What, yet another Israelite rebellion?

What’s different this time around?

 

Last week (Sh’lah L’kha), Moses faced the 10 scouts/spies who said it was too risky to enter the Holy Land. This week, the ever-challenged leader of the Israelites faces down a rebellion led by one of his kinfolk, Korah. A Levite like Moses, Aaron and Miriam, he asks why Moses should be running the show and questions the wisdom of leaving their well-fed slave home of Egypt for the wilderness. In a showdown with Aaron, Korah and his 250 followers are swallowed up by the ground. I guess we know whose side God was on.

 

The question remains: Is it really so bad to “speak truth to power” and challenge the course a leader is following? Shouldn’t democratic-thinking 21st century American Jews be taking the side of the underdogs in these conflicts? Let’s talk about it Thursday, June 10, 7:30 p.m., at our weekly Nafshenu Torah study with student rabbi David Goodman. Please sign up for a Zoom invitation.

 

 

We get to meet in person again this Saturday morning at Nafshenu’s weekly Shabbat service, led by student Rabbi David Goodman and musical director Noah Levine. We’ll have singing, a Torah reading and discussion, plus lunch! Be there, in person or on Zoom. 

 

This week’s portion (Korah, Numbers 16-18) includes a repetition of a commandment that calls for the redemption of a first-born child one month after birth. The family is to pay five shekels of silver. First-born cattle and sheep, meanwhile, are brought as sacrifices.

 
The redemption carries echoes of the idea of child sacrifice, a practice explicitly condemned in the Bible but apparently common in the region. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac until God intervened to stop him. What is the impulse that produces this urge to offer up children? And how different is that from sending out young people to war? Let’s talk! 

Join us for Nafshenu's Book Club this June, organized by Debbie Ottenberg. We will be reading Where the Crawdads Sing by by Delia Owens, and meeting on Zoom on June 27th at 2:00 PM for a group discussion.