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 JTS 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 JTS 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 JTS 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 JTS Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).

The popular bulletin Shabbaton welcomed the change, arguing that the iconic illustration distorts the verse “וישאהו במוט בשנים”, as most commentators understood it. Indeed, following Sotah 34b, Rashi believed the cluster was carried by no less than eight people. Furthermore, the grapes symbolise a sin, which the iconic image blurs.

The spies’ illustration epitomizes the power of images but also their hermeneutic limitations. Of the complex story that Parashat Shelah Lekha relates concisely, the grapes are a central motif in the visual tradition that illustrates it. For a biblical story to become an image, the artist must focus not only on the sayable but also the seeable. Hence, throughout history, images have often been presented alongside words. For example, the depicts the two spies, along with the inscription במוט בשניים”.[1]“

During the Renaissance, words were increasingly excluded from pictures; thus, the bible’s illustrators had to find other ways to signify their themes. Since Biblical paintings have no definite visual tradition to draw on, artists often chose a prop to make their pictures identifiable. When Giovanni Lanfranco painted Moses and the Messengers from Canaan (1621-1624), he depicted the former with his staff and horns, not to recall a miracle or divine radiation, but to indicate who is shown. It is perhaps for these practical reasons that the grapes became the visual emblem of the spies’ narrative.

Maerten de Vos’ illustration is set in a pastoral, hilly landscape (c. 1584). In addition to the two spies who crossed the Eshcol stream on a makeshift wooden bridge, he portrayed several figures that indicate, as the spies reported, that Canaan was populated. In the background, one can see one of the fortified cities that terrorized the Israelites. But the only feature in the picture that links it indelibly to the spies’ story is the grapes the duo carries.

Even in the 19^th century, when depictions of the story became more “realistic,” the grapes retained a

primary role. In Gustav Doré’s 1866 print, the scene appears in a desert landscape with “Oriental” costuming. However, here, even more than before, the grapes dominate the composition. Displayed on a small hill before the Israelites, they affirm the spies’ report. The illustration, however, departs from Numbers 13:27, where the fruits testify that Canaan flows with milk and honey. The rebellion occurs when the spies claim that the Canaanites are invincible. Thus, one may wonder whether Doré’s print brings to the fore an important trope or a relatively marginal theme.  

The Talmud, as discussed above, enlarges the grapes to unnatural proportions, making their symbolism ambiguous. The cluster may speak to Canaan’s abundance but also the otherness of a newly encountered land. In his commentary on Sotah, Rashi resolves this ambiguity: “its people are as strange as its fruits, tall and strong.” The images I discuss here, by contrast, preserve the grapes’ open-endedness. 

In Lanfranco‘s painting, the spies appear less rebellious than perplexed. Painted from a low angle, the scene emphasises hierarchy: Moses raises his hand while a spy bows before him. Holding a dark fig, the spy points towards the enormous cluster. His questioning look suggests bewilderment in the presence of the eccentric bunch of lush green grapes and dark, murky fruits. 

The grapes can thus be seen as a pharmakon, i.e., a signifier whose hermeneutic indeterminacy can only be settled by interpretive violence. While reading Plato’s Phaedrus, Jacques Derrida argues that the translation of pharmakon as poison or remedy “obliterates the virtual, dynamic references to the other uses of the same word in Greek.” Similarly, in Jewish classical texts, the grapes have several meanings. Psalms praise the wine that makes the human heart happy, but Proverbs warns that it bites like a snake. In Numbers 13, too, the grapes represent duality: fertility, but also, since such a large cluster does not grow in the wild, it speaks of the presence of other people.

As a pharmakon, the grapes do not destabilize the text’s meaning, nor merely bring forward hermeneutic pluralism, but embody its peculiar demand of faith. If the mission to Canaan was supposed to dispel uncertainty (Deuteronomy 1:22), the grapes retrieve the undecidability of standing before the divine. They call for a free decision, which  must “go through the ordeal of the undecidable.” In this vein, Derrida cites Kierkegaard, for whom “the instant of decision is madness.” The encounter with the incalculable warrants the intoxication of trust in God.

By the time the grapes were adopted in Palestine, they no longer harboured ambiguity. Instead, they symbolized agricultural fertility and, paradoxically, rootedness. The image was first used by Teperberg Winery, later Karmel Mizrachi, and finally the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.[3] This led to several copyright court cases, manifesting not only commercial but also political tensions. While the Teperberg Winery was part of the Old Yishuv, Karmel Mizrachi was an initiative of the First Aliya.

In this vein, one may read the decorative ceramic panel by Zeev Raban,[4] which shows the spies in Arab clothing, carrying an “Oriental” sword and a big rifle.[5] The figures recall the Second Aliya members of HaShomer who guarded the Jewish settlements. The artwork denotes the rootedness of those who defend the land. When the grapes became the Ministry of Tourism’s logo, they were an established national symbol.

The story’s lost ambiguity was recently revived by the Israeli musician Shlomi Shaban, portrays Moses and the spies as a squad of soldiers walking aimlessly in the desert. Although the grapes play a marginal role in this dramatization, they reverse the function of religious symbols in contemporary Israel. Joshua, who is referred to in the song as “yud,”[6] says, “My soul is thirsty not for revelations but wine.” Similarly, the song ends with insights that resonate with Rabbi Nachman of Breslov,[7] and postpones the return to Zion into an eternal future: “But there is no Canaan, Canaan is in the heart/ if we enter or not, it is the same… I am only a wandering Jew/ I was born to depart/ from ancient time and until the next year in Jerusalem.” 

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

[1] The mosaic, which was probably created in the 5^th EC, was discovered by archaeologist Jodi Magness and her team from the University of North California.

[3] Zeev Teperberg used the spies’ logo already in 1852 when he opened an agency for wine and drinks in the old city of Jerusalem, and later, of the winery his son Abraham Teperberg established in 1870. The winery is now known as Efrat Winery.

[4] The panel is now located in the old Beit Hava’ad of Beit Hakerem in Jerusalem.

[5] Raban follows a common practice of depicting the spies with swords (e.g., Maerten de Vos’ illustration and Poussin’s Autumn), but the edition of the rifle is unique.

[6] Throughout the song, Moses, Joshua and Caleb are suggestively called “mem,” “yud,” and “kaf” as intelligence personnel and special forces.

[7] Rabbi Nachman famously said, “Everywhere I go, I go to the Land of Israel.”

In Numbers 11, the Israelites protest their steady diet of manna and forcefully demand meat (11:4–6). God’s response unfolds in two seemingly unrelated steps. First, the appointment of a council of seventy elders (11:16–17), often understood as the precursor of the rabbinic Great Sanhedrin; and only afterward, the sending of a powerful wind to bring the quail that will feed the people (11:31). This sequence is surprising: how exactly does a new tribunal offer an adequate response to what appears to be a legitimate desire to diversify the menu?

The beginnings of an answer emerge from a careful reading of the verses. Actually, the text seems to point to a more complex motive on the part of the Israelites: rather than simply craving meat, they seem intent on rejecting manna itself.

“We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” (Num. 11:4-6)

What, then, is the problem with manna? Moses’s anguished response (Num. 11:11–15) provides a hint. It suggests that the Israelites’ complaint is not directed at the manna as food, but at what it signifies: the rejection of manna emerges as a rejection of Moses himself.

“(…) Moses was troubled. He asked the Lord, “Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? (…)I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.” (Num. 11:10-15)

Rabbinic tradition, characteristically attentive to the silences and nuances of the biblical text, makes the connection between Moses and manna even more explicit: the manna descended daily through Moses’s merit (BT, Ta’anit 9a), and with his death on the seventh of Adar, it ceased at once (BT, Kiddushin 38a).

From this perspective, the Israelites’ request for meat (and rejection of manna) catalyzes a reconfiguration of authority, shifting leadership away from Moses alone toward a broader structure embodied in the Sanhedrin.

Yet another element invites closer attention. The same biblical text simultaneously casts Moses in strikingly paradoxical terms, portraying him as a nurturing figure: a kind of wet nurse, even a symbolic mother.

Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors? (Num. 11:12)

In this portrayal, Moses becomes a provider of “milk”, the very antithesis of “meat.” The biblical text further develops this motif by introducing two additional figures whose very names evoke the imagery of “milk”: Eldad and Medad (Num. 11:26). Counted among the seventy elders of the Sanhedrin, they nevertheless remain in the camp rather than assembling with the others, as if resisting full incorporation into the emerging structure of leadership.

In Hebrew, dad refers to the nipple, viz. the source through which a nursing infant receives milk. Thus, Eldad can be read as “toward the breast,” and Medad as “from the breast.” The symbolism is suggestive: it reinforces the depiction of Moses as the nurturing source sustaining Israel in its earliest stage of development. Even as the Israelites begin to move beyond a “Torah of milk,” Eldad and Medad, two otherwise minor figures, quietly echo the formative stage now being left behind.

Moses, then, is associated with manna and milk, which share important structural similarities. Both are forms of nourishment meant for those who have not yet reached maturity; both cater to the needs of those still in the process of becoming. An infant cannot yet digest solid food; its system is not ready. For a time, it must rely on a provisional, sustaining substitute. So too with the manna, the divine food provided in the desert during the infancy of the Jewish people.

Here again, the rabbis amplified some of these themes in the midrash: “Just as a baby tastes different flavors from the breast, so too with the manna, every time that the Jewish people ate, they found in it many flavors” (BT, Yoma 75a). At the same time, if some flavors were absent from the manna (cucumbers, melons, leeks, …), it is because these foods were deemed harmful to nursing mothers (Sifrei Bemidbar 87).

This implies that the relationship between Moses, the man of milk and manna, and the Hebrew people was one of radical asymmetry: the recipients, still immature, required what we might call a “Torah of milk,” a Torah of pure revelation. Just like manna, everything flowed from God; human beings were only receivers. At the earliest stage of their formation, the Jewish people needed a form of divine communication given directly, without the mediation of human effort or interpretation.

The demand for meat and the rejection of manna constitute, in effect, a declaration of independence. It is the people’s way of asserting that they will no longer remain in a purely passive relationship with the divine. They refuse to stand only as recipients of revelation and instead seek a different posture, in which they become active partners, shaping and engaging their relationship with the Transcendent rather than simply receiving it.

It is precisely in response to this deeper demand that God initiates a decisive shift: the gradual move away from Moses as the singular, all-encompassing leader toward a more layered and participatory form of leadership: the Sanhedrin. The demand for meat was, in fact, a bold claim to autonomy, a rejection of unceasing Revelation as a form of dependence, and a declaration of the people’s desire to encounter and engage the Torah on their own terms.

As Immanuel Kant famously observed, “enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.” In Beha-alotekha, we encounter an analogous moment of transformation: a people in the act of growing up. Here, a nascent nation begins to assume a more defined identity, and with that maturation come far-reaching consequences, reshaping not only its inner spiritual posture but also its institutional life and structures of authority.

A Jewish Independence Day, as it were.

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

1. Elsewhere the Levites are listed in birth order—Gershon, Kohath, Merari (Genesis 46:11, Numbers 3:17)—but here Kohath is given priority.
2. The Kohathites are set apart from the other two clans by the division between Parashat Bemidbar and Parashat Naso, the latter of which begins with the enumeration of the other two clans.
3. The labor assigned to the Kohathites is described, without elaboration, as “Most Holy” (Numbers 4:4).  explicates this as responsibility for the “the ark, the table, the candelabrum, the altars, the curtain, and the accompanying vessels.” 

Some commentators attribute this foregrounding to the fact that Moses and Aaron were Kohathites themselves, their clan thus meriting extra distinction (Leqah Tov; Ibn Ezra).  Whatever the reason, their singularity comes to the fore in the Torah’s description in Numbers 7:6-9 of how the respective clans were supposed to carry out their work:

⁶Moses took the carts and the oxen and gave them to the Levites. ⁷Two carts and four oxen he gave to the Gershonites, … ⁸and four carts and eight oxen he gave to the Merarites, ….

וְלִבְנֵ֥י קֳהָ֖ת לֹ֣א נָתָ֑ן כִּֽי-עֲבֹדַ֤ת הַקֹּ֙דֶשׁ֙ עֲלֵהֶ֔ם בַּכָּתֵ֖ף יִשָּֽׂאוּ׃

 ⁹But to the Kohathites he did not give any; since theirs was the service of the [most] sacred objects, their porterage was by shoulder.[i]

(1288-1344) observes, “They are commanded here to carry their load by shoulder because of the sanctity of the ark and the other items they were carrying.” He goes on to discuss two later occasions when the ark was transported at King David’s behest.  In 2 Samuel 6:3-8, the ark was mounted on a cart and disaster ensued (see the haftarah for Parashat Shemini). That David learned his lesson from the incident is clear from 1 Chronicles 15:11-15, when he orders the priests and Levites to bring the ark to Jerusalem:

¹¹David sent for Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and for the Levites cf. 2 Samuel 6:7] …^{. 15}The Levites carried the Ark of God by means of poles on their shoulders, as Moses had commanded in accordance with the word of the Lord.

Levi concludes, “Nowhere else but here [in Numbers 7:9] does God command that they carry their load by shoulder.  David erred in this respect by having the ark mounted on a new cart.  That was the reason God burst out in Uzza (2 Samuel 6:3-8), and that was why David reverted to having it carried by shoulder by the Levites.”

The special privilege and responsibility of the Levites in general and of the Kohathites in particular is elaborated in the midrash 5:8:

How superior was the tribe of Levi to the other Israelites!  For the Israelites would walk about wearing sandals; the tribe of Levi, who would bear the vessels of the Tabernacle, would walk barefooted.^[ii]  Thus we learn that the tribe of Levi was superior to all the other tribes.  And pre-eminent within the tribe of Levi was the family of Kohath. An ordinary Levite would place his burden, whether it was the boards or the bars or the sockets or anything else, upon carts. The families of Kohath, however, bore their burdens on their shoulders: they were not allowed to place the ark upon a wagon as it says, “But to the Kohathites he did not give any… their porterage was by shoulder.” 

As if that were not distinction enough, the midrash continues,

In another respect also the [Kohathites] were elevated above all the other Levites.  The other Levites carried the vessels of the Tabernacle and walked in the normal way, facing in the direction they were going, but the sons of Kohath walked backwards,[iii] with their faces towards the ark, in order not to turn their backs on the ark.

This form of porterage, the midrash states, is a mark of humility.  The Kohathites were “subdued in the presence of the ark.  Why so?  Because there is no place for greatness in the presence of God.  So you must conclude that, though the family of Kohath was aristocratic, nevertheless when they carried the ark, they did so like ordinary slaves.”

And why is that? The midrash continues, “God said, The Torah is life, as it says, ‘She is a tree of life to those who grasp her’ (Proverbs 3:18); ‘They are life to him who finds them, healing for his whole body’ (Proverbs 4:22). Now the sons of Kohath have charge of the Torah, synonymous with life—namely the ark that they carry, in which the Torah is contained.”  They carry it in this unique manner “that they may live and not die” (Numbers 4:19).

In the first sermon on Parashat Naso in his Torah commentary, Keli hemdah,[iv] Samuel Laniado (a leading rabbi in Aleppo at the turn of the seventeenth century) quotes the midrash and then adds a striking idea of his own. He writes,

Since all living things are capable of carrying themselves, holy things, which undoubtedly are imbued with the spirit of God, certainly would carry themselves.  It is as the sages say [in B. Sukka 35a], “the ark bears its bearers (הארון נושא את נושאיו),” so naturally it carries itself.

Laniado presents a tour de force in which he imputes a double meaning—literal and metaphoric—to several key terms in both the midrash and the biblical text that it quotes.  When the midrash says that the Levites were “elevated” (מעולים) above the Israelites, that means that they were both superior in stature, and also literally raised up by the nature of their service.  When the midrash depicts the Levites as “barefoot” (יחפים), the term is to be taken both literally and as a metaphor for their self-abasement and devotion to service (ההכנעה וההשתעבדות).  They were, paradoxically, elevated by their humility.

Laniado cites a variant version of the midrash[v] that says that the Levites were “borne by the vessels of the Tabernacle (טעונים בכלי המשכן).”  The variant substitutes the passive form טעונים/te`unim for the active טוענים/to`anim.  Instead of being “burdened” with the vessels, then, the Levites are “borne” by them!  He continues:

The reason for the use of טעונים is to teach that according to the grammar, the ark was carrying them…. In like manner, I explain the verse [Numbers 7:9], כִּי עֲבֹדַת הַקֹּדֶשׁ עֲלֵהֶם בַּכָּתֵף יִשָּׂאוּ, to mean that the ark carries them, and that is why it does not say בכתף נושאים or יִשְּׂאוּ with a shva. 

The form יִשָּׂאוּ/�⾱������’u, in Laniado’s view, is a passive Niphal (not an active Qal pausal form), indicating that the Kohathites literally were carried along by the ark (נשואים מהארון). 

The image of the ark-bearers floating alongside their “burden” as it carries them through the wilderness is charming, but it also has a serious side.  Laniado’s discussion boils down to something like a riddle: When is a burden not a burden?  The answer: when it is the burden of Torah.  The biblical Levites humbly assumed the burden of the Tabernacle and they, in turn, were elevated in stature and literally transported for doing so.  Their ancient work was represented in Laniado’s day, and may be emulated nowadays, by what Laniado calls הטורח בעמל התורה, “exertion in the toil of Torah.”  For those who dedicate their full vigor to learning and practice, the Torah is a burden that is not a burden; she is the Tree of Life that sustains them.

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

[i] Note the final placement of the second-born Kohathites, again out of birth order.

[ii] See 2:6 on Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5; cf. Joshua 5:15): כל מקום שהשכינה נגלית אסור בנעילת הסנדל, “Wherever the Divine Presence appears it is forbidden to wear shoes.”

[iii] Jacob Zvi Meklenburg painstakingly explains that they actually walked “sideways” ().  For an elaborate discussion of walking backwards from the Presence, see on Exodus 32:15.  In principle (with exceptions), in synagogue one should not turn one’s back to the Torah scroll (Rambam, Laws of Tefillin etc. 10:10; Shulchan Aruch Yoreh De`ah 282:1).

[iv] Jerusalem, 5743 (1983), pp. 14-21.

[v] See Israel al-Nakawa (d. 1391), Menorat ha-Ma’or, ed. Enelow, part 3, p. 237.

Ruth, who was a Moabite, is often described as a model convert, on account of her declaration to her mother-in-law, Naomi, “where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God” (1:16). Indeed, Ruth is referenced as one of the first “converts” to Judaism, after Abraham and Sarah (well, before their “conversion,” Abram and Sarai). It is for this reason that we in the Library of JTS feature Ruth prominently in our current exhibition, “Your People Shall Be My People: Conversion to Judaism through the Centuries,” even naming the exhibition after Ruth’s declaration to Naomi. We chose to create an exhibition about conversion to Judaism at this time because in the modern age, many people have made that choice. In an age of fluid identities, when conscious choice becomes crucial, more people than ever (and there were such converts in the past, even despite laws that forbade such transitions) have chosen to affiliate with the Jewish path. But what do Ruth and what she represents have to do with Shavuot?

Shavuot—biblically a holiday marking the first harvest—came to be associated with the revelation of the law at Mt. Sinai. Indeed, it is described in our prayers as “the time of the giving of our Torah.” At Sinai, the people of Israel stood at the foot of the mountain, ready to accept the Law given to Moses as instruction for Israel for all generations. What kind of transition did the people undergo at Sinai? In what ways were the people different after that revelation than they were before?

In the view of the Talmudic rabbis, the people of Israel converted at Sinai. Since, for the rabbis, to be a Jew is to be a person of the Torah, before the revelation the children of Israel were not “Jews” (the term is anachronistic here). They only became “Jews” when, at Sinai, they did what converts to Judaism must do: they immersed (the Talmud imagines this), the men were circumcised (the Torah reports this explicitly), and they accepted the “yoke of the commandments,” that is, the Torah. Indeed, as the Talmud, in tractate Yebamot, makes clear (and there is a fine 16^th century volume showing this in the Library exhibition), the children of Israel serve, for the rabbis, as the models for later conversions. The rituals a convert must undertake are precisely those executed by the people at Sinai.

Now, it is true that Jewish tradition also identified others as models for conversion. The model offered by Abraham (and, we would say, Sarah) is well known, and as we can see in the names of converts written on ketubbot (Jewish marriage contracts) in the exhibition, all converts are ultimately the sons or daughters of Abraham. And, of course, Ruth was also seen as a model for conversion. But the association of Ruth and Shavuot subtly makes another point: that there is no conversion without standing at Sinai. Because Shavuot is about the revelation at Sinai, it is also, inescapably, about conversion. It is this of which the reading of Ruth also reminds us.

There is a well-known rabbinic teaching claiming that all Jews, of all generations, stood at Sinai. Hence, we are all converts. The term the rabbis adopted for “convert” was the biblical word “ger”—“resident alien” or “stranger.” The Torah commands that we not oppress the ger, because we too were gerim in the land of Egypt. Whether converts or strangers, we have been both, and thanks to what we have learned from our experiences, we are obligated to welcome and protect the strangers and newcomers among us, for we are they. On this Shavuot, when we all stand again at Sinai, let us rededicate ourselves to this value, for ours is a world where it is often neglected.

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