האתר של ד"ר פנחס יחזקאלי
This weekly Torah portion, Naso, is the longest among the 54 that comprise the cyclical yearly public readings. The reason for that extraordinary length of 176 verses is the successive repetition in the verbatim of five verses at the end of the portion readout tediously even twelve times, like a broken record.
In his futile attempts to ‘’dodge’’ the divine draft, Moses slandered the leaders of Israel arguing as a matter of fact that they would not listen to him; these words were nothing short of casting a verbal aspersion at others. Indeed, when Moses gathers the Israelite leaders the people do believe in his divine commission to facilitate their liberation from Egypt. Hence, after Moses had made that verbal slur God struck his hand with tsaraat, thus creating the first biblical connection between this affliction and slanderous speech.
When the Torah portion of Sh’mini was timed a l o n g time ago in Babylon to fall soon after Passover no one could anticipate that many centuries later it would fall in very close proximity to the State of Israel’s day of commemorating the Holocaust (Yom Ha-Shoah) on 27 Nissan…
Where did the Pharaoh find horses for the 600 ‘’picked chariots’’, indeed, ‘’all the chariots of Egypt’’ who pursued the just-freed Israelites overtaking ‘’them encamped by the sea’’?
One who serves others must be fired up without letting go. And this may very well be the reason for the repeated need for the altar’s flame to keep going constantly…
While the book of Leviticus and its first portion Vaikra focus considerably on animal sacrifices as a standard way of serving God, they do offer alternative offerings…
Having overheard such merciless slanders Moses decided right away to provide a full and exhaustive report about the gifts that the people gave for the building of the Tent of Meeting and for the making of its accessories…
Rather than owning up to his failed leadership by not standing up to the people, who had demanded the making of a golden calf to supersede Moses on the 40th day since his “disappearance”, Aaron blamed the people…
This Torah portion Tetsaveh is unique if only because it is the only portion in the Torah (since we have been introduced to Moses at the beginning of Exodus) where his name per se is absent…
This weekly portion of Torah uses a significantly different verb — "And they shall make" (a single Hebrew word) — in its instruction regarding the making of an Ark that would house the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai.
