#chukat

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Red Heifer Yourself!! - Parshat Chukat

Rabbi Benny's Weekly Torah Thought... Keeping it short, contemporary and meaningful.

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Tonight in Torah study: Chukat-Balak- 6/27/2023

A Numbers double feature. A lot happens in these two portions. We open on the description of the red heifer and its preparation and use, bef

tonight in torah study we discuss food that doesn't cause you to shit, getting owned by your own ass, the ongoing tensions between g-d and the israelites, and [checks notes] dubcon pony play

[torahgalus]

Chukat

this time with no Miriam to lead us, we shake out our timbrels and dance with abandon, cries bursting from each rough, wet throat. we sing as our mothers did, the waters lapping at our feet, hopping about each severed limb. we sing that we are saved, we sing  that we are sated.

[oneshul]

Chukat: The Brass Serpent

“The LORD sent fiery serpents against the Israelite People [for the sin of doubting Moses]. They bit the people, many of whom died. The people came to Moses and begged him to help them, by interceding with God. The Lord said to Moses,‘Make a fiery serpent—Seraph of brass, and mount it on a standard. If anyone  is bitten looks upon it, they shall recover.’ Moses did so, and the people were healed.”

--Numbers 21: 6-9

 I am Nechushtan, the Brass Serpent, Healer of the Israelites from the plague they brought down upon themselves. How dared they to doubt the leadership of Moses, as well as complain about the manna, the bread from heaven? Well, God told Moses to construct me, and I healed them from the fiery bites of the serpent-plague.

And yet, I daresay that you have never heard of me, nor ever seen my like before! For a God Who forbade the practice of idolatry, is it not strange that He authorized the building of an idol—myself? Yes, yes, I hear you say; the purpose of Nechushtan was not to be an object of worship; it was to be a source of healing, albeit a dramatic one. How long do I appear in the text of the Torah? For five verses only—that is a short episode, indeed.

Never forget that Torah is not like your post-Modernist literature. A character or object may appear for just a few verses, and then vanish just as quickly. I, Nechushtan, do reappear later in the text—not the Torah’s, but in Prophets, during the reign of the reformist King Hezekiah:

“Hezekiah abolished and destroyed all forms of idolatry. He broke into pieces the brass serpent that Moses had made, for the Israelites had been making offerings to it; it was called Nechushtan.”

--II Kings 18:4

So, clearly, despite my long absence from the text, I still managed to influence Israelite worship—or, at least, idolatry. What is the lesson?

It is in the nature of you human beings to collect and venerate objects you deem sacred, blessed, or just lucky. Whether or not the plague of the fiery serpents actually occurred, whether Moses constructed me, only to have Hezekiah destroy me, centuries later—I served my purpose. I gave some mystical quality to the text—how many times can one read of the Israelites angering their short-tempered Deity, and His punishing them? Instead, I began a body of legend that still persists, today. All glory to me, Nechushtan, the Brass Serpent!

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Rabbi David Hartley Mark is from New York City’s Lower East Side. He attended Yeshiva University, the City University of NY Graduate Center for English Literature, and received semicha at the Academy for Jewish Religion. He currently teaches English at Everglades University in Boca Raton, FL, and has a Shabbat pulpit at Temple Sholom of Pompano Beach. His literary tastes run to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Stephen King, King David, Kohelet, Christopher Marlowe, and the Harlem Renaissance.

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I haven’t written a dvar since my bat mitzvah (and I’m 27. So it’s been a long time) and am leading a service in 2 weeks. Does anyone have any dvar writing advice?? The parsha is Chukat. Cleansing impurities from contact with the dead and then Miriam and Aaron’s deaths. I was thinking going somewhere with Moses hitting the rock and doing a discussion on losing your temper and consequences?

[parshapoem]

Chukat

We were without water after her death I remembered the rock years ago how I drew water from stone sister beside me. I struck the rock again, without words but time is like water and drops into dust. I, too, will die in the desert.

[hineini]

haven’t stopped thinking through

As I was falling asleep yesterday evening, something refused to leave my head: some questions linked to why I was offered an aliyah during worship. On one level, I hardly felt I deserved it due to the abuse my employer's putting me through, desperate as they are to judge and attack me according to the fact I have epilepsy and happen to have been created gay (and won’t hesitate to make that known-directly or indirectly-to fight heterosexism or speak against anything homophobic). Looking through an entirely different lens, it felt surreal since yesterday was shabbat chukat. Gentle lesson or reminder: that Torah portion shares a story that hits hard for anyone who’s been through bullying linked to unrealistic expectations and could have been stopped if a witness had intervened any. As it is, I’ve been left to wonder if that was God trying to tell me something about the fact Ze will help me rise above everything or if it was pure coincidence. Trust a certain Jewish dyke to think too hard.

[virtual-beit-midrash]

Learn the Parsha:  Chukat

Chukat is parsha 39 out of 54.  Parsha #6 in Bamidbar (Numbers)

Israel spent 40 years wandering in the desert, but the Torah doesn’t tell us what happened during most of that time.  Last Parsha we were still in year #2, and this parsha we jump to the last year.  We are now telling the story of the new generation.

Main topics:

* Laws of the Red Heifer and ritual impurity

* Moshe’s Sin - Moshe hits a rock with his rod in order to give the nation water, God gets upset and tells Moshe he will not enter the Promised Land

* Aharon dies

* Israel bypasses Edom and wage war against the peoples on the eastern side of the Jordan

* Israel arrives at the the Plains of Moab, where they will stay until the final parsha

Texts

Parsha: Numbers 19:1-22:1

Haftarah: Judges 11:1-33 (Yemenites read up to verse 40) - Yiftach the  Gileadite wages war against Amon, and retells the story of our parsha