Shabbat Shalom - 28 Tammuz

The Pros are back!

While a host of layfolks have done an excellent job the past few weeks conducting Friday Evening and Saturday Morning Shabbat services, as happens during the summer, for this week’s services, the Professionals are back.

This Evening’s Erev Shabbat service will be conducted by Rabbi Leo Wolkow, beginning at 8:00 pm in the Garfein wing. Carole Fefferman, will be the Cantorial Soloist.

Tomorrow Morning’s Shabbat Service will begin at 10:00 am in the Garfein wing. Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus will conduct the service and Jerry Levine will be the Cantorial Soloist.

The Torah reading this week is the double Parsha Matot and Mas’ei , Numbers 30:2?36:13, which takes us to the very end of the Fourth Book of the Torah, relating the trials and tribulations of the Children of Israel in the Desert.
The reading begins with a short section on the validity of vows. A man’s vow: always valid, always binding. The vow of a maiden or a married woman? Binding! Unless her father or husband, as the case may be, disapproves of it when he learns about it.

Silly women to think they could utter a binding vow without permission of their….man!

The army is then sent out to conquer the Midianites, and does. But the army doesn’t kill the women or children, but merely takes them captive. Moses doesn’t like this very much, because, after all it was the Midianite women who caused all that trouble turning the nice Jewish boys astray to begin with. So he orders the women who have had intercourse with men to be killed, and divides up all the other captives and their possessions between G-d (whose share went to the Priests) and the Israelites at large. An impressive haul.

The balance of the reading is concerned with additional reports of the war — including the slaying of Balaam who may not have forseen his own death — some problems with those of the Tribes of Rueben and Gad, who want to live on the east side of the Jordan, a recitation of the routing taken by the Israelites over their 40 years in the Desert, instructions of what to do when the Tribes get to and settle on the other (Western) side of the Jordan, the Boundaries of the land given by G-d to the Israelites — a lot more territory than the modern state of Israel, by the way — some rules about murder.

Finally, a return to the problems of the five daughters of Zelophehad. (You remember them. G-d decided that they should inherit because their father died without male heirs?) It turns out you can appeal the legal rulings of G-d, at least if you’re an important clan leader and property is involved you can file a motion to reconsider. G-d’s final ruling. G-d decides that G-d was wrong — incomplete? — before, that the girls can inherit, but the inheriting girls would have to marry within their own Tribe, so that the Tribe wouldn’t lose any land.

chazak chazak v’nitchazeik

The Haftarah continues with preparation for Tisha B’Av, with Jeremiah 2:4?28; 3:4; 4:1?2