[To make their camp a worthy home of the Divine Presence (Shechinah), the Israelites were cautioned to free their camp of tumah, “ritual contamination” (Ramban).  What constitutes ‘uncleanness’ might be surprising since here, it seems to focus on physical or material impurities, those associated with disease, waste, death and the like. If we fail to […]

[As former Messianics with opportunities to teach Bible, we used to connect many details in the “Old” Testament with the “New” (supposedly updated and not simply a continuation of the former), and particularly the ‘ministry’ of Jesus as the Christian Messiah/Savior/Son-God.   One question we would ask of our students:  “Why do you think Jesus […]

[The privilege of the first-born . . .  still exists to this day in families of most if not all cultures, prominent in royal families where the first child if specifically male, becomes the successor to the throne.  Surely this ‘privilege’ is rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the pronouncements of YHWH in these very […]

[And so the census begins, according to tribe.  The head count of each tribal group runs into not a few thousands but huge numbers which is mindboggling when you think that this is only a segment of the population that left Egypt.  If one man or one family ventured out into the wilderness and tried […]

[In addition to the commentary from Pentateuch & Haftarahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz, we are adding commentary from The Torah for Dummies by Arthur Kurzweil which he calls “A Reference for the Rest of Us!”  This book, while teaching Torah, also updates readers on rabbinical interpretation of their Scriptures, thereby giving us a glimpse into one major world religion— […]

[When we first read this book and discovered that only male Israelites were included in the ‘census’, the women among us understandably took offense. We had already soured over the fact that the practice of having multiple wives and concubines was tolerated in the patriarchal culture of YHWH’s chosen people, the worst record being the […]

[This INTRODUCTION is from Pentateuch & Haftarahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz.]   THE BOOK OF NUMBERS NAME. The oldest name for the fourth book of the Pentateuch is ‘the Fifth of the Musterings’; i.e., that one of the five of Moses which describes the numbering of the Israelites. Later it came to be known by the fourth word in […]