Bulletin Matot

Welcome • ohtcv ohfurc
Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
Shabbat Matot/Masei
26 Tammuz 5783 • July 15, 2023 n
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Havdalah at the Beach!
Saturday July 15 th
at 8:00 p.m.
Lowdermilk Park
Light refreshments
Rain date:
July 22 th

Yahrtzeiten
July 14 • 25 Tammuz Fay B. Dunn – Mother of Norma Rosen
July 15 • 26 Tammuz Philip Brown – Father of Jack Brown
July 18 • 29 Tammuz Joel Mest – Father of Stuart Mest
July 20 • 2 Av John Geist – Father of Sam Geist
July 22 • 4 Av Frances Glaser – Father of Arlene Sobol
Birthdays
July 14
July 15
July 17
July 20
July 22
Anniversaries
Anne Rubenfeld
Bruce Bier
Bernard Portnoy, Liuva Sando
Angela Jacobson
Melvin Goldfine
July 20 Marcia Cohodes & David Goldsteen (37)
120 sg
vfrck oburfz
jna `skuv ouh
Shabbat Kiddush Sponsored by:
A Celebration
of Community and Friendship
Mavens: Steve Chizzik
Assisted by: Rosalee Bogo, Joe & Sue Hammerman
Linda & Shep Scheinberg, Jill Valesky and Sue Hammerman
Sponsor a
Kiddush
cuy kzn
Contact Arleen Sivakoff:
dsivakoff@aol.com • 239.455.8811
Share the news of your Simchas with us…
• Birth of a grandchild
• Marriage of a child
• Bat/Bar Mitzvah in the family
Please contact Lee Henson: lHenson13@GMAIL.COM

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Shabbat Matot/Masei: Num. 30:2-31:54 (Etz Hayim p. 941)
1. 30:2-9 2. 30:10-13 3. 30:14-17 4. 31:1-12
5. 31:13-24 6. 31:25-41 7. 31:42-54 M. 36:11-13 (p.967)
Haftarah: Jeremiah 2:4-28, 3:4 (Etz Hayim p. ___)973
Torah Commentary
D’var Torah:
Womanhood and Peoplehood - Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
This week is not a great week for women. We start with the issue of vows.
Men need to keep vows. Women do too, that is, unless their father or their
husband annuls their vows for them upon hearing about them. Next,
we learn about the vengeance to be wrecked on the Midianites for the
incident at Baal Peor.
Each tribe sends troops against the Midianites, and we kill all their men,
slaughter their kings, set fire to their towns, and take the women, children,
and animals captive. However, this is not quite the vengeance Moses was
hoping for. He chastises us for our mercy, for allowing the women and
children to live. He says,
“You have let every female live! Look, these are the ones who led the
Israelites by Balaam’s word to betray the Lord’s trust in the affair of Peor,
and there was a scourge against the Lord’s community. And now, kill
every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a
man in lying with a male, kill. And all the little ones of the women who
have not known lying with a male, let live.”
Moses commands us to massacre all the boys and all the women who
have had sex. After all, he blames the women for causing the incident
at Baal Peor. The additional massacre of the boys is horrific, although
common in the Ancient Near East. After all, the Egyptians did it to us.
What demands more interpretation is why Moses not only allows the
virgin women to live but also gives them as captives to the soldiers and
to all of Israel. This follows the law in Deuteronomy of marrying captive
women. But it is highly problematic in the context of the incident at Baal
Peor. After all, the original problem seemed to be the intermarriage! The
whole affair at Baal Peor was precipitated by sleeping with foreign women.
Now, just as we have cleansed ourselves of the whole affair, we sleep with
those same foreign women.
Shockingly, the way to make sense of this seeming contradiction is to refer
back to the vows of women at the beginning of the parshah. The vows of

married women can be annulled by their husbands, the vows of women
still in their fathers’ houses can be annulled by their fathers. Likewise,
it would seem that the very nationhood of women can be annulled by
killing their fathers and becoming their husbands.
When we blame the Midianite women for Baal Peor, we are blaming them
as representatives of their nation. The problem is that the Israelites, by
marrying into the Midianite people, might assimilate into them and lose
ourselves. The problem is not with any individual Midianite woman. We
are concerned only with establishing kinship ties with other nations. The
women become the symbol of all that is wrong with Midian but they also
do not have the agency or power to maintain their Midianite-ness in the
absence of their men.
The Israelites are slightly different. When we ourselves become captives
after the defeat of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, it is
largely just our women who are left alive. We imagine ourselves as Lady
Jerusalem, the personified female survivor, in the Book of Lamentations.
We imagine this woman as both a whore and a survivor of rape, a widow
and murderous mother. The biblical writers project onto her the most
desperate of female images. And then we embody her. She becomes
us, she becomes the symbol of the Israelite people, capable not only of
representing our nation, but also of holding God to account.
Join
✺
Rabbi Chorny
for his weekly discussion
group, Tuesdays at
12:15 p.m. via
and IN Person
Office Hours:
Weekdays
from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m
Gillian can be reached at
(239) 434-1818
Rabbi’s Office Hours:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
from 10 a.m. to noon.
Or call his cell (239) 537-5257
to make an appointment.
Beth Tikvah of Naples
1459 Pine Ridge Road
Naples, FL 34109
239 434-1818
Visit us online at
bethtikvahnaples.org
or scan the QR code
to go there directly