Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 21:4, Preparing for War

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 21:4, Preparing for War

- So ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just been playing Faure’s “Requiem,” the “Sanctus,” and you may wonder why I’m playing that now. Well, first of all, I think as we get closer to Pesach, I think about those people who are still enslaved, our people still enslaved, captured, and I want to remember all those wonderful people, those heroes who have died protecting us and our land, and so I thought a requiem would be great. However, as you know, requiems are fundamentally Christian masses and have language that is not, shall we say, consistent with a Jewish approach to life. It’s perfectly legitimate in terms of Catholicism, but it’s a different point of view to ours, and the “Sanctus,” that part that I’ve just played, is based entirely on the text of the Torah, “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,” Tanakh rather, “Holy, holy, holy,” which Christianity considers this is a reference to the Trinity, but for us it was part of our texts long before anybody dreamed of Trinities, and because in the “Sanctus” there is no reference other than to something which is perfectly legitimate in our tradition, that’s why I chose the “Sanctus” to play. I ought to mention at this stage before I forget that next week is the second day of Pesach, and therefore I, living in the diaspora, keep two days and I won’t be around next week, although these go on, I will join you the week after, and, you know, the big issue everybody asks is, why are we still going on this second day of festivals? And in fact, this question was asked 2,000 years ago in the Talmud. The Jews of Babylon were keeping two days.

The Jews in the land of Israel were only keeping one day, and this was to do at the time with the calendar, with the fact that the calendar at that stage was based on sighting the moon, seeing whether the moon, the new moon had arrived, and then getting the message out, and the message took a long time to get to Babylon, and therefore the Babylonians kept two days to make sure that they got the right day, and as a result of this, that became the law. Custom can sometimes become law, and it was for a long time, but then the Talmud says, “But hold on, now, third century, we have fixed the calendar "and the calendar is known well in advance to everybody, "and therefore there is no need technically "to have two days.” So why do we have two days? And the answer that the Talmud gives is, it’s the custom that we’ve had going and we don’t want to break the custom, which in one way is very nice, but in another way is problematic, and it’s particularly problematic living in the diaspora as we do today, where we have to work and we can take Shabbat off, but then taking two days off in the middle of the week sometimes is a bit of a problem, and people argue that this makes life difficult, and indeed it does, there’s no question about it, but what then did the rabbis mean when they said that it’s a minhag and we have to keep the minhag? Now, I have my own theory on this, and my own theory on this goes this way. Look, if you are in the land of Israel, you keep one day. If it matters to you that much, then go and move to the land of Israel.

If you insist on staying in the diaspora, then there’s a kind of a penalty for that, and the penalty is you have to keep two days. So if it matters to you that much, then move to Israel, and therefore you might see it as encouraging aliyah. On the other hand, you will argue back to me with quite legitimacy and say, “But look, this makes life almost unworkable in the diaspora, particularly in the autumn period.” You’ve got Rosh Hashanah, and Rosh Hashanah then gets followed by, Rosh Hashanah always is two days, it’s two days even in Israel, and that’s another example of a custom being maintained, but in the two days, we don’t have two days Yom Kippur, but when it comes to Sukkot, we’ve got two days and then a gap, and then two days again. It’s a problem. In theory, I agree, that there’s no point in having more than one day. On the other hand, if people say to me, “If only they were all one day, "I’d become more religious or more committed, "but this is so much I just can’t do it,” and I just don’t buy that argument because I’ve never heard of anybody who only keeps one day all of a sudden becoming more religious, and people, you can say in Israel, are now more religious percentagewise than anywhere else, but nevertheless, this is one of the amusing things about Pesach that we’re about to enter into, and that’s why I thought I’d mention it now, both in terms of making sure that you don’t forget that next week, I won’t be around. Now, Mira, hi, Mira. You’ve asked, “Is there a way to change the screen so the lecturer "is not put in the corner on the text "at the side and in the centre?” Mira, I really, I don’t know. I don’t know if the LU team could work out how. I’m sure there is a way, but I am just not technical enough. So maybe you should contact the LU team and see. I’ll mention it to them, but I’ve increased the size of the text so that everybody can see it, but not how to make my face still appear more centrally.

