{"id":1193,"date":"2015-05-25T00:56:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T00:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=1193"},"modified":"2015-05-25T00:56:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T00:56:30","slug":"bamidbar-5765","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=1193","title":{"rendered":"BaMidbar (5765)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Drash Cards for BaMidbar (5765)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By Marc Mangel<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I am going to riff on theme from Shlomo concerning how we name the books of the Torah and the Christians name them. We call this book BaMidbar \u2013 In the Desert. The Christians call it Numbers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Israelites are in the desert, where they received the Torah.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What does the desert teach us? We learn from the desert what is essential for life and what is superfluous. What our essence is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The desert is ownerless (or owned by everyone). The Torah is given in the wilderness so that anyone who wants to acquire it can.<\/li>\n<li>The desert teaches us that we don\u2019t need a lot to live. \u00a0That we don\u2019t need a lot to follow the Torah.<\/li>\n<li>But we wander in the desert \u2014 there is no shortcut to the promised land, no instant transformation from slaves to free people. Each one of us is trying to get out of our own Egypt. \u00a0And the message of BaMidbar is that we don\u2019t need a lot of stuff to do it.<\/li>\n<li>This book begins with a census \u2013 hence the Christian name. Indeed, the traditional explanation of the connection between the Haftorah and the Torah portion is the the second word of the Haftorah is \u201cmispar\u201d \u2013 numbers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In this census, every Jew counts equally, because every individual has his or her own unique contribution to the whole.<\/li>\n<li>But each is also counted as a member of his or he family, and as a member of a tribe because the backbone for the Torah life and society are the unique individual, the family, and significant communal groups.<\/li>\n<li>Why does God count us? Surely God knows how many Israelites there are. When things are counted, they stand in equality \u2014 the point of the census was to bring each Jewish soul to the surface \u2013 to remind the Israelites that each is equally important.<\/li>\n<li>Each of us is a unique individual \u2014 all equally important \u2014 and part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2022We read today after the census has been completed and the organization of the tribes around the Miskhan<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Judah, Issachar and Zebulun to the east; Reuven, Simeon, and Gad to the south; Benjamin, Manasseh, and Ephraim to the west; and Dan, Asher and Naphtali to the north.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Surely the Tabernacle did not need protecting \u2013 the Torah and its commandments protect us (remember the ending of <em>Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Rebbe taught that the lesson of the encampment is that we need to guard our inner sanctuary \u2013 our homes and our hearts \u2013 from all sides: the spiritual indifference on the north; hot, lustful passions on the south; self-satisfication and ego on the east; and despair on the west.\u00a0\u00a0 We do this through study and observance of the mitzvot.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drash Cards for BaMidbar (5765) By Marc Mangel I am going to riff on theme from Shlomo concerning how we name the books of the Torah and the Christians name them. We call this book BaMidbar \u2013 In the Desert. The Christians call it Numbers. The Israelites are in the desert, where they received the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=1193\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":51,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1193","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1194,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1193\/revisions\/1194"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}