Drash Cards for BaMidbar (5760)

by Marc Mangel

• I have waited 3o years to give a drash with a capital Daled. I will orate in the tradition of the prophets, Heschel, or Baptist preachers

• The whole picture:  6 weeks ago we were told to behave “As if we all left Egypt”.  One week ahead we will be at Sinai

• You just don’t cross the water and become free — change takes time (40 yrs in this case)

• You can’t get into the promised land without going into the desert. What is your desert?

• This book used to be called Chumash Ha-Pekudim (the book of inventories]. Mishna Yoma notes that this is the first citizen’s army

• So I ask today, who is a hero? And want to compare Joni Netanayahu and Butch Williams

• Hermann Wouk “When a man like Col. Netanyahu dies in a flaming deed of glory we feel agony and sadness, but there’s a sense of tragic catharsis in what the man achieved with his death. But what did Butch Williams achieve with his death?…I’ll tell you what he did. He served he was there”. Heroes are those who are there and who serve.

• In Ch 51 we read that any outsider who encroaches shall be put to death (think of Nadav and Avihu). The Talmud says that this even applies to King David.

• The Rabbis teach us that community is based not on a hierarchy of importance but on a hierarchy of responsibility. Even David, who met his responsibility, could not take over those of the Levites