As Isaiah would have it, the haftarah ended with the verse:  

כִּי הֶהָרִים יָמוּשׁוּ, וְהַגְּבָעוֹת תְּמוּטֶינָה–וְחַסְדִּי מֵאִתֵּךְ לֹא-יָמוּשׁ  

Translatedliterally itreads:

The mountains maydepart, the hills may be removed, butMyloving kindness will notdepartfrom you.

As big brother Ira famously translated it: “In time the Rockies may crumble/ Gibraltar may tumble/ they’re only made of clay/ but, our love is here to stay.” 

This may be the best-known line of a haftarah ever: “God’s love is here to stay.” 

What intrigues me is the exact relationship between the haftarah and the Torah reading, which is all too often an opaque pairing.  Famously, Ki Tetzei (Deut. 21:10-25:19) contains more mitzvot than any other Torah portion. Some count as many as 74 commandments (that would be 27 positive and 47 negative). For our Rabbis who chose the haftarah, there could be no greater testament to God’s love than the sheer abundance of commandments. For our sages, each commandment that God gave us and each time we obey that commandment, we add another knot that ties us One to another. The commandments and our observance are the stuff of our covenant with our Creator. 

The many commandments of Ki Tetzei cover a very wide array of headings. There are interpersonal mitzvot such as returning lost items, paying daily workers in a timely fashion, guidelines for divorce (yes, in a bad marriage, divorce is a mitzvah!).  

There are commandments of compassion such as shooing away a mother bird before taking the chicks or prohibiting muzzling an ox while it treads grain. Also, one cannot yoke incompatible animals together (e.g. an ox and a donkey).  We are commanded to assist an overloaded animal that has fallen on the road. This category is called �ٳ���’a��&�Բ�����;����’a����&�Բ�����;�󲹲�⾱�� – we show compassion for the travail of animals. 

There are also commands for honesty in business, such as the prohibition against having false weights and measures. We are required to return lost property. 

And then there are the mitzvot that are military regulations. The Torah commands that a military camp be kept clean and orderly. The Torah portion opens with the ethical commandment that if women are taken captive in war, they be treated with dignity and respect. I suspect that this commandment alone set us apart from all other ancient peoples. 

The Torah portion ends with an odd commandment. We are exhorted to remember, not to forget what the tribe of Amalek did when they attacked us; cutting down the stragglers of our camp during our Exodus from Egypt. We are told to “blot out the memory of Amalek!” This is, of course, a paradox. We must remember them to blot out any memory of them.  

Amalek are the quintessential bad guys of the Torah. To better understand the episode with Amalek, we need to turn back to the Book of Exodus (17:8-16) where we get the initial report of Amalek’s attack. 

Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim…whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. . . Aaron and Hur, one on each side, supported his hands; thus, his hands remained steady until the sun set. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Inscribe this in a document as a reminder and read it aloud to Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven!’ . . . The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages.

When the medieval Bible commentator Rashi notes the paradox in Deuteronomy, that we should remember to forget, he explains that were one to have spoils of war from Amalek, one should not mention that it came from Amalek. Forget to mention them, blot them out. 

I recall as a child going to visit a widowed relative and my mother sternly instructing me: Don’t forget not to mention your late uncle Irv, it might upset your aunt Rosie. So, too, we are commanded, don’t forget not to mention Amalek. 

When we go out to war with our enemies (Ki Tetzei), we are girded with mitzvot that keep us safe. God’s love and covenant surround us. As it were, we fight under God’s aegis. The many, many commandments of this week’s Torah reading, in all their varied categories, separate us from our enemies, from Amalek.  

I think that now, as we read Ki Tetzei, we must meditate upon what differentiates us from them. When we remember Amalek we must ask ourselves, Who is our Amalek? Just who is it that endangers us? Might, God forbid, we be our own Amalek!? Or is it still some unscrupulous outsider who attacks us when we are at our most vulnerable?  We need to remember who they are, and then, who we are. When we remember that, we also will know the most important lesson of this week’s Torah reading: “God’s love is here to stay.”

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

Other distinctive aspects of Deuteronomy’s priests are summarized in 91�첥 rabbinic alumnus Jeffrey Tigay’s superb commentary.[1] Despite the critical issues, the gist of Deut. 18:1-8 is clear: the verses describe what Tigay calls “the endowments of the clergy,” meaning how they are supported considering their lack of entitlement to a landhold.[2]  The details, however, are replete with problems of interpretation.

