Heretics Like Us

At the beginning of a long weekend, prepare for a reading of Deuteronomy.  It took us 6 months to read the first 4 books of Torah this year, and  this last book 'second book of the law' may seem like a remake of a familiar movie. What's the editorial ax being ground this time?

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Did the daughters of Zelophehad lost their hard-won property rights here - or were they preserved?  Is that a footnote, or another contrast that throws the rest of the covenant in relief?

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Is it just a digression, a footnote, to lay out 4 dozen towns for Levites, 6 of them to be cities of refuge?  Or does the exception prove the rule, both in the priestly role, and in the sanctuary offered accused in the face of vengeance?

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Get out your maps, and track the claims of ancestral homelands for the 12 tribes in Palestine.  Is this simply an early land claim for the 21st century state of Israel?  God forbid!

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As we wrap up the wandering, we start negotiating the patrimonies of the tribes entering the promised land - with the exception of the Levites and their cities and those of refuge - and a footnote about those daughters of Zelophehad.  Footnotes?

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How did it take us so long to wander in the wilderness?  Let's sum up the trip once more, retrace our steps, and wonder....

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What do you make of the 2.5 tribes across the Jordan in the Transjordan?  Have they got the same 'skin in the game' as the others?  Do we have such in-laws and cousins, in ecumenical and ethnographic terms?

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The wandering refugees get permission to hit back against the dominant  Midianites - read too often since as justification for genocidal wars by dominant nations against weaker ones...

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A woman's word can bind the household, the clan, in buying and selling.  In a change of relationship, a new patriarch must get notice, and disown or accept the obligations she has undertaken on our behalf.  Easy?

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Now the big 'high holidays', the pilgrimage festivals, in the annual cycle - and what are yours in comparison?

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So, compare this worship life of sacrifice to our own - lavish, communal, complex?

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The daily, weekly, monthly sacrifices are only the underlying rhythm - the foundation for the great festivals.  Rather than deride their complexity, we might reflect on our anemic observances?

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Daughters of Zelpophehad - without brothers - get to keep the clan's allotment of land.

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Counting the ranks again, including the clans within the tribes - collective shared benefits and burdens

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More than an individual romance, assimilating to the dominant host culture is an existential threat to the people.  Phineas enforces separation.

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Balaam sticks to his brief, and knows who's his boss - bless Israel, don't curse

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Balak wants him to curse, God says bless - Balaam is caught between - 

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The donkey outthinks the prophet - for now

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Barak and Balaam, and mustering on the banks of the Jordan, Israel's migrants are coming to the end of wilderness wandering - are we the xenophobic locals, or the fee-for-service pundits, or allies and advocates for the raggedy band?

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Sure, this magic is 'snake on a stick'. -the story is the detour around Edom, to come at the promised land from the east rather than from the south.

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A replay of the waters of Meribah, complaining still after nearly 40 years - and given water from a rock still

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When it's this weird, just do it!  The response to contact with a dead body includes water with ashes of the red heifer...

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Aaron won, but owes a tithe back on his tithes, reminder of the risks of self-serving over-reaching priesthood in the shadow of Korah's rebellion - do you really owe the commonwealth before your personal gratification?  Yes.

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Reinforcing Aaronic claims, left with 11 other tribal leaders' sticks in the hoy place, his staff sprouts fresh buds, blossoms, and almonds.  Someday,  the Messiah will hold that stick, eh?

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The Korahite rebellion gets some swallowed up, a plague stopped by incense after 17,400 deaths, extablishing the legitimate authority of Aaronic priesthood - or does it?

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Crossing the midpoint of Numbers, the end of wilderness wandering, including bits of magic: ground opening to swallow rebels, red heifer law, water from a rock, snake on a stick - what will you make of it all?

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Applying the 'if-then' rules 'as if', even though in a state of 'not yet' or 'no longer', might still provide moral guidance for choice - and the apparently draconian punishments can be 'read down' by Talmudic reasoning, eh?

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Caleb and Joshua alone resist the majority report of the other 10 consultants - and counsel courage

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10 out of 12 spies, scouts, or consultants get cold feet and warn the people away from the Promised Land, with tales of superhuman giants.

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Aaron and Miriam claim equality with Moses - God demurs, and dooms all 3 to die in the desert - after giving Miriam a case of tzara'at and quarantine outside the camp.

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Some of us are whining and whinging, and craving, but not construing our needs and appetites - angering God

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Imagine 12 tribes arrayed around the tent: 3 on each of 4 sides.  Which leads out when they break camp and relocate, which escort the holy things, and which act as rearguard?  Imagine then the re-enactments for millennia since, if only between ears and behind foreheads!

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From the south, 12 spies are sent to scout the Promised Land - 10 report back scared, to advise against entering.

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Who can participate, if their unclean status is not within their control?  Who should be invited beyond 'us'?

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Whose job is it to keep the home fires burning?  

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Here's a long (24 minutes) repetitive tale of a procession of 12 tribes in turn delivering the same set of gifts, regardless of their size or resources - to stay in the game as an equal tribal partner.

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It's not just by birth - but also by voluntary vows - that you can belong to the elites.  Remember Samson, or Samuel?

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Separating out the people with unclean skin or contact with dead bodies is one thing - but dealing with a jealous husband without proof of his wife's infidelity demands a harder ritual!

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Here are the job descriptions for the elites of the Aaronic priesthood, who would handle the holiest things, to pack them up to move.

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From mustering to other ways of counting: us and them, clean and unclean, if this then that - from Passover to jealous husbands, enjoy the week!

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Drilling down into the specific duties of the priests, particularly in breaking camp to move the people into the wilderness.  

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So line up those mustered men of military age, by tribes, on each of four sides of the tent in Sinai.  Imagine, 603,500 arrayed in order - or the variety of re-enactments since, at in-gathering festivals.  

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Do you imagine 600 thousand military-aged men (let alone the complementary kids and women) arrayed in order In 12 tribal groups?  Oh, yeah?  

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Is it a census or a military muster, or just a normative imaginary pageant desert?  We start 3 days, 3 chapters of recitals of the tribes, assembled on the 4 sides of the tent - and implicitly, a model for the people organized around a first temple, exile, second temple, and diaspora since.  Try it!

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Almost like an appendix, hekdesh - what does it mean to 'redeem' a person by paying what's owed, according to Leviticus?

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These are the consequences of infidelity, in the divine ecology of Leviticus.  If you seek right relations, or if you maltreat creation, there will be outcomes.

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Not just the people, but the land gets a break, standing in for God - leave it to volunteer enough for the humans...

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Here's the subversive climax of the Leviticus approach to 'us' and 'ours'.  Beyond sabbath and sabbatical, how about every 50 years we just redistribute all the land back - and let the land have sabbath, lest it vomit us up and out?

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Keep your lamps lit, in routines and rituals - then the arguments of proportionate responses to offences, rather than escalating vigilante feuds - and a strange story of an offender being stoned - or was he, if witnesses had to stand before the stones with him?

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From our culture of 24/7/365, can we imagine this rhythm of festivals, mandatory in-gathering?  Passover, Shavuot, in our spring, plus Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur through High Holidays in our fall, set a higher standard, eh?

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