Parashat Nasso

This week’s parshah is Nasso (Numbers 4,21-7,89), the second in the book of Numbers. The book of Numbers is one that gets overlooked pretty often, I think, because it starts out with a really, really boring census of the Israelites. This second parshah, though, has some interesting pieces to it. I’m going to break this post up into three different segments, as there’s just too much in here to write as one post. The first segment will be about a strange, archaic, and abusive ritual that is described in Numbers 5:12-31, called the sotah, or “unfaithfulness” ritual. The second segment will be about the nazirites (Numbers 6:1-21) and the haftarah portion of the week, which is Samson’s birth (Judges 13:2-25). The third segment will be about one of the best known, oldest, and most beautiful passage in the Torah – the priestly blessing which is found in Numbers 6:22-27.