Shalom. I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg. This video is about the double Torah Parshat that concludes the end of Numbers that we read many years. They are called Matot masei and they tell very important and interesting stories, values and laws for the Jewish people.
For one thing, they talk about the various places that the Israelites camped in their journey of 40 years in the desert. In one hand, you might ask, why does anyone care where they camped? But the sages noted that it is like a human being in examining the various places that we soldiered in our lifetime. First of all, the life cycle of most, thinking back about our place of origin, about our birth, about our adolescence, about our mitzvah, our high school years, our college years, our majors, our career choice, our dating, our marriage, the illness, children, experiences that we had. We basically remember our life through the various stages of our life. Another way to examine, it is through the places where we actually lived. I lived in this house, I lived in that house, I lived in this city, I lived in there city. So too, it is important in remembering the history of our ancestors, to recount the places that they journeyed. It was not that they stopped and camped every few weeks. They were in about 20 places in the 40 years. They were in some places for a very long time.
Another story talks about is the boundaries of the land of Israel. Now, it cleared that God promised a lot of land, much more than a Gods that current live in the state of Israel to the Jewish people, the Israelites. And so anyone who is trying to explain that the Jewish are not entitled to a homeland, they have to account for the Bible and God saying this is the Land of Israel.
Now most Jews have been very understanding of the desire for peace and have continuously said that for the sake of peace that Jews should settle for less land on the Bible promises land. Not all; Jews agree to that, but most do. So much for the desire for peace, but the amount of our land occupied by the Jewish people today, a very small slice of the piece that was promised to our ancestors in the Bible.
Then there is another interesting story that goes with the heart of the issue of the Jewish people living outside of Israel. There was a debate among some of the great Rabbis in the Middle Ages is to whether it is incumbent upon all Jews to live in Israel or we have an option? In fact, some of the prominent scientists like Theodore Hudson of the last century in conceiving about the Jewish state believe that once the state came into being, every Jew would go there and the one who are left would eventually evaporate, well, certainly it has not happen that way.
This particular story is about 2-1/2 of the 12 tribes woven God and half of the tribe in Manasha, who come to Moses and say that they like to stay across the Jordan, outside the boundary of the land of Israel and settle there. And Moses first used this as a catastrophe and as a rebellion. He finally got assures me, that if those people send there a young man to help support the survival of the young Jews in Israel, and then they can live outside diaspora that kind is the basis for the Jewish existence today outside the diaspora.
Then we have the establishment of the cities of refuge. If somebody commits man slaughter, accidental death and they have six cities, three on each side of Jordan where they supposed to live, in protection, but in a kind of a special city for those people.
And finally, a very interesting story about women’s rights and about seeking justice. There is man named Zelophehad who died, he was a good man. And he had five daughters. These five daughters realized that the law says at that time, that any land that was belonged to their father would now not be inherit by the girls. And so, they come to Moses and imagine the Mitzvah these girls come in to Moses, the big cheese, the most important guy in the world, who is responsible for all of the Israelites, and they make their case to have and it is not fair. And you know Moses does not argue, very interesting. He simply turns it over to God and God says that the cause of the girls’ is just. So God realizes the law until then was not the way it should be and the law changes itself right there. A fascinating story about the flexibility of our changing law based on ethics, about the Torah itself changing about women’s rights. That is the story of Matot masei and there we end the book of Numbers.
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