Sorry, but anyway, thank you, and let’s go back to continue where we left off. We were on Numbers, Bamidbar, chapter 21, and if you remember, we ended last week having gone up to chapter, verse, I’m sorry, verse 4, where this time now in preparation for invading the land of Canaan properly, 40 years after the last debacle, we are now facing a similar enemy to the enemy we faced after the golden calf, where they defeated us and beat us all the way to Hormah. Now, 40 years later at the same place, we are confident enough, strong enough to be able to, so to speak, take back what was taken from us, and we survived there, and you would’ve thought that that would be a good sign. Our morale is up and it’s going, and bingo, once again, we have complaints. They never ever stop. I guess that’s human nature, ‘cause until this day they’ve never ever stopped. So let’s look at chapter 4. So they journey, chapter 4. They moved on from Hor Hahar, that was the mountain where Aaron died, which is somewhere maybe parallel with, in Transjordan, you have some interesting archaeological sites at Petra that people like to go to, and Hor Hahar seems to have been somewhere near Petra, and they are coming up, and the first group of people they meet is Edom, and you would’ve thought that Edom would’ve been, after all, relatives from Esau, sympathetic. They asked only to pass through, Edom refused, and so they turned away. They’re going to have to go around about Edom on the way up north until they come opposite the river Jordan, and then they’re going to invade from the river Jordan at Jericho.

So the text says, “And they turned round from Hor Hahar, "which is by way of Yam Suph, the Red Sea, "or the Reed Sea,” but hold on, the Reed Sea was by Egypt, and they crossed over that, but now we are really talking about the Gulf of Aqaba and the area around Eilat, which is also part of the Red Sea. So this is another part of the Red Sea, and it’s the border of Edom, and at Edom they were told, “You’ve got to go another way,” and the people were fed up because they had to journey more around, and in some respect going the wrong way instead of the quickest way in, and once again, anything that doesn’t work, everybody’s up and they’re complaining, and once again, the complaint is exactly the same complaint before, “and people complained to God and to Moses.” Now, interesting this time they’re complaining against God. This is a new feature. Every time before, they never complained against God. They complained against Moses and Aaron, and they said, “Why have you taken us out of the land of Egypt, "to die here in the wilderness? "We don’t have bread, we don’t have water, "and we are absolutely fed up by "with this miserable cursed kind of bread, "which is called manna.” I don’t know if they’re referring to manna specifically. It could be to the fact that they are as travellers having food which is more, if you like, alfresco, but whatever it is, they’re complaining about the food, they’re complaining about this, complaining about everything.

Human nature. So what happens? In some respect, this is not very fair, but, verse 6, God then sends amongst the people a plague of snakes, and they started biting the people, and many people die as a result of all these serpents. Now, it’s not unusual to have plagues of serpents, of snakes, suddenly a population explosion, and particularly in times past when there were vast numbers of birds and animals and grasshoppers and everything like that around the world before human nature and pesticides started killing them off, but in verse seven, the people come to Moses and they say, “I’m sorry, this is our punishment, "as we spoke against you and against God.” So, pray another night to God, and remove all these snakes. intreat to God, pray to God, whatever word you want because this word of pallel is an interesting word, and he prayed to the people. Now this term, vaiyitpallel, I just want to spend a few moments talking about that because it has wide ramifications, 'cause normally the word tephillah is prayer, lehiitpallel is to pray. Now hit is a causative that means causing you to do something in a verb, and we normally think of prayer as something in which we ask, “Please God, may I have,” and clearly here this is such a case of saying to God, “Please, we’ve got a problem. "Can you solve the problem?” But that is only one small aspect of what we mean by prayer. Prayer divides into two sections. One section is what we talk about trying to connect us to a spiritual force or energy or idea, and so it commonly expresses ourselves in the the words when we say, which sometimes means you are blessed. is a blessing, but in English of course, blessing can also be a curse, but Baruch also means, I either worship you or alternatively it means, I care about you. is an expression of caring, of expressing what matters to us. Tephillah is slightly different.

Tephillah, because it’s lehitpallel to express oneself that in primarily is not necessarily asking for something specifically, but it is saying what matters to you, what you care about, and that’s when we bless our children and say that we care about them and want good things to happen to them. So the term tephillah, which we have in our liturgy in fact only applies technically to what we call the Amidah. The Amidah are the 18, during the weekday 19, blessings that we say after we recite the Shema, which is a recitation, it’s not a prayer, and in this situation, tephillah becomes an expression of what I care about rather than expecting an answer, but nevertheless, God comes back with a kind of an answer that primarily throws the ball back into their court. So in verse eight, God says to Moses, “I want you to make a model.” Interestingly, we had the model of the golden calf which Aaron had made, and now Moses, both of them are craftsmen, are artists, you might say in certain respects. People often accuse Judaism of having no aesthetic interest, and yet of course as we’ve gone through the Bible, and we’ve gone through the the book of Exodus, we’ve seen how carefully they are involved with the artistic creation of the Ark and with making things and doing things that should be beautiful.

Anyway, Moses now makes this molten snake, and he puts it up on a pole, and you’ll notice that the medicine, that the medical world have a symbol which includes a snake curled around a staff, and that was of an important Greek symbol. Now, did the Greeks borrow it from the Torah or the Torah give it to the Greeks. You can argue and speculate about that, but the idea was, whoever was bitten, in verse eight, by that snake or any snake, rather, would look at that snake, and live. It’s almost as though they’re saying, that has the anti-venom serum that enables you to counteract the snake or the snake bite, but what it does do is that it calls on you the individuals who are complaining to do something, not just rely on magic to happen. You’ve got to get involved in this. You’ve got to make an effort to look at the snake. So in verse nine, so Moses made this snake of brass or copper, and put it on a big stick. If a snake had bitten somebody, He looked at, she would look at this copper bronze snake and would be cured. Very interesting issue. Now the Mishnah, the Talmud, says, “This doesn’t make sense. "It does not make sense. "Do you think a snake like that can possibly cure? "I mean, it’s an image. "The snake doesn’t cure. "Who does the curing here?” And they refer also to the famous battle of Amalek in Exodus. When Amalek attacks the Jews, Joshua is sent out to fight the battle and Moses sits on a hill overlooking the battlefield and when he holds his hands up, Joshua is winning.

When his hands come down, Joshua is losing, and so Aaron and Hur stand on either side of Moses, they sit him down on a rock and they hold his hands up, two of them, until dusk, when finally Amalek is defeated and the battle is won, and so the Mishnah asks, “And does holding up of hands win a battle, "and does a snake on a staff up above cure people? "No, it’s not, but when people look up, their thoughts "are conducted up to God or their thoughts are raised "to the idea that there are greater powers "and therefore the battle becomes a battle of spirituality, "a battle with a cause, not just a physical wont "to strongest man should win, but there needs to be passion. "There needs to be commitment in order to win a battle, "and in the same way, if you want to be cured, "you’ve got to fight the serum. "This is faith healing. "You have got to make the effort. "The snake will remind you of it, but the snake "is conducting you up to get you to realise "that you have got to make the effort,” and so that is how the Talmud explains what seems to be very strange. Now the Talmud also says something very interesting. After King Solomon died, the sons or the dynasty continued with a little break when Jezebel’s daughter Athaliah managed to kill off all the heirs to the throne and put herself in charge of the throne of Judea. One child was hidden and would come back afterwards, and for a period the kings of Judea were idolatrous too, but one of the kings who fought back against idolatry and, shall we say, reestablished Judea as a religious state was King Hezekiah, Hizkiyyah, and the Talmud says some very interesting things about Hizkiyyah.

