For the week ending 3 August 2019 / 2 Av 5779
Parshat Masei
Questions
- Why does the Torah list the places where the Jewish People camped?
- Why did the King of Arad feel at liberty to attack the Jewish People?
- What length was the camp in the midbar?
- Why does the Torah need to specify the boundaries that are to be inherited by the Jewish People?
- What was the nesi'im's role in dividing the Land?
- When did the three cities east of the Jordan begin to function as refuge cities?
- There were six refuge cities, three on each side of the Jordan. Yet, on the east side of the Jordan there were only two and a half tribes. Why did they need three cities?
- To be judged as an intentional murderer, what type of weapon must the murderer use?
- Why is the kohen gadol blamed for accidental deaths?
- When an ancestral field moves by inheritance from one tribe to another, what happens to it in yovel?
Answers
- 33:1 - To show
G-d 's love of the Jewish People. Although it was decreed that they wander in the desert, they did not travel continuously. During 38 years, they moved only 20 times. - 33:40 - When Aharon died, the clouds of glory protecting the Jewish People departed.
- 33:49 - Twelve mil (one mil is 2,000 amot).
- 34:2 - Because certain mitzvot apply only in the Land.
- 34:17 - Each nasi represented his tribe. He also allocated the inheritance to each family in his tribe.
- 35:13 - After Yehoshua separated three cities west of the Jordan.
- 35:14 - Because murders were more common there.
- 35:16 - One capable of inflicting lethal injury.
- 35:25 - He should have prayed that such things not occur.
- 36:4 - It remains with the new tribe.
