The annual Torah cycle reading for this week is parsha “Beha’alotecha,” (Numbers 8:1-12:16), and it is a true potpourri of events and issues, “from menorah to metzorah.”

Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa fellowship begins with the Erev Shabbat reading:

As has been so often the case, but ESPECIALLY now, events in the world again set the stage for the midrash this week.

Have you ever noticed that there is a difference in the words used in rendering “do not covet…” your neighbors’ wife, house, and so on between the two repetitions of the “Ten Commandments?” The words used for ‘covet,” or “lust for,” are different (the Hebrew root is ;chamad’the first time, but ‘avah‘ in Deuteronomy 5:21.) And THAT word is used for those who died b’midbar – in the wilderness – as a result of their lusting for ‘meat.’

The connection, as Mark lays out, may well be that so many today are literally “lusting for death.” And it is a ‘temptation’ that YHVH has given us all the information we need to avoid, along with a means to escape.

The combined two-part reading and Sabbath midrash: