This week’s Torah portion is a double portion. The reason we have double portions is so that during a Jewish leap year, when there are 13 months instead of 12, we can “unpack” the double portions so that each Shabbat in a leap year has its own Torah portion. When there is no leap year, such as this year, certain portions double up. This double portion ends the book of Numbers (Ba-Midbar – “in the desert” in Hebrew). Many of the themes in these two Torah portions have to do with final matters before the Israelites enter the Land of Canaan. One of these matters is the concept of the “cities of refuge” that will be established in the land. The Cities of Refuge are set up for cases of negligent homicide. In ancient times, when a person killed someone accidentally but negligently, that person was still subject to the vengeance of family of the deceased. In most pre-modern culture, any member of the opposing group in a feud would suffice for vengeance. If a Hatfield killed a McCoy, then a McCoy killed a Hatfield. The law in this week’s portion, the “Blood Avenger” (go’el ha-dahm) was a step forward in the development of law. Instead of all the members of a group being held responsible for a killing, only the actual perpetrator was held responsible. The offended clan or family would send out a Blood Avenger to seek retributive justice. The perpetrator could flee to a “city of refuge” to have the case heard. If the killing were deemed completely accidental, the person is free to go. If it turns out that the person committed willful murder, the court hands him over to the Blood Avenger, who slays the murderer. If the killing were negligent, but not intentional, the person can stay safely in the city of refuge until the current High Priest dies. At that time, the Blood Avenger is relieved of his duty to avenge the blood of his kinfolk, and the perpetrator can leave the city safely. This law clearly seems to be intended to prevent something rampant in pre-modern times, and still in force in many places today: the vendetta. If a person from one tribe, group, gang, mob, race, religion, nation etc., kills a person from another group, the offended group feels it has the right and duty to kill any member of the group of the perpetrator. Destructive feuds follow. This law takes us a step out of the primitive world of blood vengeance and limits the avenger to killing only the perpetrator and introduced the intervention of a court to adjudicate the case. The avenger is, of course, an executioner, but only of someone who has committed intentional murder. Accidental killings are excused and negligent homicides are handled within the city of refuge.

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Teaching in Exile(Adapted from 2019)

Rabbi Mordecai Finley, Ph. D.

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Parashat Matot-MasEi NuMbErs 30:2 - 36:13haFtarah

JErEMiah 2: 4-28; 3:4

The Talmud takes this wise and fairly straightforward law into unforeseen territory. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:42, where the matter is reviewed, that that person guilty of negligent homicide can flee to a city of refuge “and live”. The Talmudic rabbis ask what it means “to live.” Obviously, he goes there to live and not to die; that is the purpose of the law. “To live” must mean something else. The rabbis decide (as recorded in Tractate Makkot 10a) that a person cannot live without the study of Torah, so if a person is exiled to the city of refuge, his teacher must go with him. And where the teacher goes, the whole yeshivah goes. This reading of the text is, of course, contested, and there is no recorded case of a rabbi and the yeshivah following a negligent killer into the exile of a city of refuge (at least partly because rabbis and yeshivahs did not exist in the time of the Bible.)The Talmud is probably referring to something deeper, something that every real parent, teacher, healer, therapist, life coach, mentor, true friend, etc. knows: you can only guide another person if you are willing to go into the exile experienced by the person for whom you are caring. The empathy and insight required for true guidance requires that the person who assumes the role of guide can somehow peer into the soul of the suffering one and not be defended from what one sees there. The true witness to the suffering of another will not be untouched. Perhaps this is the mark of a healing presence, whether family, friend or counselor: the willingness to suffer some of the exile of the one in pain. The rabbi of the man who kills negligently must go into exile with him, we are taught, as well as the entire yeshivah. I try to imagine how the curriculum of this mythological yeshivah is affected, as the students in this yeshivah in the city of refuge are by now mostly those guilty of negligent homicide. I mean all of us. Relationships are often killed, negligently, by a thousand cuts. We often kill ourselves spiritually with relentless negative inner voices, cutting away at our sense of self. We need to flee to the city of refuge, a state of mind in which we admit that we are sometimes slowly and negligently killing the spirits of others, killing relationships, killing our own well-being. In that exile in the city of refuge, we can confront that destructive negligence and seek the teaching that will release us. Imagine that we are all in exile, all seeking the city of refuge, all seeking the teaching that will help us stop destroying that which we treasure. Off the top of my head, here are two little teachings. We all live with resentment and regret. You are not human if you have not been hurt or regret hurting yourself or others. But we ought not be weighted down into the past. Each day is a day that opens on to a new horizon, a new canvas for self creation. Voices of resentment and regret must be addressed (they never go away), but they ought not dominate our inner dialogue. Our inner life should be guided toward openness, hope and joy. A second teaching: understand poetry and irony. Oftentimes, the greatest teachings are taught through metaphor and misdirection, bypassing the defended and skeptical ego self, directly reaching the heart. The path to free will is not free.