Verses 6-8 are particularly salient, and may open a window into the behavior of Deuteronomy’s clergy in early Israel:

The beginning of the chapter (18:1) refers to the clergy as הכהנים הלוים, a strange term that first occurs in 17:9 and 18.  A literal translation would be “the priest/Levites,” pointing up the ambiguity of the pairing.  In the historical books Ezra/Nehemiah and Chronicles, the two terms are separated by “and” in most cases, making it clear that “priests and Levites” are two distinct groups.  Might the pairing here suggest that all Levites (“the entire tribe of Levi,” 18:1), irrespective of specific lineage, may potentially serve as priests?[4]  reports the contrary opinion of Yehoshua b. Levi: “In twenty-four places in the Bible the priests are called Levites,” citing Ezekiel 44:5 as proof.[5]  comments that “the Levite” cannot denote an actual Levite because 18:7 says, “he may serve the Name of YHWH his god.”  “The priest is the one who serves, not the Levite,” says Bahya, harmonizing Deuteronomy’s cult functionaries with their Priestly confrères.

A different reading of verse 6, however, suggests that there are Levites who reside in Israelite towns—performing some Levitical functions there—who may wish to participate in the activities of the central cult site.  They are authorized to do so as visitors on a par with their peers who are stationed there.  The rabbis explain the actions here in relation to the 24 (משמרות), which are anachronistic for Deuteronomy.

The 16^th-century kabbalist Isaac Luria establishes a surprising but reasonable connection between “the Levite” sojourner here and the itinerant Levite who serves as a priest for Micah’s private cult in Judges 17-18.  Two textual details facilitate the connection.  First, the use of the singular with the definite article (“the Levite”) prompts traditional interpreters to seek specificity, viz., which Levite?  Second, the language of sojourning (גר) is common to Judg. 17:7 and Deut. 18:6:

The Lurianic tradition, in his collected Liqqutei Torah (also quoted twice in Isaiah Horowitz’s compendious Shenei Luhot Haberit), asserts: “There is here [in Deut. 18:6] a marvelous allusion to an actual Levite, namely the young Levite who was Micah’s priest.”[6]  And then, based on a remarkable comment in , Luria identifies the anonymous Levite in Judges 17 with the named Levite, Jonathan ben Gershom ben Manasseh [sic], who served as priest to the Danites (Judg. 18:30).

The biblical author treats the actions of the Levites in Judges 17-18 as beyond the pale, characteristic of the chaotic time when “there was no king in Israel” (Judg. 18:1, etc.).  I would propose, rather, that while the behavior of these itinerant Levites-for-hire was normal in early Israel, it was condemned and superseded by the rise of centralized monarchic and priestly authority, as exemplified by the phrase, “the place that YHWH designates” in Deut. 18:6.

The case of Jonathan ben Gershom ben Manasseh is extraordinary.  In biblical manuscripts and printed editions, the nun of Manassah is raised and suspended, indicating that מ^נשה was a substitute for משה (Moses).  According to , “for the sake of Moses’ honor the nun was written in order to change the name, and it was suspended in order to indicate that it was not Manasseh, but Moses.”  So the anonymous Levite was none other than Moses’s grandson!  The Gemara explains that he was called “Manasseh” because his actions were like those of the idolatrous Judean king of that name (2 Kings 21).

Now the Lurianic interpretation, following Bava Batra, connects the dots from Judges 17 and 18 back to Deuteronomy 18, offering some consolation to Moses’s compromised lineage: “It is not right to condemn [Jonathan] because he did not intend to commit idolatry.  Rather, he erred in his understanding of the rabbinic saying, ‘one may commit idolatry (עבודה זרה) in order not to be dependent on charity.’”  Although עבודה זרה is the idiomatic term for “idolatry,” in this case it was supposed to be taken literally as “strange work,” meaning work that was alien to him (Bava Batra 110a). 

Jonathan’s misunderstanding led him to become an idolatrous priest. If he were to return to the fold, says Luria, he would be entitled to his share of the priestly portions along with his fellow Levites (Deut. 18:8).  Why did Jonathan go astray? Because of his patrimony (thus interpreting ממכריו על האבות, ibid.), referring to a unique tradition in the that as a condition of his marriage to Zipporah, Moses agreed to raise his first-born Gershom (Jonathan’s father) in his father-in-law Jethro’s idolatrous faith.  “And so the matter comes full circle (מתגלגל),” Luria concludes: “that is how the young Levite came to be an idolator.” 

The sojourning Levites (גר שם) direct our attention to Moses’s son Gershom (גרשם).  (as glossed by Rabbi Steinsaltz) spells out the lesson:

Rabbi Elazar says: A person should always cleave to good people, meaning one should marry a woman from a good family, as this is beneficial for the offspring of that marriage. As in the case of Moses, who married a daughter of Yitro, who was a priest of idolatry, Jonathan, who was also a priest of idolatry, descended from him.

In the somber unfolding of the Talmudic/Lurianic interpretation, the anonymous Levite of Deut. 18:6 is identified with the grandson of Moses—a cautionary figure whose descent into idolatry is the consequence of his father’s intermarriage.  Should he forsake his idolatry, he might yet rejoin his fellow Levites in the service of YHWH.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

[1] The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), pp. 169-172.

[2] See Num. 18:20; Deut. 10:9; Josh. 13:33.