One of the things I like about Hizkiyyah is, they said that he set up schools for children from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south for boys and for girls, which is the first example I can think of of Judaism promoting female education, and they checked after a period of time and found that every boy and girl was an expert in Jewish law because they were so successful. Now of course I don’t think that really happened, but it’s a lovely idea of expressing the fact that Hizkiyyah was committed to spreading Torah, but Hizkiyyah was also committed to getting rid of idolatry, and they say, the Talmud says, that Hizkiyyah destroyed two books, sorry, he destroyed two things and that although he’s destroying some things which were part of the tradition, God approved and everybody approved. What were the two things that he destroyed? One of them was the book of cures, because these were considered magic cures, hocus pocus cures, and the other thing he destroyed was the snake. He ground the snake into ashes because people were worshipping the snake. They were assuming it was the snake that was curing them. People assumed it was magic that was curing them, and he was trying to say, “No, you have to try to cure yourself.” Doesn’t mean to say you shouldn’t use medicines you can find and plants and other medications, and in ancient times they were very expert in a lot of these things, not so much in other areas, but anyway it was calling on the individual to make the effort and that was behind this kind of magic case of the serpent on the staff. So we now move on to verse 10, and the children of Israel carry on their journeys.

So they’re moving up. First of all, they have to go round Edom, which is, we’re now there in where it’s Transjordan today, and they are going to move up to face other powers on the way north. and they camped for a while in a place called Oboth, and they journeyed on from Oboth and they carried on, they encamped at Iye-abarim. Now Iye-abarim means literally, the islands of those who pass by. We don’t know if that was the original name, but many of these names have been identified by Israeli archaeologists on the east bank of the River Jordan. So we are now heading towards Moab. So we’ve got Edom at the bottom, we’ve got Moab, remember Moab comes originally from Lot’s family, on the east side. So we’re on the east of the river Jordan, and and then they moved on to a little rivulet called Zered, which was a much bigger one in that day, and from there they carried on, the other side of Arnon into the wilderness area, which is leading to the Amorites. The Arnon, the river Arnon is the boundary of Moab and it’s between Moab and between the Amorites. So now we are coming to the next nation they have to deal with, and now we have a little poem. Out of the blue comes a little poem, and the poem goes like this, verse 14. and this is how it is written and what people say in in the book of the wars of God. Now here’s a reference to another book. We had a reference before, if you remember, before the 10 Commandments, we talked about There was a covenant, a book of the covenant at that stage, and now we have another book, the Wars of God. We have no trace of, we do not know what it was, who wrote it, what happened to it, but the Torah mentions it, so it must have been at the time a well-known document, and in the in this book of the Wars of God, it says, Now how this is understood and what this actually means is a matter of great debate. On the face of it, these are simply three locations, three locations, but they could also be three little mini-battles on the way, and basically we are talking about little rivers that mark off boundaries. So Nahal is a wadi, it’s a little river.

So we had above in verse 14. So Echet is a kind of a tributary, a branch of it. that leads to and stretches along the area of Ar and arrives at, just at the border of Moab and from there onto a place called Beer, which is a well, and this is the well, where God said to Moses, “Gather the people, "and I will give water.” Now what does that mean? Is that the case where Moses had to hit the rock and got into trouble we studied last time, or was it another place where they discovered a well because previously the water came from a rock but now there’s a well. So they found water there and it was wonderful, and then in verse 17, “And then the children of Israel sang this song.” Now if you remember when they crossed over the Red Sea in Exodus, it says, “Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song,” and now 40 years later they’re singing another song. So in a sense the song opens this whole narrative and in another sense the song closes as they come to an end, and so they sang about this magical well. Oh well, fruitful well, we are singing to you. We want you to sing to us. This is a well that the chiefs, the big guy, the officers, that the principles of the people were involved in digging this well with their own tools, with their spades and their sticks.

