The Torah/Pinchas
Questions
[edit | edit source]Here are a few of the questions that the Rabbis raised about this Torah reading:
- Why does the Torah detail Pinchas’s ancestry (in Numbers 25:11)?[1]
- What special circumstances justified Pinchas’s taking justice into his own hands?[2]
- Why another census?[3]
- Why did the tribe of Simeon lose so many people between the two censuses?[4]
- What happened to Korah’s children (referred to in Numbers 26:11)?[5]
- Who was Serah bat Asher (referred to in Numbers 26:46)?[6]
- Why (as Numbers 26:62 reports) didn’t the Levites get an inheritance of land?[7]
- What was it about the case of Zelophehad’s daughters that puzzled Moses?[8]
- Who was Zelophehad?[9]
- Why does the designation of Joshua follow the incident of the daughters of Zelophehad?[10]
- What was it about Joshua that qualified him to succeed Moses?[11]
- On which Festival did the priests sacrifice the most animals?[12]
- Why does the Torah (in Numbers 29:12–34) require the Israelites to sacrifice 70 bulls on Sukkot and one bull on Shemini Atzeret?[13]
- Why did the number of sacrifices on Sukkot decrease every day?[14]
Notes
[edit | edit source]- ↑ Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 82b.
- ↑ Mishnah Sanhedrin 9:6; Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 81a–82b.
- ↑ Midrash Tanchuma Pinchas 4.
- ↑ Numbers 1 & 26.
- ↑ Babylonian Talmud Megillah 14a, Sanhedrin 110a–b.
- ↑ Genesis 46:17; Babylonian Talmud Sotah 13a; Genesis Rabbah 94:9; Zohar 3:167b.
- ↑ Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 122a.
- ↑ Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 119a.
- ↑ Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 96b–97a.
- ↑ Numbers Rabbah 21:14.
- ↑ Numbers Rabbah 21:14.
- ↑ Numbers 28:9–29:38.
- ↑ Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 55b; Numbers Rabbah 21:24.
- ↑ Numbers Rabbah 21:25.