[3] The meaning of the last phrase is uncertain. See Tigay, p. 172.

[4] Thus, e.g., Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885), pp. 124, 146-47.

[5] See also Rashi on Deut. 18:1

[6] Cited from Liqqutei Torah Nevi’im Ketuvim (5733), p. 264; available on (login required).

The Israelites stand at the precipice of entering the land (Deut. 11:29) and face the immense challenge of establishing a stable, thriving society. The dramatic shift from a nomadic society protected by God’s presence and encamped near the Tabernacle, to an expansive polity, posed profound agricultural, social, political, and religious challenges addressed in the parashah.[1]

It is significant that this foundational moment is framed by the notions of choice and decision. Good legislation is a necessary component of a thriving society – one of the primary preoccupations of Deuteronomy. But a legal system that is good – comprised of God’s commandments – is not sufficient. A guiding ethos must undergird the choice to do what is right and good. Ethics is thus a central preoccupation of Deuteronomy, as well.

If it were easy to create a stable, just, thriving society, there would be no need to emphasize choice. However, it is natural for societies to organize around scarcity, competition, and the pursuit of power for survival, as in the “state of nature” described by political philosophers. Deuteronomy thus emphasizes that the good life – even in a well-organized society marked by an excellent legal code – must be repeatedly chosen. Dilemmas abound between competing desires, needs, and values. A broader ethical vision serves as a guide in those ever-present difficult moments of decision.

The choice presented at the beginning of Parashat Re’eh is presented both in the second person singular (����’e��) and the second person plural (lifneikhem). R. Jacob Ben Asher (13^th century) argued that the singular-plural doubling is significant (Baal Ha-Turim, Deut. 14:1). The good life requires coordination among the individual and the collective.

But what guides our choices? In addition to legislation, Deuteronomy is filled with programmatic statements that provide overarching norms to guide our choices more broadly.

For example, Deuteronomy, including this parashah (at Deut. 13:5), is the primary locus of the concept of “walking in God’s ways” (vehalakhta bidrakhav). From the Talmud to medieval and modern philosophy Imitatio Dei – imitating God – has been a central component of Jewish ethics, emphasizing virtues and ethical acts ascribed to God in biblical narrative (e.g. Talmud B. Sotah 14a, Shabbat 133b).

Ethics is often associated with an orientation toward the other. The infinite worth of all human beings, foundational to ethics, emerges with the creation of the human being in the image of God. The image of God is also found in the self, and there is an intimate interrelationship between self-worth and the worth of all others. This interplay – between an orientation toward the other and the preservation of self-dignity – lies at the heart of Jewish ethics.

Parashat Re’eh gives unique expression to the importance of a theologically-informed fundamental sense of self-worth, at Deut. 14:1: “You are children of the Lord your God – you shall not cut yourselves (lo titgodedu)… [in mourning] over the dead.”

In Pirkei Avot, R. Akiva identifies this verse as one of three essential theological-ethical statements in the Bible (Avot 3:14).[2] The verse includes a broader value statement that results in a norm. The broader concept is the idea of being the children of God, which dignifies the Jewish people, who must, in turn, preserve their own dignity and self-worth (R. Samson Raphael Hirsch [19^th century], Commentary on the Pentateuch, Deut. 14:1). The norm is a commandment against self-harm. In moments of crisis, when one feels broken, there is a temptation to externalize and literally embody that brokenness.  

In the development of Jewish law, two distinct commandments emerged from the single statement “you shall not cut yourselves.” The first is the principle against physical harm to the body of the individual. The second, derived from rabbinic exegesis (Talmud B. Yevamot 14a), is a prohibition against dividing the body politic into polarized factions governed by separate legal courts. Polarization emerges at moments of profound crisis within the polis, where the temptation becomes great to display this brokenness by fracturing fundamental institutions – creating separate legal frameworks. R. Judah Loew (Maharal) of Prague (16^th century) noted that extreme civil discord fractures the collective, and the individual citizen, too, feels “as if” their own “body is broken apart” (Gur Aryeh on Deut. 14:1).

In Deut. 14:1, something about being God’s children is a call to the individual and the collective to remain whole, even — especially — when brokenness abounds everywhere. Being God’s children is an unconditional status (R. Meir’s position on Deut. 14:1, Talmud B. Kiddushin 36a) that implies being loved and valued always. This knowledge is central to the pursuit of the good life.

Being God’s children is always simultaneous with being created in God’s image alongside all creatures (Avot 3:14). An ethic of self-preservation is intimately intertwined with an ethic of the dignity of all. Neither can be forgone if a society and the individuals who comprise it are to have any hope of achieving the “good life.”

In Parashat Re’eh, at the precipice of forming a stable and permanent civil society in the promised land, the civil and political founding is accompanied by an ethical founding. The call to self-dignity and self-preservation of Deut. 14:1 is immediately followed by a call to holiness: “For you are a holy people unto the Lord, your God…” (Deut. 14:2).

These verses transport the Israelites back to Leviticus 19, another founding moment of Jewish ethics. “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2) is an earlier articulation of the notion of imitatio Dei – a call to a life that mimics God’s holiness. Leviticus 19 also includes the prohibition against self-harm (19:28) as well as the command to “love the neighbor as yourself” (19:18) and its parallel command to “love the stranger as yourself” (19:34).

Parashat Re’eh opens with the rallying cry of the second half of Deuteronomy – the call to choose “the blessing.” Central to the good life is a deep sense of self-worth, self-dignity, and a commitment to self-preservation. This follows from being the beloved children of God. A thriving community also requires an ethos of the dignity of neighbor and stranger, also created in the image of God. At times of crisis, there is a temptation both to fracture the community and overlook the dignity of the other. It can feel impossible to choose the “blessing” and “the good.” The concept of choice was developed in Deuteronomy at a crucial foundational moment. At the cusp of a new life, fear of the unknown and awareness of the profound challenges that lay ahead were countered with the formulation of guiding values and a persistent belief in the power to choose.

[1] The geographical distance of a centralized Temple would pose agricultural questions about food supply and meat consumption (e.g. Deut. 12:20ff). The risk of structural poverty called for rigorously applied social policies (Deut 15:1-18). Absent the constancy of the divine presence of the wilderness, charismatic demagogues who might sway the people would need to be opposed (Deut 13:2ff).

[2] The others are Gen. 9:6 (prohibiting murder on account of the creation of the human being in the image of God), and Prov. 4:2 (declaring the Torah a good teaching not to be forsaken).

As part of Moses’s series of sermons that we read throughout Deuteronomy, and his persistent plea that the Israelites remain faithful to God and the covenant, here, Moses imagines a future when the Israelites will have settled in the Land of Israel. At that time, they will enjoy all the benefits of the fertile land, and in Deuteronomy 8:10, we read:

וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבֵֽרַכְתָּ֙ אֶת־ה אֱלֹ-יךָ עַל־הָאָ֥רֶץ הַטֹּבָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָֽתַן־לָֽךְ׃

When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the ETERNAL your God for the good land given to you.

This is the verse referenced in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 21a, as the source for the commandment to recite birkat hamazon.

אָמַר רַב יְהוּדָה: מִנַּיִן לְבִרְכַּת הַמָּזוֹן לְאַחֲרֶיהָ מִן הַתּוֹרָה — שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ וּבֵרַכְתָּ״.

Rav Yehuda said: From where is the mitzva by Torah law to recite Grace after Meals, derived? As it is stated: “And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God” (Deut. 8:10).

While the elementary school students I mentioned above are happy to recite birkat hamazon, I have found that as kids get older (think of pre-adolescents approaching b’nei mitzvah at 12 or 13), they are often less inclined. Through my many years of teaching middle school students, more than one student has asked me hard and critical questions about Jewish traditions we practice in school, including, “Why do we have to say birkat hamazon?”

While it is developmentally appropriate for children at that age to question the adults in their lives, I think the question about birkat hamazon holds more than just a push back against authority. After all, in our parashah, Moses pointed to a time when the Israelites would be well fed, so isn’t it natural for them to feel thankful? Why do we need a commandment to say these blessings after eating? More than that, middle schoolers really don’t like being told how to feel. I understand their annoyance: Why are you commanding me to feel thankful? If I get what I need, and my tummy is full, I will feel it.

The answers to these questions can also be found in Parashat Eikev. Moses’s imagined future includes a description of people whose needs are met and who become self-satisfied. We read in Deuteronomy 8:12–14:

פֶּן־תֹּאכַ֖ל וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבָתִּ֥ים טֹבִ֛ים תִּבְנֶ֖ה וְיָשָֽׁבְתָּ׃

וּבְקָֽרְךָ֤ וְצֹֽאנְךָ֙ יִרְבְּיֻ֔ן וְכֶ֥סֶף וְזָהָ֖ב יִרְבֶּה־לָּ֑ךְ וְכֹ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־לְךָ֖ יִרְבֶּֽה׃

וְרָ֖ם לְבָבֶ֑ךָ וְשָֽׁכַחְתָּ֙ אֶת ה אֱלֹ-יךָ

When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in,

and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered,

beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the ETERNAL your God

The concern for this haughty attitude is further articulated in verse 17:

וְאָמַרְתָּ֖ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ כֹּחִי֙ וְעֹ֣צֶם יָדִ֔י עָ֥שָׂה לִ֖י אֶת־הַחַ֥יִל הַזֶּֽה

and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”

In other words, people who are full and satisfied are actually unlikely to feel gratitude. They might give themselves credit for the blessings that they enjoy. As Jeffrey Tigay puts it in The JPS Torah Commentary on Deuteronomy, “The idea that material wealth and satiety can lead to pride and arrogance and forgetting one’s dependence on God is a persistent concern in the Bible” ( p. 80).