Title, Continued

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The Second Haftarah of Destruction: This week we read the second of the three Haftarot of destruction. Here is a selection from the Haftarah: 4. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel; 5. Thus said the Lord: What iniquity have your fathers found in Me, that they have gone far from Me, and have walked after vanity, and have become themselves worthless? 6. And they did not say, where is the Lord who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt? 7. And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat its fruit and its goodness; but when you entered, you defiled My land, and made My heritage an abomination. 8. The priests did not say where is the Lord? And they who handle the Torah knew Me not; the rulers also transgressed against Me, and the prophets prophesied by Ba’al, and walked after things that do not profit. 9. Therefore, I will yet plead with you, says the Lord, and with your children’s children will I plead. 10. For crossover to the islands of Kittim, and see; and send to Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there is such a thing. 11. Has a nation changed their gods, even though they are not gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. 12. Be astonished, O you heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be greatly appalled, said the Lord.

Synopsis of Haftarah

Jeremiah 2: 4-28; 3:4

Synopsis of the Torah Portion Matot Numbers 30:2 - 32:421. The laws of making oaths -- the special case of a woman living under her father or husband.2. War against the Midianites for what happened at Ba’al Pe’or. The battle took place on the plains of Moab, across from Jericho.3. The purifying of captured Midianite utensils (this section serves as the basis for the koshering of utensils).4. The division of the spoils in the Midianite war.5. The request of the tribes of Reuben and Gad to remain on the East bank of the Jordan River.Synopsis of the Torah Portion Masei Numbers 33:1 -- 36:131. The summary of the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the borders of Canaan.2. The boundaries of Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel).3. The names of those who will lead the Israelites into Canaan.4. Levitical cities.5. Cities of refuge; the laws of the manslayer vs. the laws of the murderer.6. The prohibition of tribal intermarriage (raised by the problem of the daughters of Tselophehad). The ban was lifted on the 15th of Av, after the land of Canaan was partitioned.

Synopsis of the

Torah Portion

Numbers 30:2 - 36:13

Parashat Matot-Masei

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This Week We Remember...Samuel Rodd,

father of Sarabaeth Rodd, on July 12.

Happy Birthday...Yeshaia Blakeney on July 15

Richard Nagler on July 17Jacob Kantor on July 18

Lori Anne Shane on July 18

Happy Anniversary...Roni Scherr-Willson & Richard Willson on July 14

Our Condolences To...Clark Gregg

on the passing of his brother, Andrew Thompson Gregg, on June 11.Tammy Bersing Steiner & Joel Steiner

on the passing of Joel’s mother, Carol Winkler-Steiner, on June 30.

Caryn & Sheldon Burgh on the passing of Sheldon’s brother,

Edward Burgh, in May 2020.

Mazal Tov...Carolyn & Robert Blashek on the birth of their granddaughter, Hailey Rose Guja, on June 7.