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"


back at it again in deuteronomy! last week was a double portion, because the week before that our study fell on tisha b’av, so to observe the prohibition against studying any torah unless it is depressing and heartwrenching, we instead read lamentations. this is our first week back to a regular schedule since then.
so, this week's portion opens with more mentions of idolatry, in particular destroying shrines to foreign gods in the promised land, instructions on how to worship and provide offerings (not like those other guys!), and not inquiring into the abhorrent practicess of foreign deities. chavurah member @geostatonary brought up at this point a commentary explaining why it must be repeated so often that idolatry is, in fact, bad: because idolatry, being the most severe offense, serves to lead into enumeration of further, lesser offenses.
due to a commentary by ibn ezra on 11:27 regarding the definition of blessing and curse, noting that kelalah (curse) shares a root with kallah (light), as one who is cursed has the goodness taken from them and therefore becomes lighter, we started discussing commentary on the torah itself being not just an effort to interpret and understand the torah, but as part of this, an effort reconstruct classical hebrew (hence seemingly silly commentaries such as "a blessing means you get good things and a curse means you get bad things").
moving on from there we noted ibn ezra's commentary about how he is right and the talmudic consensus is wrong about what fats are permissible:
as well as our chavurah's parasocial relationship with ibn ezra, our best friend. we went on to talk about sforno's apparent desire to drink olive oil...
...and express our concern over the implication that people were like, bottling blood the same way one does for wine? eventually we reached another section speaking about idolatry as a framework for explaining laws regarding investigation and death penalties, as discussed last year. this year we talked about the development of jewish jurisprudence - particularly the gradually changing social roles of rabbis throughout history and how they used the tools available to them in order to address the moral and procedural tension inherent in the interpretation of halacha and determination of punishment. ("maybe killing children isn't great?") and chavurah member appleberry talked about ongoing scholarship and commentary and its role in community building and cultural preservation.
taking a break for a moment there was conversation about gnosticism, it's role in influencing supersessionism, and related gentile conceptions of the Mean And Evil Old Testament God which, of course, led to (much like last year) gawking at the horrors of HOW INSANELY ANTI-SEMITIC THE WORLD OF DARKNESS BOOKS ARE ("what did they do to my boy rambam" - @veryroundbird)
and finally we got into the rules of kashrut, where we noted the inability to truly know what exact animals were being talked about in certain passages, and also for the third and final time in the torah - we come across the concept of not boiling a kid in its mother's milk. however! after reading a commentary in which rashi says mixing birds and milk is cool, and we were forced to navigate the Talmud’s Meat Absorption Rates Logic Puzzle to find out why. after learning about the importance of weight and standards (don’t want to steal money by weighing things improperly!), we found that the prohibition of mixing bird meat and milk is a rabbinical prohibition rather than a biblical one, per rabbi akiva. further, there is a suggestion that since a kid must only not be boiled in mother’s milk, male animal milk is therefore excluded from the prohibition. @geostatonary, however, opined that you can’t forcefem any male goats or you’ll run into the issue of deciding whether or not the goat has become a mother.
further discussion and usage of google found that human breast milk is pareve and that the only reason it is not okay to mix human breast milk and meat is because any observer might get the impression you are mixing the milk of a kosher animal and meat. this was all valuable scholarship on our part!
moving on from the milk mystery we get into piercing the ears of slaves when they refuse freedom, and conversation on how much of the sixth aliyah and the commentary from the sages on it for this portion are centered around handling the question of “what should be done with those who become destitute”, taking into note the idea that there will always be those who are in need.
concluding the torah portion, we talked about the joys of seeing words about passover during torah readings.
“Hey! I recognize that reference!” - chavurah member appleberry
“I know Jewish stuff!” - @figurafloris
so, moving on to the haftarah (isaiah 54:15-55:5), we discussed how it links to the torah portion: it was a reflection of the question posed towards the end of the portion, the question of what will be done to aid those in need. chavurah member spacecatte read this section, and noted that it comes of as describing in effect a form of mutual aid. it was also noted how funny it is that the verse about creating the weapons of havoc is followed by a verse that basically just says that nobody's weapons will do damage to the jewish people and also they will win every legal argument. ("I will provide for you an excellent lawyer…")
in closing:
Ibn Ezra shares One Weird Trick That Will Make Economists Hate You:

