The fourth portion of Deuteronomy! As before, lots of rehashing prior stuff- this time, we get a lot of appearances from Leviticus and some Numbers. We open with rules around offerings when the Israelites enter the promised land, as well as further admonitions to destroy the cities of the people and cast down their idols, as well as a section on idolatry that apparently serves as an important part of halakhic jurisprudence around death penalties and investigation requirements. This is followed by a brief discussion of diviners and false prophets which in English reads kind of like G-d is throwing wizards at you to see what you do, but is in actuality about how when you run into a wizard making prophecies you should know better than to commit idolatry at their advice in a whole sequence turning on the more archaic definition of the term "test" or "proof" in the English translation.
We also go over the kosher rules, how you very emphatically shouldn't be eating blood, the jubilee as concerning debt slavery and financial debts, obligations to the poor and the widow, how to properly consume and offer blemished firstling animals, and the rules of the three pilgrimage holidays.
This portion went long! Less because of the portion, admittedly, and more so because there were only five of us who had a lot of thoughts and are fairly close. Such topics included:
- spending about an hour three verses in discussing what the blessing and curse described are; our own relationships with faith, materialist thought, the transcendent; and how we engage with other people's religious and occult practices as people who are or are looking to be jews, and how beliefs necessarily must translate into action
- why are pigs the ur-example of treyf food anyways
- what's the appropriate amount of blood to draw from someone's wrist during sex, as contrasted with with, say, a murder
- eating blood, jewish vampires, and how incredibly anti-semitic the world of darkness books are
- universalist theology in the Reform movement, jewish marxism, and the development of zionism
- Seventh Day Adventists
- how on consideration we are pretty sure G-d doesn't play wizard entrapment shell games, and the sages appear to agree
- what the word "dun" means
busy night. surprisingly few commentary clips.
We do love it when Ibn Ezra repeats a sentence though, especially when it's about eating flesh

Rashi recounts the opinion of a R. Judah who thinks that some of the repetitions about not eating blood and "being strong" is because maybe the jews liked to eat blood at the time. you don't know that they didn't. the other sages disagreed on this point.

And of course, the classic "we are really just guessing which animals are actually being talked about here"

