After the amida prayer, we immediately do nefilat apayim, literally - “falling on the face.” We sit, rest our head on our arm, and look downward - almost in a fetal position. Rabbeinu Bahya traces this practice to our parasha: And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “Divide yourselves from this community,

When the spies enter the land of Canaan, they collect different fruits to bring back with them. They cut a cluster of grapes and then we are told: That place was called Wadi Cluster because of the cluster of grapes that the Israelites cut off there. What we are not told is who named the

When Moses wants to convince his Midianite father-in-law Hobab, also known as Jethro, to stay with the Israelite camp, he tells him: “We are journeying to the place of which the LORD said to us, ‘It will I give to you.’ Come with us and we shall be good to you, for the LORD has

Should we be forced to retire at fifty? From thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who come to the army to do the task in the Tent of Meeting. This is the work of the Kohathites. Only in the desert, writes Maimonides (Kli HaMikdash III), were the Levites forced to retire. And

Moses is commanded to take a census of all Israel and then he’s told: But the tribe of Levi you shall not reckon, and their heads you shall not count in the midst of the Israelites. Moses was himself a Levite and the Midrash imagines his initial reaction. He assumed: maybe there is something wrong