They did it, so now we have a new phenomenon. This is the people are getting involved in looking for water, not relying only on Moses and Aaron and God to get it for them, and so having done that, off they went Midbar from the wilderness to Mattanah, and Mattanah, we know in modern Hebrew means a gift. So it was the name of a town, and from Mattanah we went on to Nahaliel, the inheritance of God and inheritance of God is the land of Israel, and from Nahaliel we went on to Bamoth, and Bamoth. Bamoth is not where you might think it is in Israel. It’s still the edge of Moab. At the high peak, looking down to Jeshimon. So this is a poem that is talking about the fact that they dug water, they themselves and this enabled to go forward on their journey towards the land of Canaan, and now we return to military diplomacy. Remember, last time in preparation for travelling through Edom, Moses sent messengers, diplomats, along to them and asked for permission to travel through. Edom refused, and the children of Israel moved away because they were descendants of the fathers. Edom is Esau, Esau was the son of Isaac. They were family. We respect family and even if they’re mean to us and won’t let us come through, we’re not going to have a fight with them. We want to avoid family conflict. If only that message would carry on into this day and age, 'cause there are too many families with inner conflicts. Anyway, this time once again he sends messengers. Verse 21, Israel sends their messengers, to Sihon, the king of the Amorites. So now we’ve got another group, the Amorites, and they are to the north of the Edomites, but heading north, and he asked for this request. I would like to pass through your land. “We won’t go off into your fields and into your vineyards. "We won’t drink your water.

"We will go on the highway. "We go on the main road. "We pass through. "We don’t want to have any conflict with you.” In verse 23, once again, didn’t get permission for Israel to go through his territory. Sihon gathered all his people, and he came out to attack Israel, and arrived at a place called Yatzah. Verse 23, and fought against Israel. So Sihon not only would not let them pass, he didn’t just block, but he engaged in battle. He came to fight, and this time instead of turning away 'cause he was no relative and he started it, smote him with a sword. They defeated him completely, and they took over, conquered, yes imperialism if you like, conquered their land and to the borders of Ammon. So here you have the first in a sense victory on the east bank of the river Jordan. This is not the promised land, but it’s a victory because they attacked. Verse 25, and so Israel took over all their cities, and they started settling in all the cities of the Amorites from Heshbon and her tributaries, 'cause Heshbon is a big centre, 26, was a city of the Amorite kings, and originally he conquered it from Moab and he took all the land of Moab. So this was a combination of the Amorites and the Moabites merged into one that Israel actually defeated, and though Moab was in a sense a relative, nevertheless because it had been conquered, therefore we took it over, and now another strange line.

In verse 27, very strange line, and so the poets or the bards or the chroniclers used to sing, “If you come to Heshbon, "you will finally be able to rebuild "the cities of Heshbon and Sihon, because "because fires come out and destroyed Heshbon, "and Heshbon itself had destroyed the cities of Sihon "and eaten up the cities of Moab and all those areas "and the lords and the kings of Arnon.” So here we have got a poem going, a poem which is certainly not prose and it is recited by poets. We don’t know who these poets were. Were they Jewish poets? Were they not Jewish poets? And there are lots of references in the Torah to other sources outside of the Torah, but then you ask the question, well if so, why did the Torah think it’s important to mention it? And I think what this is saying is that Torah must not just be seen as a book of laws, not just seen as a rigid system of religious authority, but also a record of a culture, a record of poetry, a record of art, a record of the interactions with the other people around at that moment, and also setting the tone for a world in which it was dog eat dog. It was a world of one tribe fighting another tribe, as we saw the five and four kings at the time of Sodom, and this is recognising these towns and these locations that were lost, and people just thought of them as being back in history, and yet the Torah is trying to document all these earlier references as they did originally to the earlier forms of humans when talking about Genesis and the Bereshit, the first chapters of Genesis. Anyway, so verse 28, this poem is saying fire from Heshbon on the one hand destroyed one city, then it destroyed itself, then it consumed Moab and then Moab was destroyed by Chemosh.

