Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 11:16, Rebellion within the Ranks
Summary
Study the text of the Bible weekly with Jeremy Rosen through a combination of traditional, critical, and personal perspectives. No knowledge of Hebrew or the Bible is necessary. You may use any Bible text you may have or you can go to sefaria.org. This week will begin with Numbers 11:16, rebellion within the ranks.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
You raise a wider issue and that is this whole book is one in which human beings are struggling to find a relationship with God. In a sense, God is rather like a parent who just doesn’t understand his kids, doesn’t understand why they’re not doing what they’re expected to do. There is an ambiguity here, and the ambiguity won’t stop until we can detach our idea of God from an objective idea of God. Remember that everything that is being said about God in the Torah is being said about us.
Remember the term, “Lech-lecha,” was applied to Abraham, and it was applied to Abraham twice. First time, “Get you out of the idolatrous community of Harran.” Then it was a second time when it was, “Go and sacrifice your son.” The rabbi said, “Lech-lecha always normally means do it for your benefit. There will be an end benefit to this. Eventually, despite the famine in the land of Israel and all the problems go, you’ll be home then and it’ll be a great place to stay.” Therefore the implication was that sending them to see what the land was like will lead you to be happy about the consequences, and to want to go and inhabit this land, because this land is a good land.