Bulletin Bamidbar

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Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
Shabbat Parshat Bamidbar
2 Sivan 5784 • June 8, 2024
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SHAVUOT
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Yahrtzeiten
June 7
June 8
June 9
June 13
Anniversaries
Nancy Garfinkel
Harvey Jacobson
Belle Agronin, Mark Litow
Steven Werlin
June 7 Lee & Joe Henson (55)
June 8 Terri & Stuart Kline (55)
June 12 Elaine & Fred Kamin (58)
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June 7 • 1 Sivan Martin Weiss – Father of Judy Fant
Simon Mest – Brother of Stuart Mest
Victor Rosenberg – Father of Alan Rosenberg
Ira Schwartz – Brother of Elliot Schwartz
June 9 • 3 Sivan Marvin Chartoff – Husband of Janice Chartoff
Martin Miller – Father of Karen Moss
June 11 • 5 Sivan Eleanor Blatt – Sister of Stephen Iser
June 13 • 7 Sivan Alter Bresnick – Father of Arnold Bresnick
June 14 • 8 Sivan Faye Keyser – Wife of Stephen Keyser
Jerry Ritigstein – Brother-in-law of Shepard Scheinberg
Birthdays
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Shabbat Kiddush Sponsored by:
Elaine & Fred Kamin
In honor of their 58 th anniversary
Lee & Joseph Henson
In honor of their 55th anniversary
Angela & Harvey Jacobson
In honor of Harvey’s Birthday
Mavens: Rosalee Bogo & Steve Chizzik
Assisted by: Elaine Kamin, Mel Goldfine,
Sabrina Strobl & Jill Valesky
Sponsor a
Kiddush
cuy kzn
Contact Arleen Sivakoff:
dsivakoff@aol.com • 239.455.8811

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Shabbat Bamidbar: Numbers 2:1–3:13 (Cycle 2) (Etz Hayim p. 774)
1. 2:1-9 2. 2:10-16 3. 2:17-24 4. 2:25-31
5. 2:32-34 6. 3:1-4 7. 3:5-13 M. 4:17-20 (p. 785)
Haftarah: Hosea 2:1–22 (p. _787__)
Torah Commentary
D’var Torah:
Abraham and Moses, Fathers of Many - Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
We are the inheritors of God’s two-fold promise to Abraham: children and land.
We are a great nation in the land of Canaan. The Book of Exodus opens with the
fulfillment of the promise of children, we explode in number. The Torah ends
with us poised to enter the land. That is, except for Moses. Moses will not enter
the land. And in our parashah, Moses’s children are written out of existence.
Our parashah is a celebration of the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise of
progeny. We number ourselves exuberantly by tribe, celebrating each tribe’s
function, each individual’s contribution. We, who once were slaves, are now a
fighting force. We are ready to take on anything, including taking on possession
of the land.
And yet, Moses’s children are gone. We read a most peculiar verse in Numbers
3:1, “And these are the generations of Aaron and Moses on the day
God spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai.” What follows is a list of Aaron’s
children. Moses’s kids, Gershom and Eliezer, do not appear. They may or
may not be there. We know that they rejoined Moses with their mother and
grandfather just before revelation. We know that Jethro left shortly afterward and
then perhaps one more time in the Book of Numbers. We do not know whether
Zipporah, Gershom, and Eliezer went with him. They are not mentioned again
in the Torah. They are not mentioned in our parashah, as the descendants of
Moses.
However, we find them and their descendants in the retelling in the Book of
Chronicles. We read in 1 Chronicles 23, “​The sons of Amram were Aaron
and Moses. And Aaron was set apart to be consecrated for the holy
of holies, he and his sons, forever to burn incense before God, to
minister to Him, and to bless in His name forever. And Moses, man of
God, his sons were called with the tribe of Levi. The sons of Moses
were Gershom and Eliezer. The sons of Gershom, Shebuel the first.
And the sons of Eliezer were Rehabiah the first, but Eliezer had no
other sons. And the sons of Rehabiah were very many.”
The promise is fulfilled after all! Moses gets not just some children, but he
becomes the father of many, just as Abraham was. So why is Moses’s great
lineage not mentioned in our parashah? Perhaps Moses’s children were nothing
to be proud of. In the Book of Judges, we find an oblique reference to Moses’s
grandchild engaging in idol worship. Moses’s name is only hinted at there - a nun

is inserted above the word to make it look as if we are talking about the grandson
of Menashe rather than of Moshe. In Sanhedrin 19b, Rabbi Yonatan explains that
in fact Aaron’s sons became as if they were Moses’s sons because Moses was their
teacher. Elsewhere these two ideas are combined and we read that Moses needed
to consider Aaron’s sons as his own because his sons engaged in idol worship.
There is also something powerful about our leader denying himself sons, losing
his sons, sending his sons away. Already, there are strong parallels between the
story of the Akedah for Abraham and that of the bridegroom of blood for Moses.
Both fathers nearly lose their sons when God requests those sons. Both fathers
have two sons. All these sons are sent away into the wilderness. And both fathers,
despite the promise of progeny and land, fear being childless or are effectively
childless. These fathers are our progenitors, our leaders, our exemplars. These are
the two men who make a covenant with God and seal our future. And they send
their sons away, they separate from those whom they love best of all.
In this behavior, we see echoes of the high priest’s behavior in the Azazel ritual.
He too will take two kids, nearly kill one of them and separate from the other one.
This ritual removes sin from the entire community. This ritual allows us to exist
in close contact with God. And this ritual allows us to choose life for our children.
Aaron has already lost his first two children. After Abraham, after Moses, and
after Aaron, we can release the model of the bereaved and lonely father. The
promise of progeny does not require us to risk our progeny. God chooses the
Levites instead and they choose to offer up the goats. When our family was
created through Abraham and our nation through Moses, we lost our sons. Our
parashah marks the beginning of a new regime, in which we no longer have to
offer up our sons to save ourselves.
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