Actually, Chemosh is actually the name of a god, an important god of the Amorites at that time. So you are the people of Chemosh, but you have been destroyed, and your children and your sons have all gone into captivity to the Amorites and to Sihon and so you suffered 'cause Sihon conquered your lot and once they become captives they are treated like all slaves most horribly, and all the way down to Dibon at Nophah, to the town of Nophah, which is in Medeba, they were all consumed by the Amorites, and now look what happened to the Amorites. The Amorites have been destroyed by the Israelites. The Israelites are living in Amorite territory and later on we are going to see that some Israelites don’t want to move from Amorite territory 'cause it’s so good and don’t want to go to land of Israel, but we’re going to come to that at another stage, and so having won that particular battle and having conquered this whole territory and now having settled somewhere where they call home with the provision of the waters, because look at all the little rivers that we’ve mentioned. So they have water on that location, they have grazing ground in that location, everything’s fine. At long last they’ve come to somewhere solid and stable, even though it’s not the promised land, and so in verse 32, Moses sent, and now he uses the word, that is to spy not was the spies that was sent originally to look around the land, not necessarily to spy, but now we are actually, it’s which is with a view to undermining the Amorites that are there.

So in verse 33, these people went up forward to the land of Bashan. So having prepared to look the situation beyond Sihon, we are now going Bashan and coming towards Og, King Og, and he comes out, he takes the initiative, he doesn’t wait for any appeal. The Israelites are not asking if we can pass through his land anymore, but he doesn’t like the arrival of this new power on the border, and so Og, the king of Bashan goes out, he and all his people to fight at a place called Edrei. Don’t confuse Og with Magog, but nevertheless that’s what his name is, Og. Verse 34, God turns to Moshe and He says, “Don’t fear him.” Why didn’t He say that before the battle with Sihon, with the Amorites? Maybe because Sihon wasn’t considered that big a threat, whereas Og is considered a massive threat. So Og is a serious big king as opposed to Sihon of the smaller king. Anyway. “Don’t be frightened of him. "I’m going to hand him and his people all over to you. "You’ll do to him "what you did to Sihon and the Ammorites, "who lived in Heshbon,” and so, verse 35, they smote him and his children and his people until not one remained. So they inherited his land. Now this is very, very interesting.

Why in the case of Sihon did they keep the captives, and why in the case of here the Og, they destroyed everybody? And in one sense one can explain, although in modern terms we can’t excuse, but we could explain that in one case there is an existential threat and in another case there is simply a military threat. If it’s a military threat, then that’s something that we deal with militarily, we defeat, we take booty or whatever it is and we manage to go on from there, but if you are dealing with a society which is a totally corrupt and decadent society and a society full of evil people who have been corrupted, then you may feel that this is a much bigger threat in the same way that Amalek was a bigger threat than the rest of the Canaanites. So here we have the distinction between the types of enemies that the Israelites have to encounter and how they’re going to deal with them, and that is where we will take a break for today at chapter 22 and start looking at your questions. So, I’m reminded in case I forget towards the end, I’m reminded that I want to remind you that Pesach is coming up. I wish you all a very, very happy Pesach. We will be sad for those who we’ve lost. We’ll be sad for those who are captured, but the answer is not to allow depression to pull us down, but to keep going positively, and may you all have a happy Pesach. Remember the phrase, “In every generation, "some people want to destroy us "and we have been saved by God from them.” We thought that only applied in the past. Now unfortunately we know it applies in the present. So to go to your questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Steven, thank you.

Ted, oh you are telling about how to put your cursor. This is back to you, Mira, put your cursor on the image and move it with left button and push down. So Mira, I hope you’re still around listening to this and that’s how you get the screen where you want to get it.

Anthony Tibbett says, “As to the two days of ago, this contrary to what "the Torah prescribes specifically when it says, ”'You should says you must not add, you must not detract,’“ and so there is a debate about what that means and what they understand it to mean is, you can’t innovate something totally new but you can modify things that already exist, and the difficulty with that is of course that in fact we do have things that are completely new, whether it’s Purim or whether it is Hannukah, and so there is an inconsistency without any doubt about how and in what way we add. We are adding customs all the time, and I think I have to say this is one example of where we Jews totally ignore both the letter, if not the spirit, of the law in the Torah. So you are right to raise that question, and I agree with you.