Another text from Tractate Berakhot 32a backs up Professor Tigay’s assertion and brings a list of biblical quotes, including one from Parashat Eikev (Deut. 8:14), to support the idea that being satiated can lead to trouble.

אָמַר רַב אַחָא בְּרֵיהּ דְּרַב הוּנָא אָמַר רַב שֵׁשֶׁת: הַיְינוּ דְּאָמְרִי אִינָשֵׁי: מְלֵי כְּרֵסֵיהּ זְנֵי בִּישֵׁי. שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״כְּמַרְעִיתָם וַיִּשְׂבָּעוּ שָׂבְעוּ וַיָּרׇם לִבָּם עַל כֵּן שְׁכֵחוּנִי״. רַב נַחְמָן אָמַר: מֵהָכָא: ״וְרָם לְבָבֶךָ וְשָׁכַחְתָּ אֶת ה׳״. וְרַבָּנַן אָמְרִי, מֵהָכָא: ״וְאָכַל וְשָׂבַע וְדָשֵׁן וּפָנָה״.

On a similar note, Rav Aḥa, son of Rav Huna, said that Rav Sheshet said: That is what people say in a popular maxim: Filling his stomach is a type of sin, as it is stated: “When they were fed and became full they were sated, and their hearts were lifted and they have forgotten Me” (Hosea 13:6). Rav Naḥman said: This principle is derived not from the verse in Hosea, but from here: “And your heart is lifted and you forget the Lord” (Deut.8:14). And the Rabbis say that this principle is derived from here: “And they will have eaten and been sated and fattened, and they will turn to other gods” (Deut. 31:20).

While some people innately feel gratitude, many of us need to be commanded to be thankful, especially at times when we feel satisfied, such as after eating. The commandment to regularly recite birkat hamazon is a way to counter these self-aggrandizing impulses, a gratitude practice that inculcates awareness of blessings that we cannot control. That practice has the potential to help us avoid the pride and arrogance Moses describes. Moreover, psychological research shows that feeling and expressing gratitude makes for happier and more optimistic people. Being thankful is good for us.

The practice of gratitude is an important life lesson that all my students need, so birkat hamazon remains a part of Schechter’s daily routines. When a reluctant 12-year-old tells me that they don’t want to do it, that is an opportunity to begin a dialogue with them, to share the things I am grateful for in my life, and to ask them to reflect on what they are grateful for. Reciting birkat hamazon at each meal offers my students and me the ongoing and frequent opportunity for this important reflection. So, whether it is with the enthusiastic elementary students or the leery upper school students, I will be excited to sing birkat hamazon with them again when they come back to school this fall.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

This is exactly where B’nei Yisrael finds themselves at the opening of Mattot-Masei. With forty years of wandering behind them and the land of Canaan visible across the Jordan, they stand at a great threshold. And it is at precisely this moment that the Torah pauses, looks backward, and does something unexpected:

וַיִּכְתֹּ֨ב מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶת־מוֹצָאֵיהֶ֛ם לְמַסְעֵיהֶ֖ם עַל־פִּ֣י ה’ וְאֵ֥לֶּה מַסְעֵיהֶ֖ם לְמוֹצָאֵיהֶֽם

“Moses recorded the starting points of their various marches as directed by GOD. Their marches, by starting points, were as follows.” (Num. 33:2)

What follows is a dense list of forty-two encampments, most appearing nowhere else in the Torah and attached to no narrative whatsoever. “There is nothing in the Torah that seems to be as superfluous as the recording of these marches,” writes the 15th-century Spanish commentator Rabbi Abraham Saba, capturing a discomfort that ripples through generations of interpreters.

To make sense of this itinerary, classical commentaries like Rashi, Maimonides, and Sforno search for a macro-theological purpose, reading it as proof of divine providence, kindness, or historical loyalty. Yet these interpretations all share a collective vantage point. What none of them quite asks is what this exercise actually meant for the individual doing the writing.

The text emphasizes that Moses wrote it down, al pi Hashem, at God’s explicit instruction. This is an intimate act: Moses, sitting with the full weight of forty years, commanded to go back through every stop and departure, not to extract an overarching lesson, but simply to name them, one by one, from the very beginning.

This is a masterful pedagogical move on God’s part. John Dewey famously argued that “we do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” True reflection requires a willingness to sit with what happened before moving on to what comes next.

And Moses, in doing this, does not produce a highlight reel. Read the text closely and notice what actually interrupts the otherwise steady rhythm of vayisu and vayahanu (they set out and they encamped). The pattern only breaks for moments of vulnerability: the Egyptians burying their firstborn; Rephidim, where they ran out of water and failed in faith; the painful specificity of Aaron’s death; and the looming threat of the Canaanite king of Arad.

