Rabbi Levin's Blog

“Zion shall be redeemed through justice and her penitent through Tzedakah (translated as  righteousness or charity).” (Isaiah 1:27.)  These are the closing words of the Haftorah that we read this week, on “Shabbat Chazon.”  This is the name given to the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the day of the destruction of both Holy Temples.  It is named Shabbat Chazon  referring to the first word of the Haftorah, “Chazon Yeshayahu,” Isaiah’s prophetic vision of the destruction of the Holy Temple.   The verse can be translated on a basic level.  The prophet is saying that after the destruction and the terrible tragedy and suffering of the exile, eventually (v. 24, 26) “I will avenge Myself of My foes... And I will restore your judges as at first and your counselors as in the beginning; afterwards you shall be called City of Righteousness, Faithful City.”  Then Isaiah adds that Zion, referring to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and its penitents (or another t...

The Jewish people traveled through the desert from Egypt to Israel over a period of 40 years.  They stopped in 42 places, and the Torah enumerates them in the second of this week’s double Parsha, Masei.  The reading of that section is basically a long list of names.  They journeyed from this place and camped in that place.  And they journeyed from that place and camped in another place.  Since it is customary not to make a break in the reading in the model of the list, the same words, Vayisu (and they journeyed) and Vayachanu (and they camped) are repeated again and again many times in one Parsha.  Many readers have a tendency to speed up for this section, because of fears of monotony. Someone wrote to me that she has a hard time just reading names and more names and finding meaning in it.  I reminded her that every word of the Torah has deep mystical meanings, and that every word is the wisdom of Hashem.  With that attitude the reading takes on a...

  Is it good to be a zealot?  From a superficial reading of the story of Pinchas it would seem so.  Let’s recap the story that we read at the end of the Parsha last week.  Many of the Jewish men had succumbed to Bilaam’s vicious and disgusting plot.  “Their G-d hates promiscuity,” Bilaam told Balak.  So, he said, have your women seduce them, and that will bring them the destruction that I could not accomplish by cursing them. The plot succeeded, and many Jewish men, primarily from the tribe of Shimon, went with the Moabite and Midianite women, leading them also to worship the Baal.  A plague started and many died. When the prince of the tribe of Shimon, Zimri, brazenly and publicly brought a Midianite woman to his tent, Pinchas went after them with a spear and killed them both.  What was Hashem’s reaction?  “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Pinchas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the kohen has turned My anger away from the children of Isr...

What was Bilaam thinking?  It’s kind of mind boggling to think that Bilaam thought that he would be able to curse the Jews.  Let’s briefly recap the story.  Balak, king of Moav, sees the Jews camped near his border.  Even though Hashem had clearly warned them not to capture the Moabite lands, Balak hated them and claimed that the Jews were about to commit genocide.  That was his excuse to commit genocide on the Jews. So he sends messengers to the biggest anti-Semite of all, the prophet Bilaam, whose main claim to fame is that he is an extremely successful curser.  Balak knew this because Bilaam had actually cursed Moav before and they had lost a war with the Amorites.  This is a job that Bilaam relishes - to curse his enemies, the Jews.  What exactly had the Jews done to him?  It doesn’t matter, he was protesting their existence.  And he had the power to do something about it, or so he thought. So he asks Hashem in a dream to let him cur...

  (Dedicated to the memory of Rachel bat Yosef Shmuel. Beloved wife, mother, grandmother, teacher and friend. She passed away on Erev Shabbat and was laid to rest surrounded by her family and many, many friends in the Holy Land.) Chukat, the Parsha we read and study this week, talks a lot about death. Miriam and Aharon, two of the three greatest siblings of our people, pass away. And Moshe is informed that he will not live to take the Jewish People into Israel.  The Parsha begins with the laws of the “Red Heifer.” This was the cow that was slaughtered and then burned, and its ashes mixed with “living” spring water. The mixture was sprinkled on a person who had come in contact with a corpse, twice over a period of seven days, and he or she would then immerse in a Mikvah and thus be purified from the Tumah (ritual “impurity”) that came from contact with the corpse.  There is a fascinating Midrash that recounts a discussion between Hashem and Moshe. Hashem taught Moshe t...