Shavuot - Naso - 2023

Chevre, tonight is שָׁבוּעוֹת (Shavuot) followed immediately by נָׁשאֹׂ (Naso) in Israel. Outside Israel, Naso will be read next week. We have been counting the Omer up to Shavuot since Passover. Shavuot is the holiday of the giving of the Torah. It’s traditional to stay up all night (OK, I just can’t anymore, but I stay up later than usual. I need a real good support case escalation to get my blood moving late into the night to stay up). And eat Dairy food.

Naso continues with some Levi responsibilities to the Mishkan, Purifying the camp, the Sotah and Nazire (Sotah is the wayward wife and a Nazire takes on extra stringencies like not eating anything made of grapes and not cutting their hair for a period of time), has the priestly blessings followed by the offerings of all the tribe leaders to the Mishkan.

What is interesting around the purifying of the camp is that they expelled from the camp anyone that was ritually impure or had the spiritual disease tzaarat, which would appear on the skin and was caused by a ritual or spiritual impurity. In our code today, we often “throw out” errors when something “bad” or unexpected happens. Having a robust system requires that these impurities be dealt with. Either by capturing the errors and moving on, retrying the action or event or by saving the bad event or input somewhere for later review. By expelling the ritually impure, these folks were given time to purify themselves and come back. The folks with Tzaarat needed to be checked by a Priest/Cohen and when given the all clear could come back to the camp. So in this way, the Bnei Yisrael were creating a type of Dead Letter Queue where these folks could be in a holding pattern for some amount of time before being “retried” and brought back. Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom.