Kol Ramah

For over fifteen months, Eliot, Jeremy, and I have been meeting on Zoom each week to discuss the parashah [the weekly Torah reading] and other items of interest, and to record a podcast known as Parashah Talk. It has become one of the highlights of my week, both the opportunity to meet in friendship and the opportunity to talk Torah, one of my great loves. Week in and week out we met, sometimes on a Wednesday, sometimes on a Thursday, sometimes on another day. Finally, our respective schedules caught up with us, and a week ago Sunday we recorded two shows. So, I do not quite remember what we talked about! Parashat Mattot-Massai [Numbers 30:2-36:13] is one of the longest readings of the year, and concludes the Book of Numbers. There is the cancellation of vows by a father or a husband for his daughter or wife, which often occasions comment in the modern world for the apparent bias/discrimination against women; there is the successful [and problematic] war against Midian after which Moshe will be gathered