Q: Shelly asked, "Does God use snakes in chapter 21, verse six "to remind the people of humankind’s rebellion against God "by eating of the tree of knowledge "because of the temptation of the snake of Adam and Eve?”

A: Well Shelly, that’s a brilliant idea. I never thought of that connection whatsoever because that was an unusual speaking snake, so to speak, in the case of Genesis at the beginning, whereas here we are talking about the natural phenomena of snakes, but I think you are right in the sense that the punishment to the snake in Genesis was that there would be constant tension between snakes and human beings. Snakes would constantly be biting human beings and human beings were constantly trying to crush the head of the snake and and turn it in the heel, and so yes, in that sense I suppose there definitely is a connection.

Q: “What about the insistence of current rabbis "on both extensive needs for Pesach certification "of food following minhagim like no kitmenot certification? "Any thoughts?”

A: Shelly, this is a huge subject, and it’s a highly controversial one because we are super strict on Pesach for the simple reason that whereas all non-kosher food has to be eaten a certain amount before you break the law, an olive’s amount, when it comes to matzoh on Pesach, any amount is forbidden and therefore Pesach in terms of Jewish law of kashrut is stricter than anywhere else, and we are therefore supposed to be stricter on Pesach than any other time, but there’s a huge battle going on on two fronts. First of all, there’s the battle on the front of, what constitutes kosher and what does not constitute kosher, and on the one hand you have those people, and I am included in them, by saying if there are no non-kosher ingredients, then it doesn’t have to be kosher. So in other words, you don’t have to kosher fruit, you don’t have to kosher lots of different things. If something has been manufactured and it has never in that manufacturing come into contact with anything non-kosher, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have it, and so for example, there’s no reason why you need to get kosher for Pesach coffee, which is ground, which is then if you like boiled and cooked in special containers and processes which have nothing hametz in with them whatsoever, there’s no reason you would need to get kosher for Pesach coffee, for example, or sugar or various other items like that, and yet some people insist that you need to have them because you must have something that is supervised.

In other words, if I can put it like this, it’s as works on the assumption that everywhere in every manufacturing process there is a little man with a hametz gun firing it over the process and we have to pay him to stay away over Pesach, and that’s why it becomes kosher for Pesach. Now that’s humorous, but nevertheless, there is excessive preoccupation and also sometimes food processes go through, if you like, different chews in which some of the food that going through beforehand was not kosher, even if something that’s going through after is perfectly all right, and that sometimes needs to be checked, but even that isn’t that serious an issue, and then there are issues of certain ingredients that are not mentioned, certain chemicals that are not that need to be checked on, but where you have nothing in that, so in other words, no chemicals are being added to sugar, although some chemicals might be added to decaffeinated coffee, but nevertheless, if you look into them and check on them, there’s no need to spend vast sums of money on getting stuff that’s kosher for Pesach, but another thing you will find out that during Covid, every rabbinical authority was more lenient than it was at any other time, for good reason, but now that Covid’s over, all those leniencies have been dialled back and we’re back to strict, more strictness than ever.

I’ve even heard for example that you, now in certain parts of London it’s necessary to kosher the Shabbos kettle you have for boiling hot water on Shabbat, but why? The water is from the tap or from some other source, but it’s perfectly okay. It goes inside, there’s a lid on top, nothing goes inside it. So therefore technically speaking, why would you need to kosher it for Pesach? And if it’s the outside you just clean the outside, but nevertheless there are people who want to be doubly strict and I have to say, I am stricter on Pesach than I am on any other time, but what worries me is for people who can’t afford it, it’s a huge problem and the cost is phenomenal and it’s going up all the time, and that’s why for example, Sephardi rabbis are much more lenient when it comes to Pesach than Ashkenazi rabbis are, because they in general always had to do with poorer people and therefore they have to make it more accessible and easier to cope with. So that’s my overall rant on the question of Pesach.

Barry, “comment, Gaon said in contemporary times, "11th century before Russia and Israel it was one day. "The influence of Provencale scholars called "for two day Rosh Hashanahs. "This ruling was backed by originals, and that’s a custom "of two days everywhere.” Yes, I mean the truth of the matter is Rosh Hashanah was two years, two days long long, long ago, but the question of whether that was the reason why we keep two days now is the debate that I was referring to.

Q: “Who is Israel in verse 21?” In verse 21, who is Israel?

A: Let me just check which one verse you are referring to. Ishka 21. Ah, so Israel is turning to the people. So this is in a sense other members of the committee of the people, the other leaders are getting involved in this, but generally you’re right. All the time it talks about Moshe sending messengers. Now it’s talking about Israel sending messengers, but it’s another way of talking about it. It’s rather like saying Winston Churchill sent the army over or Britain sent the army over to reconquer Europe.

Thank you, Rita, for your good wishes.

Shelley, “In verse 29, Moab is referred to the people "of Chemosh to show that despite their ancestry "being locked to the nephew of Abraham, "they have a pagan god and pagan morals.” Yes, that’s an excellent point because Chemosh is the pagan God and I think that is particularly pointing out the fact that they have abandoned any Jewish kind of heritage.

Thank you, Nouri, thank you very much, and thank you, Stephen Paul.

Q: “Why do you think Israelites turned away "from entering the land and went by way of Bashan?” Today, it includes the Golan. “It wasn’t necessary to defeat, "was it to defeat the threat they knew would come from Og?”

A: An excellent question. Remember, they came up on, their intention originally, the first time after the golden calf was to go in straight from the south, go up by the south, but they were defeated, pushed back and as a result of that they went south back down towards Eliat, and from Eliat they started coming back up again on through Transjordan. I think the way they did that, there were two explanations. One of them is they didn’t want to face the same enemies a second time, but I don’t think that was it. I think they saw by this deviation there was good land on the east bank and that might be a better way of tackling and going into Canaan then going up through the south, through Hebron. So I think it was, and it proved so because they were able to gain more territory on that part of the River Jordan, and as we are going to see later on, some of the tribes remained there and stayed there. That’s another issue.

Karla, thank you very much. to you and thank you again, Nouri, and Robert, thank you too. Thank you, Richard, should we all stay happy and healthy?

Q: And you’ve also said, “On the subject of the snake, "do you have any other extrapolation of the presence "of snakes on the medical symbol?”

A: Well I’m told that the, in the medical symbol, it’s comes from Greece, but I don’t know if Greece got it originally from Israel, which it might have done. So I don’t know the answer to that. Perhaps you can do a little bit of research and let me know.

Q: Ted, “If Jews claim hegemony over present day Israel "by virtue of 200 years of occupancy, "might the same reasoning be applied to Amman, "present day Jordan, occupied by Jews "from Exodus 3,000 years ago?”

A: Yes, I think so, but I don’t think you’re going to win many converts to that given the fact that the whole of the world doesn’t even want to give Israel the little bit that it has. It’s certainly not going to allow anything more, but nice thought.

Rita, in memory of the loved lady’s presence, how lovely. Yes, I wish you long life.

Hi Mira. “Of course I’m still around. "Your lessons are fascinating. "Thanks for the advice. "I can move your little frame but not change its dimensions. "I’ve got to find some other way of doing it then.” Anyway, and what else? Thank you very much, thank you.

Rhonda, wishing you and and Mira, I hope to see you, hope to see you again after Pesach in the museum. “Wishing you happy Passover, "thank you for your weekly lectures.” Thank you Rhonda, I appreciate that, and mentions this in Tehillim 83. Yes indeed, that’s quite right. So anybody who wants to see that should look up at Tehillim 83. Really appreciate this. everybody, and I will see you in two weeks time.