Kol Ramah

Parsha Talk, with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. We often refer to the Torah as the Chumash, a shortening of the Hebrew phrase for the 5 Books of Moses or 5 Books of the Torah. But there is a rabbinic tradition that there are actually 7 books, based on a scribal anomaly where the two verses 10:35-36 are bracketed by inverted nuns [the 14th letter of the Hebrew alphabet] in the Torah scroll.. Our book of Numbers would then comprise 3 books: 1:1-10:34, 10:35-36, and 11:1-12:16. There is no clear consensus why these verses are so bracketed, but the two verses in question are most familiar to us from the Torah service in the synagogue, where verse 10:35 begins the Torah service with the opening of the ark and 10:36 begins the last paragraph before we return the Torah and close the ark. We discuss the significance of these verses as part our conversation for Parashat B’ha’alo’tkha [Numbers 8-12]. There are a myriad of other topics this week, some of which capture our attention, i