There was never a question of whether it was good, the Promised Land was always full of possibilities.  True it did not have the overflowing waters of the Nile or the Tigris or the Euphrates, nor the wildlife of Africa,…

When Moses wanted to get the Israelites attention, I mean really get the Israelites attention, he didn’t use the Shofar.  No, as described in this week’s Torah portion Beha’alotcha, the instrument of choice was the trumpet, and more specifically the…

The Hebrew word “Naso” has two separate and very different meanings.  It can mean either to take a census and to lift up.  We normally think of a census as an unbiased collection of data, but it is a choice…

Even in Biblical times, Jews didn’t count the way you would expect.  The book of Bamidbar or Numbers begins with a census, not of all the people but only men of military age, each according to their family and tribe. …