The commandment to appoint judges and law enforcement is given.
The commandment on how to deal with idolaters is given.
The commandment to appoint a king is given.
The commandment on how to deal with a rebellious legal authority is given.

G-d tells us we will have prophets. Although only a handful of prophets are actually mentioned in Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), our tradition tells us it was a common phenomenon before the destruction of the First Temple.

The rules of engagement are enumerated.
The commandment of what to do with a stranger who died on the road is given.

My analysis:

Prophecy is such an alien concept to us. In the rabbinic world they make the joke (I expect no one to laugh)”What is it called when you talk to G-d? Prayer. What is it called when G-d talks to you? Schizophrenia.” Clearly then, to say that there were many people walking around at one point claiming G-d was talking in their ears and telling them the secrets of the world. I can understand why religion might not be taken seriously with that perception.

To understand what prophecy was about, one needs to understand what prophecy is. We have a number of words in Hebrew that are used in reference to prophecy. All of them are words related to seeing. Prophecy was clarity of perception of the world not just in terms of the physical space, but it was an ability to see into the spiritual world. Science subscribes to the concept of four dimensions (the three that compose space and time) and Judaism acknowledges a fifth (soul). Someone with a real clarity can conceptualize that fourth dimension and in a sense they can see from the beginning of time to the end. Of course, we say G-d needs to help you with this process since it is beyond this world, but that is the process very simplified.

Among the different qualities a prophet had to have, one was that they needed an open, settled mind. Someone with a narrow viewpoint or allows the world to mess with their head won’t be able to achieve this level of perception. The rabbis tell us that level of serenity hasn’t existed since the First Temple.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have a piece of it, and that piece won’t help us get by in life. If you take the time to settle your own head before making a decision, you’re going to make better decisions. If you take the time to smell the flowers, meditate, or study up on heavy-duty philosophical things, like Torah, it’s going to affect your decisions. The most important part of that process however is the ability to be receptive to new ideas and innovations. It means sometimes doing away or challenging preconceived notions. That doesn’t mean don’t think or question. Quite the opposite is true. Only with an open, settled mind can you achieve some level of this thing we call prophecy, and some say that it is even possible for the right person to achieve even that state in the present time.

G-d promises that the Jews will be able to take over Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) and that He will provide for them.

G-d prepares the Jews to enter the Land by reviewing incidents where they had messed up along the way and how G-d had helped them as well as punished them.

Moshe describes how he had interceded on behalf of the Jews during the incident of the Golden Calf.

The Torah makes a correlation between the performance of good or bad deeds and positive and negative consequences in this world.

My analysis:

I just remember this one Maharal I learned a number of years back that helped me to understand some of these reward and punishment portions. I happened to really like Maharal because of his heavy philosophical analysis that makes you feel smarter every time you pick up his books:

There’s so many places where people are getting rewarded with treasure or getting zapped all throughout Tanakh. If you notice, there are no explicit mentions of reward or punishment in the Next World. It seems odd to have a religion with no afterworld, and the fact is that the same people who put Tanakh together, the rabbis, say that in fact we do have a conception of a next world, including reincarnation, resurrection, and an ethereal next world of reward and punishment. So why no explicit mention of any of this?

Imagine this: you spend three weeks writing a paper on your laptop which gets stolen, you don’t have the paper so you fail the class and lose your scholarship and are forced to leave school and work in a gas station, and someone tells you as a reward for your good deeds you’ll get to do it all over again? Spiritual concepts such as the Next World can’t really be spelled out in physical terms, and to write them out would distort the concept. Only through allusions made in the prophetic literature coupled with a good teacher can someone begin to get a picture of what these things really are.

Incidentally, the fact that these things aren’t spelled out also tells you how much of your time should be spent worrying about what’s going to be. Take care of the here and now and you will be taken care of.

Tisha B’Av is the national mourning holiday for the Jews. A number of the major Jewish tragedies happened on this day and the day after, and fast on this day from sunset until the stars come out the next evening. Showering, wearing leather shoes, and being with your spouse are also off limits. Here is a quick rundown, though it is not an inclusive list:

The proclamation the Jews would wander in the desert for 40 years
The destruction of the Two Temples in Jerusalem
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492
The liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust
The expulsion of the Jews from Gaza in 2005, many of whom still lack permanent housing

I don’t do well with fasts, and even after a very powerful class in the morning I still wasn’t feeling anything except hungry, tired, and cranky, all the way until the end of the fast. It was at afternoon services that I just was going over in my head the different things I had learned when I saw an old student of mine. Both of us lit up when we saw each other, but we only spoke afterward.

I was very happy to hear he’s taking the MCAT’s in a few weeks, and everyone should wish him luck. That’s a different story.

The only reason I mention is we both understood that as happy as we were to see each other was that it wasn’t the time then. You have to be able to compartmentalize, like the Byrd’s song goes (taken from the book of Kohelet/Ecclesiastics incidentally) “a time to live, a time to die”. So there was certainly time for us to talk, but there was also a time, a necessary time, to sit and reflect on what’s gone wrong in the past and what we plan to do in the future so that it doesn’t happen again. Tisha B’Av is that day, and now I fully plan on enjoying the rest of the summer, and checking up on a few of my students in the process.

