BEMIDBAR/ NUMBERS

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

On Shabbat Hanukkah, we read the passage from the Prophet Zechariah that envisions the future Great Menorah, taking its sacred place in a rebuilt Holy Temple after the Babylonian Captivity. (We read the same Haftarah for Shabbat Behaalotekha.)

Zechariah, in visionary, prophetic style, goes beyond the Torah's description of the original Menorah (literally, a Light-bearer). That Menorah was planned as part of the portable Shrine, the Mishkan, in the Wilderness.

First Zechariah describes the Menorah of the future that he sees: "All of gold, with a bowl on its top, seven lamps, and seven pipes leading to the seven lamps." It sounds like the original bearer of the sacred Light. But then he adds a new detail: "By it are two olive trees, one on the right of the bowl and one on the left." (4: 2-3)

By Rabbi Jeff Sultar & The Shalom Center's Green Menorah Covenant Campaign
(215) 438-2983 Greenmenorah@shalomctr.org

During Hanukkah, we celebrate the use of one day’s worth of oil to meet 8 days’ needs. Hanukkah can be seen, then, as the festival that has the most to teach and inspire us about energy use.

And it couldn’t come at a better time:

• We are living in the beginning stages of a global climate crisis caused by human activity.
• Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Warner are right now putting forth a bill, the “America’s Climate Security Act,” which is the first piece of legislation with the realistic potential to begin addressing the global climate crisis, though it also needs to be strengthened.

When Philadelphia P'nai Or's Shabbat-morning Torah-study group gathered to learn Torah on Shabbat Naso (June 2006), something unexpected happened:

As we studied the teachings in Numbers 6 and in the Haftarah about the consecrated role of Nazirite, we found ourselves addressing what happens when a spiritual teacher turns to sexually abusing students and staff subordinates.

The learning was at two levels – in process and in content.

Process first:

When I lead Torah-study, my usual mode is inter-experiential, in which I "weave" more than I "teach," and wisdom arises from the kahal (grass-roots community) rather than through my imposing my interpretation.

Obviously, this is oceans away from a teacher's literally jumping up and down to drive the kahal "higher," and then using the aura of his "hyper-highness" to – you might say – "jump the bones" of students.

Red Cow, Red Blood, Red Dye:
Staring Death & Life in the Face

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Berman*

The Torah-portion Hukkat (Num. 19 through 21) calls our attention to what looks at first like paradox.

Literally "looks," for the paradoxes appear before the eyes.

First we are told that in order to restore to the community those who have become tamei by contact with death, a red heifer is slaughtered and burned in red fire with red wood and red dye in a great cloud of red smoke for / before the eyes of the priest (Num. 19: 5).

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

From Frozen Korach to Flowering Seed

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow*

Moses. Korach.

Up there: a far-sighted leader -- or is he arrogant, a tyrant? Down here, facing him: an ambitious troublemaking rebel -- or is he a democratic visionary?

These issues arise again and again in our own lives, inside us and around us:

Facing down our own rigidity -- to shake our selves into a messy puddle, or to shape a new, more fluid dancing in the world?

Challenging a father -- to ruin him, or learn to stand alongside, joyful comrades?

Rabbi Michael Graetz

Hukkat
Rabbi Michael Graetz
From Pinah Masortit #135a (vol. 3) MASORTI@JTSA.EDU (Masorti: Torah and News from the Masorti Movement in Israel)
Masorti Movement
Rabbinical Assembly of Israel
4 Rav Ashi Street,

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

PINCHAS AND GOD'S TSHUVAH
In a drusha that I wrote on the story of Pinchas, I discussed an idea that I developed from this parsha that God ended the Divine jealous rage that had brought a plague upon the Israelites when co

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

JEREMIAH 1 - HAFTARAH MATTOT

Words of Yermi-yahu [Jeremiah] son of Chilki-yahu, of the clan of priests in Anathoth in the district of Benjamin, as the Breath of Life spoke through him in the days of Yoshi-yahu [Josiah] so

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

In the regular Jewish Torah reading for this week, we read the story of a Priest who becomes a murderer and calls a murderous God into reflective peacemaking.

In our own gwneration, the passage has been cited as justification for zealous murders -- justification for blood shed today. In response, many peaceniks of today shrug off the story as just another bloody streak in the Biblical fabric.

But I see the story in a different light - one that celebrates turning from zealous murder to self-reflective peace.

In the ancient story, two peoples meet. There is risk in their meeting. Perhaps there is also a possible profit. Perhaps there is even possible delight. But among at least one of the peoples, the leadership is frightened and forbids all contact.

The Broad Who Lived on the Edge in Jericho
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

The Hebrew Scriptures do two things in their storytelling that we conventionally, today, would not think religiously "proper": They often use puns and word-plays to make a deep religious and spiritual point; and they sometimes treat sexuality not with prudish reserve but with relish, again to teach a spiritual point.

The traditional Torah-reading and prophetic portion for this Shabbat (June 8-9) do both.

When Moses sent twelve scouts across the Jordan to tour the land (in Hebrew, "latur"), ten of them came back scared by the “giants,” seemingly impregnable, they found there. From their panic came thirty-eight more years of wandering in the Wilderness (Num. 14).