Rabbi Levin's Blog

  A talking donkey?  OK, we know that there have been great miracles, like the sea splitting and fire enclosed hail raining down over Egypt.  Each miracle had a purpose.  A principle of Torah is that Hashem wants us to live within nature and follow the laws of nature.  Miracles happen when necessary, to show that the laws of nature are in Hashem’s hands and can be changed at will, or for a specific purpose, but why the talking donkey?   You may know the story that we read in this week’s Parsha, Balak, of the anti-Semitic prophet Bilaam who was on his way to curse the Jews as they were about to enter the land of Israel.  His donkey sees an angel with a drawn sword standing in the way and turns away from the main road in fear.  Bilaam did not see the angel, and he hit his donkey.  The angel came again on a narrow pathway and the donkey, squeezing by to pass the angel, scraped Bilaam’s leg against a wall.  Bilaam hit the donkey again.  The angel came a third time to a place that the donke

  One would expect a priest to be aloof, especially a High Priest.  We are talking about the Jewish High Priest, who spends almost all his time in the Temple (or the Sanctuary in the desert), a spiritual person whose entire life is devoted to holiness.  Perhaps we might think that he spent his days with other, like minded holy men, as the stereotype goes.  Yet we find that the first High Priest, Aaron, was not aloof at all.  When the Torah describes Aaron’s death in the Parsha we read this week, it states   (Bamidbar 20:29) :    The whole congregation saw that Aaron had expired, and the entire house of Israel wept for Aaron for thirty days.  Rashi comments:    the entire house of Israel: [both] the men and the women, for Aaron had pursued peace; he promoted love between disputing parties and between man and wife.   Every person in the nation was familiar with Aaron.    Aaron did not remain purely in the rarified atmosphere of the Mishkan, tending to the sacrifices and answering the lof

True leadership!  It is rare, and when we see it we marvel.  Moshe (Moses) was the consummate leader, and in the story of the rebellion of Korach that we read this week, we see how great a leader he was.  It is almost unbelievable how Moshe behaved toward two of the leaders of the rebellion that Korach instigated in the desert.  I assume you are familiar with the story.  Korach questioned Moshe’s leadership, claiming he was doing things on his own accord and not by command of Hashem.  Korach wanted to be the High Priest, and unified a  large group of leaders to join his rebellion.  Two of the instigators of the rebellion were Datan and Aviram, brothers who jumped on the bandwagon and used the opportunity to once again fight against Moshe.  I say once again, because Datan and Aviram had fought against Moshe since he was a young man.  According to our tradition, they were the ones who turned Moshe in to Pharaoh when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Jew to death.  It wa

It was a disaster the first time, so just go ahead and do it again!  One of the strangest stories in our history is the second set of spies that were sent into Israel, this time by Yehoshua (Joshua).  We all know about the first set of 12 spies that Moshe sent.  The Jewish people were in the desert preparing to capture and inherit the land of Israel, and they made a request of Moshe: "Let us send men ahead of us so that they will search out the land for us and bring us back word by which route we shall go up, and to which cities we shall come (Devarim 1:22) ."  Moshe agreed, and sent leaders of each tribe to go and scout the land.  On the long awaited day, the spies came back and gave their report to the people:  The land is good, but the people are strong and the cities are fortified. Forget it, we can’t succeed.  The people ignored all the miracles Hashem had performed for them, lost their faith and cried all night. Therefore, Hashem decreed that the people would spend 40 y