These are not glorious inclusions. Strikingly, Sinai gets the same flat line as a dozen forgotten stops. The list only slows down for grief, fear, doubt, and loss. Everything else, including revelation itself, gets folded into the steady rhythm of the march.

The natural human instinct, standing at a moment of arrival, is to curate and tell a clean story that moves seamlessly from struggle to triumph, quietly omitting the embarrassing or mundane stops. We do this instinctively at graduations and end-of-year celebrations, selecting for key moments and presenting a version of the journey edited for the occasion.

But Moses is commanded to preserve the whole journey. Furthermore, he does not get the chance to use his reflection to fuel future performance. Unlike in Dewey’s model, where we look back in order to do better next time, there is no next chapter for Moses. He knows he will not cross the Jordan. Yet God commands the writing anyway, teaching us that honest reflection has value independent of utility. Bearing witness to the fullness of a journey is an act of integrity and a way of saying, before moving on: all of this was real. I was here for all of it.

This is what I find myself wanting to offer my own children at the end of this complicated, layered year, and what we are called to offer the students and children in our care more broadly. Not a curated version of who they were, but the honest acknowledgment that we saw them through the whole of it: the hard stops, the boring ones, the painful ones, and the glorious ones together, without ranking them or editing them into a tidier story than the one that actually happened. To do that is to tell them something a graduation speech rarely does: that they are seen and loved not only at their best, but across the full, complicated, bumpy length of the road.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

The Masorah noticed this numerical character as well. Medieval scribes carefully recorded that the parashah contains 168 verses, 1,887 words, and 7,853 letters. Such figures served a practical purpose—they helped scribes verify copies of the text. But the Masoretes were hardly alone. Rabbinic literature is full of lists and enumerations. Four New Years. Ten generations from Adam to Noah. Thirty-nine categories of labor prohibited on Shabbat.

The second half of Parashat Pinehas provides an especially clear example. Numbers 28–29 presents the sacrificial calendar in careful sequence. The reader moves from the daily offering to the Sabbath offering, from the Sabbath to the new moon, and from there through the cycle of festivals. Days are counted. Months are counted. Sacrifices are counted. The section reads less like a story than like a schedule.

This calendrical material becomes even more interesting when one remembers that the parashah itself occupies different positions within the calendar. In the Diaspora there are four basic ways in which Pinehas can relate to the Seventeenth of Tammuz. Because of the structure of the Hebrew calendar, Pinehas is sometimes read just before the fast, sometimes just after it, and occasionally within the same week

These variations also affect the way the portion is heard. A congregation reading Pinehas on the nineteenth of Tammuz is already within the period of mourning. A congregation reading it on the fourteenth stands just before it. The text is unchanged, but the setting is not.

That observation leads naturally to the name of the season itself.

In Hebrew, the period between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av is known as בין המצרים, “between the straits.” The phrase comes from the Book of Lamentations: “All her pursuers overtook her between the straits.” In its biblical context the image is geographical. Jerusalem has been trapped in a narrow place with no avenue of escape.

Yiddish-speaking Jews often used a different expression. Rather than בין המצרים, they commonly spoke of די דריי וואָכן, “the Three Weeks.” The difference is small, but not meaningless.

The two names describe the same period in different ways. The Hebrew term preserves a biblical image of confinement and distress. The Yiddish term simply counts the time. One speaks in metaphor. The other speaks in weeks.

That contrast brings us back to the Mishnah.

Tractate Ta’anit provides the classic framework for this season. It begins with a numerical scheme that would have felt entirely natural to a rabbinic audience: “Five things happened to our ancestors on the Seventeenth of Tammuz, and five on the Ninth of Av.”

The events themselves range across many centuries. Some belong to the biblical period. Others belong to the Roman era. Historians may question whether they occurred on the precise dates assigned to them. The Mishnah’s purpose, however, is not chronology. It is organization. A scattered collection of national disasters is arranged into two groups of five.

The chapter then turns to mourning practices associated with the Ninth of Av. At that point the reader might reasonably expect the tractate to conclude with destruction, exile, and grief.

Instead, it takes a sharp turn.

The very next mishnah opens with the declaration: “There were no festivals for Israel like the Fifteenth of Av [1]and Yom Kippur.”

The shift is striking. One moment the Mishnah is discussing catastrophe. A few lines later, young women dressed in borrowed white garments are dancing in the vineyards. The movement is so abrupt that it has puzzled readers for centuries.

Scholars including Paul Mandel have suggested that the reference to Yom Kippur may be a later editorial addition. While not everyone accepted Mandel’s proposal, the larger question remains: Why conclude a discussion of national catastrophe with courtship and dancing?

That tension brings us back once more to Parashat Pineḥas. The portion is remembered for its laws of sacrifice and festivals. The Three Weeks commemorate the destruction of the Temple where those sacrifices were offered. The Mishnah counts the disasters associated with that destruction and then ends, unexpectedly, with a festival.

