional. On the distinction between error and malice, and a warning that spilled blood defiles the land and demands repair.
Parashat Masei - Fifth Aliyah
Amid the laws of division and inheritance, the Torah turns to speak of one special tribe: Levi. Forty-eight cities with their open lands, an entire tribe without land of its own, so that all the land may be illuminated with holiness.
Parashat Masei - Fourth Aliyah
A list of names of the tribal representatives who will apportion the land, headed by Elazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun. Behind the dry lines hides one of the founding moments: the division of the land is not a transaction, but a mission entrusted to precise emissaries.
Parashat Masei - Third Aliyah
Israel stands at the threshold of the land, and a double command arrives: to dispossess the inhabitants and destroy the idolatry, and then to divide the land by lot according to precise borders. On a conquest that is not only external, and a precise place for every tribe.
Parashat Masei - Second Aliyah
This aliyah reads like a travel log: station after station, no stories and no miracles. And precisely in this emptiness hides a deep echo, that the Torah takes care to write even the places that left no impression.
Parashat Masei - First Aliyah
Parashat Masei opens with a long list of stations, a travel journal written at the word of Adonai. Rashi brings Rabbi Tanchuma's parable of a king who counts out every journey for his son, revealing that the dry list is a story of an embrace.
Parashat Masei - Insights and Questions
Parashat Masei opens with a long list of the stations of the children of Israel in the wilderness. Behind many of the stations stand events of fear, miracle, falling, thirst, faith and repair. The journey that never ends: one can leave Egypt in a single moment, but taking Egypt out of the soul is a long process.
Why does the Torah detail the names of the five daughters of Tzelofchad - does each name reveal another side of spiritual courage?
The five daughters of Tzelofchad are not an anonymous group. A homiletical reading of the names Machlah, No'ah, Choglah, Milkah, and Tirtzah reveals five faces of spiritual courage: pain, movement, leaping, self-respect, and refined will.
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