Episode 5 – Matot-Masei: A Foot in Each World and the Point of No Return |
This week, we reflect on the double portion Matot-Masei, and the ending of the Book of Numbers. From censuses to conquests, we explore the challenge of closing one chapter while standing on the edge of the next. What does it mean to count—as an individual, and as part of a people? What happens when ancient texts challenge modern moral frameworks? And how do we live in the tension between exile and promise? |
We explore:
• Why the Jewish lunar-solar calendar sometimes gives us double parshiot and how time in Torah reflects cycles and spirals, not just linear progress.
• The laws of vows and the power of speech: is it a uniquely human trait and how does speech shape the world?
• The war against Midian: how do we read difficult passages of divine-commanded violence through a modern ethical lens?
• Moshe’s heartbreak: leading to the threshold, having to separate from his in-laws, and does he end up buried in the land or at least with his people?
• The tribes of Reuven and Gad asking to settle east of the Jordan with their flocks and children or rather their children and flocks?
• The bridging role of Menashe and Joseph holding ground in both the Promised Land and the diaspora.
• The journeys of Masei - anxiety of being halfway and how does the math work out?
| Parshat Matot-Masei 5785
Torah: Numbers 30:2–36:13 | Haftarah: Jeremiah 2:4–28, 3:4 |
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