From the Pages of the OU Press

Parshat Naso, the largest single parsha in the Torah, is also one of the most fragmented.

Central to the parsha is a section consisting of disparate legal themes, including:

1. The temporary exile of individuals afflicted with specific forms of tuma from various sections of the camp

2. Laws concerning theft and false denial of financial obligation

3. The regulations governing a Sota, a married woman suspected of adultery

4. The laws of a Nazir, an individual who vows to undertake more rigorous religious observance

5. The rules of Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing

Two seemingly disparate phenomena, one technical and one philosophical, converge as we open the book of Bamidbar. Considered together, they provide powerful insight into the significance of this book of the Torah.

First, as a result of an apparent calendar coincidence, the reading of the book of Bamidbar begins each year in the synagogue on the Sabbaths directly before the festival of Shavuot.

Second, the book of Bamidbar is unique among the five books of the Torah as it is almost entirely limited to the description of the historical events and temporal commandments that mark the Israelites’ sojourn in the wilderness. Very few lasting mitzvot are recorded in this volume.

The Book of Ruth read on Shavuot is a beautiful and inspiring story, instructive to us in many ways. The story itself is fairly simple, and most of us are, or should be, well acquainted with it. The cast of characters is well-known: Boaz, Ruth and Naomi as the major characters, and Orpah, Elimelekh, Mahlon and Kilyon as the minor characters.

As Parshat Bechukotai and the book of Vayikra draw to a close, God delivers a stinging rebuke and warning to the Israelites. Known as the Tochacha Haketana, the small rebuke (in contrast to a second, larger rebuke found in the book of Devarim), this section contains a series of frighteningly prophetic descriptions of the tragedies that will befall the nation should they fail to follow God’s ways.

At the core of this tochacha, a word is found that, in this conjugation, appears nowhere else in the Torah text. Here, however, this term, keri, is repeated no less than seven times within the span of twenty sentences. According to most authorities (see below), this term apparently connotes “casualness” or “happenstance” and is derived from the root kara, to happen.

The passages of the Tochacha within which the term keri appears are:

1. “And if you will walk with me keri…”

2. “And if in spite of these things you will not be chastised towards me, and you will walk with me keri…”

3. “And then I [God], too, will walk with you with keri…”

4. “And if with all this you will not hearken unto Me, and you will walk with Me with keri…”

5. “And I will walk with you with a fury of keri…”

6. “And they will confess their sin and the sin of their fathers, for the treachery with which they have betrayed Me, and also for having walked with Me with keri.”

7. “And I, too, shall walk with them with keri…”

In the midst of the Torah’s discussion concerning the festival cycle, immediately after the commandment concerning the Omer offering (a barley offering in the Temple which marks the beginning of the harvest and allows the use of that season’s grain), the following mandate is found:

And you shall count for yourselves – from the day after the Sabbath, from the day you bring the waved offering of the Omer – seven weeks; complete shall they be. Until the day after the seventh Sabbath, shall you count fifty days; and you will offer a new meal offering to the Lord.

This commandment is reiterated in the book of Devarim: “Seven weeks shall you count for yourselves; from the time the sickle is first put to the standing crop, you shall begin to count seven weeks.”

As codified by the rabbis, this mitzva, known as the mitzva of Sfirat Ha’omer, the Counting of the Omer, obligates each Jew to verbally count the days and weeks from the second day of the holiday of Pesach until the first day of the holiday of Shavuot.

As indicated in the previous study, the communal vidui, confession, recited by the Kohen Gadol over the se’ir hamishtaleiach is a central feature of this Yom Kippur Temple ritual:

And Aharon shall place his two hands upon the living he-goat and he shall confess upon it all of the iniquities of the children of Israel and all of their rebellious sins in all of their sins, and he shall place them upon the head of the he-goat and he shall send it at the hand of a designated man to the wilderness.

The bulk of the parshiot of Tazria and Metzora deal with a description of the dramatic effects of tzara’at, often defined (for want of a better term) as biblical leprosy.

The Torah delineates in fine detail the specifics of this mysterious affliction – which affects individuals, clothes and dwellings – and the steps to be taken under the guidance of the Kohanim towards its diagnosis and treatment.

On June 27, 2008, the telephone rang in my home in Tel Aviv. Naftali Menashe, news editor of one of the Israeli radio stations, was on the line. He asked whether the name Feodor meant anything to me, and, if so, who Feodor was, and what I remembered about him. Surprised by the call, I replied that Feodor was a Russian taken captive by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, in the same Block 8 where I was held toward the end of World War II. I did not know his last name, only that he came from the town of Rostov in Russia. “Why are you asking me about him?” I asked Mr. Menashe. He told me that the radio station had not received information from the Associated Press news agency about a Professor Kenneth Waltzer of Michigan State University in the United States. After having recently studied Gestapo documents at the Bad Arolsen archives in Germany, Professor Waltzer discovered that the Gestapo had kept records of the Russian prisoner who had protected a Jewish child in the block, a boy named Lulek from Poland. Waltzer also found that Feodor’s last name was Mikhailichenko, and that the boy was Israel Meir Lau, who eventually became chief rabbi of Israel.

As Parshat Shmini draws to a close, the Torah abruptly turns its at¬tention to a set of laws that fall into the halachic category popularly known as kashrut.

The text delineates, among other laws, the categories of animals, fish and fowl that are halachically permitted or prohibited for consumption.

To be considered kosher, an animal must possess split hooves and chew its cud, while a fish must possess both fins and scales. Prohibited birds are listed individually in the text without the delineation of defining characteristics.

After outlining a series of additional regulations, Parshat Shmini ends with the following broad exhortation:

For I am the Lord your God, and you shall sanctify yourselves and you shall be holy, for I am holy.… For I am the Lord your God Who raises you from the land of Egypt in order to be for you a God; and you shall be holy for I am holy. This is the law of the animal and the bird and all living creature that swarms in the water and for every creature that teems on the ground. To distinguish between the impure and pure and between the creature that may be eaten and the creature that may not be eaten.

סדר הקערה The Talmud (Pesachim 114b) discusses the requirement to place shenei tavshilin, two cooked items, on the Seder plate, commemorating the korban Pesach and the chagigah offering that were eaten when sacrifices were brought in the Temple. Rav Huna says that this requirement may be fulfilled by using beets and rice. According to Rav Yosef, one must use two different types of meat. Rambam (Hilkhot Chametz u-Matzah 8:1) follows the opinion of Rav Yosef, while the popular custom is to place one item of meat and an egg on the Seder plate (see Kesef Mishneh, loc cit.).

The presence of the egg at the Seder also has another source. The first day of Passover always occurs on the same day of the week as Tishah be-Av, the day that marks the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews (Orach Chayyim 428:3). Accordingly, the custom is to eat an egg, a symbol of mourning, on the first night of Pesach (see Rama, Orach Chayyim 476:2). The egg, therefore, symbolizes both joy, the chagigah, and mourning, Tish’ah be-Av.