When is a tribe not a shevet?  When it is a mateh (and vice versa).  We begin "the Book of Tribes" this week, and one of the two Hebrew words for "tribe" will play a major role.

It's the section about the jubilee year, so naturally I'm thinking about Mark Twain and Thomas Jefferson…

Leviticus tells the priests they must avoid ritual contamination with death -- unless the death is that of a close family member.  But the text uses a standard Hebrew word in a very unusual way in order to issue this command.

This week we are told that the Tent of Meeting "abides" in the midst of the Israelites—something that a tent ought not to be doing.

Our text begins by discussing a woman who does the verb tazria before giving birth — but does it mean that she conceives, delivers the baby, or … ?

This week, Aaron gets his first chance to offer sacrifice -- there are too many people making too many offerings.  What's going on?

This week, we focus on the unusual word mok'dah — unusual in its rarity, its form, its spelling, and most of all in the central role it plays in divine worship as prescribed in Leviticus.

Who reads what when?  This week we're beginning to read the book of Leviticus.  But in the podcast we'll look at a rabbi who walked into a synagogue and found the reading beginning in a surprising place — and we'll see what light that sheds on the tradition of reading the Torah.

This week, the Israelites go ahead and build the Tabernacle they were commanded to build 10 chapters ago.  But one thing is different:  the gold they were commanded to bring is not merely a terumah; this week it is also a tenufah.  What's the difference between these two kinds of offerings, and what makes the gold different than it was planned to be three weeks ago?

In Exodus 34, God makes the "Ritual Decalogue" the basis for the covenant between Himself and Israel.  What role does the third party to the transaction, Moses, play?