The Torah seems to at first to favor the idea of one powerful leader, Moses, who has direct contact with God. In the ancient world of the Middle East, the King tended to be the god. He combined temporal with religious authority. But despite Moses’s special relationship it was Aaron who became the High Priest and divided the roles. After…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
War
The Torah gives us a series of commands relating to wars. After the Torah the rabbis introduced a differentiation between an optional war, Milhemet Reshut, and an obligatory, self-defense war, Milhemet Mitzvah. When going out to war a special priest, Mashiah Milhama, anointed to lead them into war, would get up and give them a pep talk about fighting for…
Communal Responsibility
The Torah reading this week includes a great deal about forms of government and leadership. It ends with the law of what happens when you find a corpse and no one can find any evidence to convict the killer or killers. In our world that is the end of the story, no evidence, no case and no conviction. But the…
False Prophet
From the start, Judaism has been plagued by false prophets. From within and without. Every major Biblical prophet had enemies and opponents, some of whom claimed to be speaking in the name of God. And amongst the non-Jews there have been an endless stream of men including Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammad who claimed that their gods told them that they…
The Place
The Torah here in this week’s reading, mandates a specific “place” where the Israelites were to sacrifice to God. Originally whenever anyone wanted to eat meat they had to bring it to the sanctuary where it was sacrificed, its blood, fats and inedible parts removed and then divided up between the owners and the priests. During the wilderness period the…
Paganism
So much of this week’s reading is devoted to warning the Children of Israel not to follow the religion and fashions of the Canaanites they were coming to displace. The Israelite mission was to live a considered, thoughtful life, not the random, superstitious, loose and indulgent life of the pagans. What characterized Canaanite paganism was the disguising of one’s true…