The parsha starts of with the halacha of vows. We know that the way a man gets out of having to follow a vow he makes is that he goes to chacham and tells him why he did not mean to make the vow. Then the chacham asks him if he would have made the vow if he would have known what he knows and the man responds by saying no, so the chacham annuls his vow. [There is a famous story about Rabbi Akiva that after he got engaged to his wife her father vowed not to give them any of his money, even though he was one of the richest men in all of Eretz Yisrael. Later, after Rabbi Akiva became the leader of the generation everyone in town is waiting to get a bracha from him. His father in law gets to him and does not recognize Rabbi Akiva. He asks Rabbi Akiva if he could annul the vow he made not to give any money to his daughter. Rabbi Akiva asks if he would have made the vow if his son in law was a talmid chacham. His father says that he would not have, so Rabbi Akiva says that he is his son in law and he annuls the vow.] So the Torah says that when a woman makes a vow her husband, upon hearing her vow, can annul it. How can this be equal to going to a chacham and talking over the vow with him? When a man and woman are married they have a connection that makes them both greater, they influence each other to be better. When a woman talks over her vows with her husband it gives her a greater understanding of what she did. This is how a relationship grows, by the man and woman discussing things it helps them grow together, not only into better people but closer together as well.
Killing all of the Midyanim:
Hashem commands the Jews to go and kill ever last Midyan boy, even the smallest baby. He uses the word vengeance, but why these little children? What did they do? Also, doesn't this go against the halacha of not taking revenge? Why is okay for the Jews to go around killing all of the little babies in Midyan?
Rav Brevda was discussing a bracha that did not fit the normal laws of brachot. He said that normally a bracha cannot be changed because the mishna in brachot says that a long bracha cannot be made short and a short one cannot be made long. So how could this bracha be altered? He quotes the Brisker Rav who says that since chazal were the ones to institute brachot they were the "baalim" (owners) of brachot. As the baalim they had the right to change the laws as they saw fit.
So too here, Hashem is the One who gave the torah. Therefore, He is the baal of all of the mitzvot. Whenever He sees fit He may alter them. People wrongly think that because we live in a moral world we do not need the torah to tell us how to live. This is the farthest thing from the truth. In fact, it would possibly have been better for us not to live in a moral world so that every time we did something good it would not be because it is the good thing to do, but rather because Hashem told us to do it. The problem is the people put morals in front of the torah. For example one could say: how can Hashem say that homosexuality is bad, morally we should let them live however they want? Who is the One who decides what is good in world? Only Hashem makes that decision, therefore, He can tell us to do something like kill little babies and it not be an issue. He is the one who decides what is moral.
Koshering Utensils:
The Chofetz Chiam had an amazing vort on koshering utensils. He explains the process of koshering. First a person must take the utensil and remove any rust that is on it. Then, after it is clean you must rid the residue by doing to it the same thing that made it not kosher. If it became traif by fire then it must be burned, if by water it must be put in water. He then says that the same is true by man. To rid oneself of sin a man must remove the sin (remove the rust). Then, he must say that he will never do the sin again. The only way to make sure that one will not do the sin again is to turn himself around and do the exact opposite. If one speaks a lot of lashon hara then he must use his mouth (the very thing that sinned) to speak words of torah (remove the thing caused by fire using fire).
Reuven, Gad, and Chaitzi Menashe:
Josh told me the following idea.
There is a halacha in the shulchan aruch (240:2) quoting nedarim daf 20b that says that a man may not think of one cup while drinking from another. The halacha means that while a man is having relations with his wife he may not think about any other woman. Chazal explain that if a man does this then it can mess up the baby that is born through this union. If we look back at Bereishit we remember that when Yaakov was having relations with Leah he thought that it was Rachel, and in that union Leah had Reuven. Then later, when Leah thought that she could not have more children she had Zilpah sleep with Yaakov, but at that point he thought she was Leah, in this union Zilpah gave birth to Gad. Later, we have the story with Dinah having relations with Shchem. We are told that she had a baby (possibly two) through this union. We know from the midrash that that baby girl later marries Yosef. So now Yosef has two children. One fourth of the children are from a grandfather who is not Jewish. Later on this 1/4 is 1/2 of Menashe. We see that each of these tribes had something wrong and that is why moments before they where going to walk into Eretz Yisrael they chose not to get that land.
Masei:
The Travels:
At the beginning of Parshat Masei the torah lists in less then 50 pasukim all of the travels that the Jews did in the Midbar. Forty years of travelling spanning 3 full books of the torah are summed up in 49 pasukim. What can we learn from this? We know that there are two types of learning, biyun and bikeut. In biyun one spends a lot of time on a short peace understanding all of the tiny details. In bikeut one learns a large amount of information very quickly covering a lot of ground. We see from this piece of torah that sometimes the details are not the most important thing. That sometimes a person must look at the big picture and see everything, after a long climb up the mountain it is a great experience to look down and see how much you climbed. Sometimes we have to push off the tiny details and look at the big picture.
Ir Miklat:
After a person kills accidentally he runs to live in an ir miklat. He cannot leave without risking his life until after the death of the Kohen Gadol. Why the Kohen Gadol? On Yom Kippur the upon leaving the kodesh hakodashim the Kohen Gadol says a special prayer that no one should be murdered. The fact the someone killed accidentally means that someone was murdered. The only way that would have happened was that the Kohen Gadol did not have enough kavannah during his prayer. Now as long as lives anyone who killed accidentally will be davening that he should die. So as a meida keneged meida for not having kavannah to stop death a group of people have kavannah to have him die.
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