Modeling Ritual

Jun 26, 2015 By Mitchell Cohen | Commentary | Hukkat

Recently I visited a group of Ramah teens on their one-week Poland experience, just prior to their summer trip to Israel. While visiting Jewish cemeteries in Krakow, I stood to the side and did not enter the area of the graves. Two of our teen participants, also both kohanim, asked me why I wouldn’t enter the cemetery, and I told them about the traditional prohibition of kohanim coming within six feet of a grave. Both decided to adopt this custom—at least for the days we were together—and both told me that even though they couldn’t explain why, it just felt right.

Hukkat

Jan 1, 1980

¹ Jephthah the Gileadite was an able warrior, who was the son of a prostitute. Jephthah’s father was Gilead; ² but Gilead also had sons by his wife, and when the wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out.

Hukkat

Jan 1, 1980

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: ² This is the ritual law that the Lord has commanded:

Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid.

Hukkat-Balak

Jan 1, 1980

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: ² This is the ritual law that the Lord has commanded:

Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid.

The Humanity of Moses

Jun 30, 2012 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Hukkat

Readers of the Torah suspect that, by this point in his long life, Moses does not much care for the work he does so selflessly. He seems worn down by the incessant kvetching of his people, and has long since grown used to the inscrutability of the God he loves and serves. We are drawn to this man. We want to know him and learn from him. In this way as in so many others, he accomplishes the Torah’s wishes, if not God’s. He draws us into the story, and makes us proud to be its heirs.