Audio Summaries of the daily Chumash portions In loving memory of Ousher Zelig ben Myer HaLevi Z”LTo sponsor an episode please visit: https://itistaught.com/support-this-project/To get the daily chumash summaries in your email click here https://substack.com/profile/182692001-sarede-rachel-switzer?utm_source=profile-page.Subscribe on SpotifySubscribe on Apple PodcastsPlease consider leaving a review on the platform of your choice! For comments and inquiries, email itistaught@gmail.comWar Plunder, Spoils and TributesMoshe, Elazar and all of the leaders saw the young men of Israel going out of the camp to grab the spoils from the war so they went out to meet them.Moshe was angry with the army commanders. Rashi teaches that we learn from here that the leaders are responsible for anything negative with their generation as they have the power to fight against it.Moshe rebuked these commanders for letting the females live, as those female which had caused the Israelites to sin were recognizable amongst them. Moshe tells them that they should kill every man as well as every woman who is fit to have relationship with a man (even if she has not yet had relations with a man). A girl/woman who is fit to have relations with a man is defined as one who is above the age of three. The way they would determine her age is they would have the women pass in front of the Tzitz and if she was fit to have relations with a man, her face would become yellowish.Moshe goes on to say that anyone who had killed someone should not enter the Courtyard of the Mishkan, i.e. the Camp of the Shechina, the innermost camp of the three camps (The three camps were the Camp of the shechina, the Camp of the Levis which was around it and then around that was the Camp of Israel).This would only apply to someone who killed with an object which can receive impurity, such that when that thing touches the corpse at the moment it dies, the impurity from the corpse gets transmitted to the killer through the weapon. Thus for example, a person would not become impure if he kills someone by shooting an arrow at him.There is an opinion that non-jewish corpses don’t transmit impurity to someone if s/he is merely under the same tent as the corpse, however even according to this opinion, the non jewish corpse would transmit impurity to someone through touching or carrying them.Non Jewish people do not become impure, however the captives they took would end up being circumcised and converting to Judaism and thus they could also become impure.Such an impure person must stay outside of the camp for seven days and on the third and seventh days they must purify themselves with the water of sprinkling.Any clothing, vessels of hide as well as anything made of the horns, hooves and bones of goats must be purified.Elazar now instructed the men to take gold, silver, copper, iron, tin and lead and put it through fire to be purified or anything that is not used to cook with fire should pass through water (i.e. things are purged in the manner which they are used. If something is used to cook with hot water, it is purged with hot water. If it is used for roasting or grilling, it is purged with fire). The rust must be removed from a vessel before purifying it.The water purification must be done in a mikva that would be proper for a woman to immerse in to purify from menstruation (ie they must be 40 se’ah of water – the equivalent of 2.25-4 gallons of water).Metal vessels (of the metals listed here) which are only used with cold water just need to be immersed. Earthenware vessels purchased from a non Jew do not need to be immersed. For other metals and glass, a rabbi must be consulted as to what to do.The impure people being discussed had to immerse their garments on the seventh day.After all of this, they were allowed back into the camp of the Shechina.Elazar attributed what he taught to Moshe saying that these were things which G-d taught Moshe.Since Moshe “fell into anger”, he fell into error as well – in the sense that these laws were concealed from him which is why Elazar taught them and not him.Rashi gives two other examples of times when anger caused Moshe to err. One is from the 8th day of the inauguration where Moshe got angry with Elazar and Itamar (see Vayikra 10:16) and this caused him to make a mistake in regards to the laws of mourning as they pertain to the Kohanim. Another time was with regard to the rock when Moshe called the Israelites “rebels” (see Bamidbar 20:10) which ended up leading him to hit the rock.G-d instructs Moshe that he, together with Elazar and the leaders should calculate the total amount of plunder from the war.They are then to divide it in half, with half of it going to those who fought in the army and half to everyone else. Again, the plunder only included animals and men. The spoils on the other hand included any inanimate movable objects and these were not part of the division. For those spoils, everyone just ...