Throughout these sources, counting remains a constant. The objects counted change—letters, sacrifices, days, weeks, or disasters—but the habit itself throughout.

Seen in this light, Pinehas occupies a distinctive place in the annual cycle. It stands near the point where several systems of counting converge: the Masorah’s count of letters and verses, the Torah’s count of sacrifices and festivals, the calendar’s count of days, and the Mishnah’s count of historical disasters.

There is a lesson in that fact, though not an especially complicated one. Human beings count what they do not wish to lose. Communities do the same thing. They count their dead, their festivals, their years, and their sacred texts. Counting is one way of marking something as worthy of attention.

The rabbis who shaped the observance of the Three Weeks could not rebuild the Temple. The Masoretes who counted the letters of the Torah could not restore the world in which much of that tradition had first developed. What they could do was refuse to let things disappear without a trace.

This observation may help explain the ending of Tractate Ta’anit. After all the disasters, mourning practices, and discussion of destruction, the Mishnah turns to young women dancing in the vineyards. The editors knew perfectly well that the Temple had been destroyed. Yet they chose not to give destruction the final word.

The weeks between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av ask us to remember losses that span centuries. Yet remembrance is only part of the task. We also must notice what remains: the communities we sustain, the traditions we inherit, the texts we study, and the responsibilities we carry forward.

May we learn to count wisely, giving our attention to what is worthy of it. May we remember the past without becoming trapped within it. And may the days that now lead us toward mourning also lead us, in time, toward consolation, renewal, and peace.

May it be Your will that we be comforted from Heaven for all the disasters that have befallen us, and may we merit to hear once again voices of joy and gladness in Judah and the outskirts of Jerusalem, speedily in our days. Amen.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

[1] Tu B’Av (the Fifteenth of Av) is a minor Jewish holiday following the mourning period of the Three Weeks, which is associated with courtship, reconciliation, and communal joy.

Balaam’s story is an unusually good place to watch that interpretive dynamic unfold, because his own character becomes a shared (and contested) reference point in both Jewish and Christian reading to think about dangerous speech and false prophecy. The New Testament already references Balaam as a polemical tool (Rev. 2:14, Jude 11, II Pet. 2:15), while rabbinic traditions often interpret him as a paradigmatic wicked gentile prophet. But despite these categories established early in both textual communities, Balaam resists easy binaries. He is neither an Israelite nor entirely outside God’s purposes; he is simultaneously an outsider, participant, critic, and unwilling witness. So perhaps the more interesting question to ask is not whether Balaam is good or evil, prophet or fraud, insider or outsider, but this: What does it take to see what has been there all along?

One small detail in the Torah’s description of Balaam at the beginning of his speech, a phrase about his eye, became a hinge for generations of interpreters thinking about what it means to “see”:

Num. 24:3

וישא משלו ויאמר נאם בלעם בנו בער ונאם הגבר שתם העין

He took up his discourse and said: The declaration of Balaam son of Beor, and the declaration of the man shetum ha-ayin [meaning unclear].

Explaining the unusual Hebrew phrase shetum ha-ayin, appearing only in this chapter, Rashi draws on BT Sanhedrin 105a’s aggadic interpretation that the Torah’s use of the singular “ayin” (eye) indicates that Balaam was blind in one eye. Whatever the philological merits, the exegetical point is vivid: the man who claims visionary authority is marked by partial sight. He sees, but only out of one eye; he knows, but not fully.

Balaam’s failure, therefore, might be interpreted as not merely wickedness, but self-certainty. He assumes that because he is a seer, he sees; however, it is the donkey’s attentiveness that actually perceives the angel in the road. The beauty of biblical commentary is that no one reader sees everything fully. Jewish readers, Christian readers, medieval readers, modern scholars — all are, in some sense, seeing some things clearly and missing others. In the study of texts, traditions, and their long histories of encounter, the donkey’s careful attentiveness is the rarer gift. But what makes sight possible at all?

Thinking beyond Balaam’s physical condition and character, this narrative might be read about our human perception itself.

Num. 22:31

וַיְגַל ה’ אֶת־עֵינֵי בִלְעָם

And the Lord uncovered Balaam’s eyes.

Rabbi Tobiah ben Eliezer, an eleventh-century contemporary of Rashi’s from the Byzantine Empire, writes in his Lekah Tov:

ויגל ה׳ את עיני בלעם – מלמד שכל העולם כולו בחזקת סומין עד שהקדוש ברוך הוא מגלה עיניהם כיוצא בו ויפקח אלהים את עיניה ותרא באר מים. יש הרבה דברים ואין כח בעיני האדם לראותם עד שיגזור הקב״ה

And the Lord uncovered Balaam’s eyes – this teaches that the whole entire world is presumed blind until the Holy One, blessed be He, uncovers their eyes. Similarly [of Hagar]: “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water” [Gen. 21:19]. There are many things, and the human eye has no power to see them until the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees it.

Ben Eliezer’s movement from Balaam to Hagar is especially striking: in both cases, God opens non-Israelite eyes to something already there. The well and the angel may be miraculous, but the deeper wonder is that both were present before humans could see them. Moreover, Lekah Tov does not make this a story only about Balaam’s flaws. The limit is simply human: “the whole entire world is presumed blind” until God uncovers our eyes. Read this way, the parsha is not mainly warning about wicked outsiders, but is asking insiders to admit how much of reality (textual, moral, spiritual) we regularly pass by without noticing.

There is something subversive, and I think genuinely hopeful, about a tradition that builds a central lesson about vision and divine wisdom around a non-Israelite prophet and a talking donkey. For an educated modern public living amid confident claims from every side, Parashat Balak offers a counter-discipline to our New Yorker “see something, say something” instincts, encouraging us to move through the text with less certainty about what we already “see,” and more willingness to have our eyes uncovered before we speak. For if even Balaam can be made to speak truth, and even a donkey can notice what the prophet misses, then our task together is to become the kind of readers – and neighbors – whose attention makes room for truths we did not expect to hear, maybe even occasionally from people we did not expect to trust.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

Neither of these approaches is entirely satisfying. I tend to be sympathetic to the perspective that Korah’s challenge doesn’t merit being swallowed alive. His desire for a fully egalitarian society is, if perhaps impractical, certainly understandable. And the response to his group seems to prove his point: surely a just society ought to be open to hearing challenges and taking them seriously, rather than smiting those who are troubled by the existing power structure. Yet how can we fully take Korah’s side if his devastating punishment comes from God?

I want to suggest that instead of siding with Korah and defending the actions of his group, or siding with God and coming up with a rationale for Korah’s harsh punishment, a more satisfying response to this story’s challenge might come from the rabbis, who are themselves conflicted inheritors of the tradition.

The rabbis rewrite Korah’s story in a number of different ways, some more sympathetic than others. In one version presented in Bemidbar Rabbah, Korah’s challenge is not about the general leadership structure but rather relates to the particulars of certain mitzvot. Korah asks Moses whether a garment entirely made out of tekhelet (the sky blue dye commanded for biblical tzitzit) would be exempt from tzitzit, and when told that it would not be, objects, “A tallit that is entirely made of tekhelet doesn’t exempt itself, but four threads [of tzitzit] exempt it?!” He then asks whether a house full of Torah scrolls would be exempt from needing a mezuzah on its doorposts, and when again told that it would not be, objects, “The two hundred and seventy-five chapters of the Torah don’t exempt the house, but the one chapter that is in the mezuzah exempts it?!” He then proceeds to accuse Moses of making the whole thing up.

Korah’s questions in this version of the story pose a serious challenge to the seeming arbitrariness of the halakhic system, and for this reason they remind me of the way the rabbis present another famous questioner who happens to be one of their own: a sage named Rabbi Yirmiyah. Like the rabbinic version of Korah, Rabbi Yirmiyah likes to ask questions about why halakha is the way it is, and similarly like Korah, asks about hypothetical cases to demonstrate the arbitrariness of the law. Most famously, he asks about the legal ruling for a lost chick who is found with one foot within fifty cubits of its coop, in which case it would need to be returned to its owner, and one foot outside fifty cubits, in which case it would belong to its finder—and he asks several other such questions throughout the Talmud. Of course, the rabbis also like to use hypothetical cases to test halakhic principles, so Rabbi Yirmiyah’s questions are not so far outside the pale. Nonetheless, he becomes a kind of scapegoat within the tradition for the rabbis’ ambivalence toward their own intellectual project. As punishment, he is not swallowed up into the earth, but he is famously kicked out of the rabbinic study hall (BT Bava Batra 23b), which for a rabbi in late antiquity is basically just as awful.

A lesser-known fact about Rabbi Yirmiyah, however, is that after being kicked out of the study hall, he later returns to the intellectual community (BT Bava Batra 165b). His colleagues realize that they still need his wisdom, and they send him some questions, which he answers with a combination of sagacity and deep humility. Upon realizing that he is not the threat they at first perceived him to be, his colleagues welcome him back, and though the text does not say so explicitly, I imagine that he is thrilled and relieved to return.

Parshat Korah presents the story of a question perceived as a communal threat that is met with complete suppression, one that we may never fully make sense of. But the rabbinic tradition offers us two helpful resources: first, a tradition in which Korah is seen as someone whose questions may be deeply challenging but nonetheless stem from real intellectual engagement; and second, through the R. Yirmiyah narratives, an alternative tale of what a community can do, at least at a minimum, to take questioners seriously, even if they at first raised some hackles. Each of us knows what it is like to hear a challenge to our commitments that makes us deeply uncomfortable. I hope we can learn from the stories the rabbinic tradition offers us about considering new models for what curiosity, and even repair, can look like.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).