Ta Shma

Parashat Shelach ends by introducing the laws of tzitzit, the ritual fringes worn each day by observant Jews. Parashat Korach begins with the story of Korach and his followers, a group of rebels who insist that the entire people are holy and that Moses and Aaron have thus wrongly exalted themselves above everyone else. Is there a meaningful link between these two adjacent passages? Taken together, the mitzvah of tzitzit and the story of Korach offer us powerful insights into the heart of Jewish theology and spirituality.

There is something profoundly tragic about the book of Numbers: a people liberated from slavery, protected by a faithful God, and promised a good life in a land flowing with milk and honey, simply cannot overcome its fears, its lack of faith, and its inability to trust. Yet according to the Torah, God's love and faithfulness do not readily accept defeat. Despite everything, Numbers urges, God's hopes and promises will yet be fulfilled.

From the story of Eldad and Meidad in this week's parashah, and its rabbinic commentaries, we learn a tremendous amount about leadership, humility, and the crucial relationship between them. Here, there are four leaders, all of whom care far more deeply about the goal of serving God than they do about the seductions of power, glory, or ego-affirmation. Moses, Joshua, Eldad and Meidad all internalize the simple but profound turth: It's not about you.

The threefold priestly blessing (birkat kohanim) is among the best-known and most deeply treasured passages in the Torah. A close look at the blessings, and at the ways they have been understood, yields crucial insight into the role of the priests in Judaism-and just as importantly, into the nature of blessing in Jewish theology.

The opening of the book of Numbers does not exactly make for scintillating reading. God commands Moses to take a census of adult males, which Moses proceeds to do. Why the seemingly plodding procession through tribe after tribe after tribe? A variety of Jewish interpreters suggest that though Numbers 1 may seem boring at first glance, it actually conveys one of the core truths of Jewish theology and ethics: Individuals matter.

In Egypt, the Torah suggests, the Israelites were so abused and exploited under Pharaoh's brutal reign that they were reduced to beasts of burden. In freeing the slaves, God removed the yoke that had so oppressed them, enabling them to stand tall again for the first time in centuries. Subtly the Torah indicates that to serve God and to stand upright are not mutually contradictory. On the contrary, one cannot really serve God without a robust sense of one's own dignity. True divine service depends on those who serve standing tall.

Judaism dreams of a world in which human dignity is real and the presence of God is manifest. Yet the world we live in falls excruciatingly short of that dream. To take Torah seriously, on the one hand, and to live with our eyes and hearts open, on the other, can be a harrowing project. And yet that is precisely what mature spirituality demands of us. Herein lies our challenge: How to hold onto the dream, how to nourish it and live by its lights, without losing all hope, without concluding that the way the world is, is the way it will always be. Judaism's boldest response to that challenge is, in a word, Shabbat.

The Torah insistently connects the festival of Sukkot with the obligation to rejoice (once in this week's parashah), and later Jewish tradition calls Sukkot z'man simchateinu, the time of our joy. Why is Sukkot of all holidays singled out as the time of happiness and delight? Understanding the joy associated with Sukkot helps us gain crucial insight into the nature and dynamics of God's covenant with the Jewish people.

No words in the Torah are better known than "love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18), and no words are generally seen as more significant. And yet for all its manifest centrality in Jewish spirituality and ethics, the precise meaning of the verse is actually quite elusive. What does it mean to "love" your neighbor? Does the Torah command our emotions as well as our actions? Given emotions can't be controlled, can they even be commanded at all? Rav Shai argues that they can.

Ask a Jew about the meaning of Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), and you are likely to hear that it is a day of repentance and forgiveness, a day when sins between us and God are atoned for. But it is not that simple: some interpreters suggest that we have to repent for what we have done to others before we can come before God at all. We cannot sidestep the people we have hurt on our path to God; on the contrary, God insistently directs us towards those very people.