Matot, Mattot, Mattoth, or Matos (מטות — Hebrew for “tribes,” the fifth word, and the first distinctive word, in the parshah) is the 42nd weekly Torah portion (parshah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the ninth in the book of Numbers. It constitutes Numbers 30:2–32:42.Jews in the Diaspora generally read it in July or early August.
The lunisolarHebrew calendar contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between 50 in common years and 54 or 55 in leap years. In leap years (for example, 2011 and 2014), parshah Matot is read separately. In common years (for example, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2018), parshah Matot is combined with the next parshah, Masei, to help achieve the number of weekly readings needed.
In his 2004 lecture on Deuteronomy 14, Dennis Prager says:
“Nine eleven changed Jewish life… The things that I can say in lectures to Jews now that do not elicit hoots and boos and derision is unbelievable. I could not talk about Jewish choseness before 9/11. Nowhere do Jewish audiences now find this bizarre. Real evil has confronted them. The centrality of Jew hatred in the world has made it evident that there may be some truth that Jews walk a different path. Any Jew with any Jewish identity is now prepared to hear this without laughing or bouncing the lecture fee. I am stunned. I speak more now in Jewish life than ever before. Sixty two Jewish communities last year and I don’t take all the ones I’m invited to. I can’t obviously.
“I say this almost all the time and it’s unbelievable to me. I’m pinching myself. They’re not yelling at me? They are giving this a standing ovation in Dallas? The largest group of Jews ever to convene in Texas I spoke to last year and I spoke about [Jewish choseness]. There is no other way to understand Israel and the centrality of Jews in the world and the hatred? I believe America is hated because it is the one society in history to affirm Jewish choseness. It is the one Judeo-Christian society in history… You latch on to the Jews, and you get the blessings and the hatred of a lot of people.”
Question: Why did 9/11 have this affect on Jews and not the Holocaust?
Dennis: “The Holocaust was so overwhelming that the only effect it had on Jews was to depress them. The evil was too great.”
In his 2004 lecture on Deuteronomy 14, Dennis Prager says: “There’s a tacit agreement in Jewish life between the observant and the non-observant — we both agree that the laws have no meaning.”
“It is a pain in my life because I so believe in Judaism and in the Torah that Judaism has become in certain areas so irrational.”
“The priests are in charge of the temple. They are the priests of Israel. You can’t qualify for it. You have to be born into it. It’s a terrific thing or otherwise there would be bribery and who knows what. There’s no politics. You can’t run for priest.”
Jacob Milgrom: “As God has restricted his choice of the nations to Israel, so must Israel restrict its choice of edible animals to the few sanctioned by God.”
Dennis: “Democracy is good for running a nation, but God does not run the world by democracy.”
“Sports matter,” they write in the book’s first sentence. “They hold a singular position among leisure time activities and have an unparalleled impact on the everyday lives of billions of people.” (Pg. 1)
Says Bill Shankly, the long-time manager of the Liverpool soccer club: “Some people think football is a matter of life or death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more important than that.” (Pg. 15)
Great players change society. Jackie Robinson, for instance, the first black in Major League Baseball, influenced America as much as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. “They lead to an enlightening,” says Dr. Markovits, “precisely because they are the best of the best at what they do.”
Sports are languages. While Americans speak football, basketball, baseball and hockey, the world primarily speaks soccer. The 2006 World Cup final between France and Italy, for instance, drew approximately two billion viewers. By comparison, the Super Bowl is seen by only 160 million people around the world.
Unlike the William Blakes, Mohandas Gandhis, Huston Smiths, and Karen Armstrongs of the world, Dr. Prothero says that the essence of each religion is profoundly different.
What religions do have in common is a conviction that there is something wrong with the world. For Christianity, the problem is sin. For Islam, it is pride. For Buddhism, it is suffering. For Judaism, it is evil.
Each religion offers a solution to what ails the world. In Christianity, the solution to sin is faith in Christ, which brings individual salvation to Heaven. In Islam, the solution is submission to Allah, which brings paradise. In Buddhism, the solution is awareness, which brings nirvana. In Judaism, the solution is God’s law, which brings justice in this world.
Each religion offers a technique for moving from problem to solution. In Christianity, it is faith and good works. In Islam, it is the five pillars (submission to Allah, prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage). In Buddhism, it is the Noble Eightfold Path (which includes meditation and chanting). In Judaism, it is practice of God’s Law (including the laws of the Sabbath, diet, and sex).
On Dennis Prager’s radio show yesterday, relationship expert Alison Armstrong says: “Sports is one of my most favorite place to watch men. One of the things about men that women don’t know is that you are always about winning. A hundred percent of the time, men are winning at something. If you look and ask, what is he winning at now? Then you can be in sync with a man.
“Because men are all about winning, you have developed a more powerful relationship with failure than women have. To women, failure is the f-word. They don’t want fail at anything. They can’t ever say they’ve failed at something. If you want to see a group of women petrified, say, ‘You’ve failed.’
“I remember watching the Olympics in a downhill race and this man who was favored didn’t win. And he said, I didn’t ski as well as I needed to. The other guy skied better. The end.
“And he’ll go back to his cave and gather himself together and come back fine.
“In the woman’s slalom, and the woman who was favored to win didn’t win, and she said, ‘Well, it was icy out there and I don’t think my edges were waxed right…’ She couldn’t say that she failed.”
Dennis: “I have an older brother. Six years older. I was almost 13 when he left home for college. Until then, everything that occurred in the home, including cleaning the table, who can do it faster, was competition.
I’ve heard Dennis Prager say in the past to the effect that good peace-loving Muslims don’t count for much because they have no power in Islamic life. Islam today is run by bloodthirsty jihadis.
I’m sure there were a lot of nice Nazis but they didn’t run anything important.
Dennis: “Any theocratic society is totalitarian. The only ideology within religion aiming for a theocratic society today is within Islam.”
I am an Alexander Technique teacher in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com). I have five books available on Amazon.com. I've been blogging since 1997. I was born in Kurri Kurri, Australia, on May 28, 1966. I have lived in California since May 1977.
