5:51pm - Havdalah, Saturday
(Melbourne Australia)
Good Shabbos!
Please click here to view the Yeshivah Shule Tzetel for Shabbos Parshas Nasso. Please click here to view the PDFs of Weekly Publications.
PARSHAH IN A NUTSHELL
Numbers 4:21–7:89
The name of the Parshah, "Naso," means "Count" and it is found in Numbers 4:22.
Completing the headcount of the Children of Israel taken in the Sinai Desert, a total of 8,580 Levite men between the ages of 30 and 50 are counted in a tally of those who will be doing the actual work of transporting the Tabernacle.
G‑d communicates to Moses the law of the sotah, the wayward wife suspected of unfaithfulness to her husband. Also given is the law of the nazir, who forswears wine, lets his or her hair grow long, and is forbidden to become contaminated through contact with a dead body. Aaron and his descendants, the kohanim, are instructed on how to bless the people of Israel.
The leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel each bring their offerings for the inauguration of the altar. Although their gifts are identical, each is brought on a different day and is individually described by the Torah.
HAFTORAH IN A NUTSHELL
Judges 13:2-25
This week's haftorah describes the birth of Samson, a lifetime nazirite. A condign haftorah for this week's reading, which discusses all the laws of the nazirite.
Manoah and his wife, members of the Tribe of Dan, were childless. One day an angel appeared to Manoah's wife, informing her that she will give birth to a child. This child, the angel instructed, was to be a lifetime Nazirite. In addition, the angel instructed her to abstain from all foods forbidden to a nazirite — such as wine or ritually impure foods — from the moment she would conceive. The angel further informed the woman that her son will save the Jewish people from the Philistine oppression they were enduring at that time.
The soon-to-be-mother told her husband the good news. He entreated G‑d to send His messenger again — they were unaware at the time that the messenger was an angel. G‑d sent the angel again, and he repeated his instructions. Manoah and his wife then invited the angel to partake of a special meal they would prepare, but he declined. Instead he encouraged Manoah to offer the goat he wished to slaughter for the meal as a sacrifice to G‑d. The angel then ascended to the heavens in the flame that devoured the sacrifice.
The haftorah ends with the birth of Samson: "And the lad grew, and G‑d blessed him."
SAGES ON THE PARSHAH
Every Jew, whether righteous or wicked, has two souls. . . . One soul . . . clothes itself in the person's blood to animate the body [and is the source of its egocentric drives and desires] . . . and the second soul of a Jew is literally a part of G‑d above [and is the source of the person's striving to unite with G‑d] . . .
The body is called a "small city": as two kings wage war over a city, each wishing to capture it and rule over it—that is to say, to govern its inhabitants according to his will, so that they obey him in all that he decrees for them—so do the two souls (the G‑dly [soul] and the vitalizing animal [soul] that derives from kelipah) wage war against each other over the body and all its organs and limbs.
The desire and will of the G‑dly soul is that it alone should rule over the person and direct him, and that all his limbs should obey it and surrender themselves completely to it and become a vehicle for it, and serve as a vehicle for its ten faculties [of intellect and emotion] and three "garments" [thought, speech and action] . . . and the entire body should be permeated with them alone, to the exclusion of any alien influence, G‑d forbid. . . . While the animal soul desires the very opposite . . .
(Tanya)
https://w2.chabad.org/media/pdf/19961.pdf
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