My analysis:
I wonder how many of you are history majors. I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you that career-wise it’s not the smartest choice, unless you’re doing law or you really want to become a teacher (FYI Social Studies teachers have the hardest time finding a job of any of the other core subjects). I would say don’t make the same mistake I did, but for some people it ultimately does work itself out.
For those of you who avoided history, that’s whom I’m writing this piece for. I happen to like it, but I can understand why you wouldn’t. Leave it to a textbook to take a perfectly good war and turn it into a sleep medication. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take it. History is not like that class in conspiracy theories or multi-variable Calculus. History is relevant to your life whether you know it or not.
Americans don’t always have such a concept of history the way people in other parts or the world do. We sometimes have difficulty understanding animosity that people have for one another in different countries just because of something that happened hundreds of years ago. It seems silly and stupid. While I agree some of it is, it’s not so simple.
History is the combined experiences of a people. Have you ever thought about what makes you Jewish? Many people might think: “Oh, it’s because we all went through the Holocaust.” That’s the right track, but such a small piece of the story, which starts with the historical narratives in the Torah and keeps going right through to today. The things the Rabbis of old wrote affect your life and perceptions in ways you might not realize. I could go through examples but not every example applies to every person. You can see if you ever take the time to go through our sources how much is reflected in your attitudes no matter what your affiliation.

The command to light the Menorah (candelabrum) is given.

The Leviim are officially inaugurated into the service in the Mishkan.
Pesah Sheni (2nd Passover), the make up day for the Pesah (Passover) sacrificial offering, is established. It’s not really celebrated nowadays except some people eat matzah.
There are two verses that discuss the Jews moving through the desert, and the rest of what it looked like when the Jews moved around is described. These two verses are treated like its own separate book.
The Jews complain and ask for meat. They got quail. Quail are small birds with not a whole lot of meat on them from what I’ve been told. Not worth what happened to them next.
Miriam makes an off-handed comment about her brother Moshe’s wife, and is punished with Tzaraat (the leprosy-like disease discussed in Parshat Tazria).

My analysis:

Forgive this one being a bit philosophical but I just read Halachic Man by R’ Yosef Ber Soloveitchik. It’s heavy and touches on a number of philosophers I never bothered reading in college like Plato and Aristotle. It made me feel a bit dumb actually. I may go back and read them but I have a lot on my plate right now.
The word used when the Cohen lights the Menorah means “to raise up”, not to light. Rashi says the wick has to be lit until the flame goes up by itself. It the midst of what is usually a purely spiritual event, which it is in most religions, there’s a little law thrown right in there. There are actually many laws to be learned from every verse.

Rav Soloveitchik makes the argument that the essence of Jewish spiritualty is the laws themselves. The laws, while seeming burdensome, actually orient you to relate to the world in a spiritual manner. The laws are a representation of cosmic perfect concepts that the Jew takes and imposes on an imperfect reality, thus perfecting it to a higher spiritual order. He says a person accomplishes this without the need of mystical intentions or intentions, and is fulfilled by living in the world rather than escaping it. The phrase I’ve heard is that it is bringing heaven down to Earth. He said it is possible to corrupt this notion by using laws or concepts invented by man, such as Social Darwinism, which has actually been used to advance some very destructive agendas. He says the concepts represented in our laws are divine concepts, divine principles, which have even been expressed in mathematic equations. The Menorah represents all of this because it is light that comes out from the walls of the Mikdash and illuminates the world.
I personally don’t know how I feel about a Judaism without Kabbalah (mysticism) the way Rav Soloveitchik expressed it. My friend follows this path and came up with a nice compromise position. He says Judaism has room for mysticism, but Judaism is unique that you can be spiritual without being mystical. Point taken.

Rashi asks the question why the account of the Sotah is right next to the account of the Nazir.  He says because when someone sees a Sotah in her downfall, one should take a vow of Nazirut to keep him or her (I hate grammar check) from slipping off the straight and narrow path.

Dr. David Pelcovitz, who was one of my professors at YU and a really nice guy, said this doesn’t make sense.  Shouldn’t it be seeing someone being smitten Biblical style be enough of a deterrent?   What he said was is human nature is to see the crime and not the consequences.

Tell me: when you see in the police log that someone got written up for something, did that make you want to not do it.  My friends and I used to try to get into the police log on purpose, without getting caught of course.  And for the record we were successful three or four times sophomore year.  Clearly no one was scared of the big bad blotter.

My wife had a similar story that I like and she is grossed out by: she met this one redneck while hanging out with her friends in her native Texas.  Someone brought up the fact that they were having roach problems or something like that.  The redneck said in order to show the roaches that they shouldn’t come in, you have to show them what happens if they violate.  Any time he caught a roach, he would pin it up around his apartment so they would “see what happens.”  He claims his strategy was effective in warding off the roaches after a few months.  He also apparently had a bigger body count tacked to the wall that Vlad the Impaler.  It just doesn’t work.

I’m sure we all know someone who’s having issues in their life and is being at least somewhat self destructive.  We’d all like to help these people.  Scare tactics are not the way to go.  Apparently “Scared Straight” did work with many of the teens that went to the prison for the filming of that movie.   I’m skeptical though.  My experience is that it hasn’t been effective at completely curbing the self-destructive behavior.  Helping someone take proactive steps to make their life better does.  The nazir is called holy for taking on this level of restraint.  Someone should feel good about themselves (I’m not changing it this time.  I’m sick of grammar check) for holding back on being self-destructive.  All the more so if they do something actually positive.