Parshah

It was a stormy night, and a battleship was on exercise at sea. The captain stood on the bridge, peering into the foggy night ahead. Suddenly, he heard the look-out shout from the observation post. “There’s a light on the starboard side!”

How far are we willing to go for peace?

 One of the intriguing topics in the Torah’s longest parshah is the sotah, a woman accused of infidelity. The suspicious husband must remain separate from his wife until she can be exonerated by drinking the “bitter waters.” The process of preparing this powerful potion includes dissolving a piece of parchment which contains the curses that will befall the sotah if she is, in fact, guilty. Even though these words come from verses which bear the name of G-d, the Torah instructs that they be destroyed to allow for the possibility of clearing her of all charges. Remarkably, Hashem is willing to erase His own name for the sake of shalom bayis, helping the couple take the first step toward rebuilding their relationship (Sukkah 53b).

Even in their 80s, siblings don’t always get along.

 At the end of the parshah, Miriam and Aharon speak lashon hara about their brother, Moshe, and are swiftly struck with tzara’as. The verses only mention explicitly that Miriam was punished, but Chazal say that Aharon was as well (Shabbos 97a).

It had been a long time since he had spoken with his father. Too long. A few months back, they had gotten into a heated disagreement, and things hadn’t been the same since. It wasn’t always like this, of course. His father was his role model, his hero growing up. He was an only child, and his father had been his teacher, his mentor, and in many ways, his best friend. Many of his greatest memories featured time spent bonding with his father. And now, he couldn’t help but wonder how they had gotten to this point. They never fought, ever. That’s it, he thought, I’m going to call him, I’m going to set things straight and schedule a special breakfast for next week. He was about to pick up the phone, when he looked at his schedule. He was pretty booked for the next few days, so it made more sense to call to schedule for next week. He also had a meeting in 15 minutes, so their conversation would be curtailed if he called now. He phoned his secretary:

Imagine a life beyond the one you currently experience – one with new senses and sensations, new colors added to your field of vision, new sounds to your range of hearing. What if you had abilities that far surpassed anything you can imagine? Consider a reality in which you had access to all wisdom and could experience and grasp it all instantaneously. It is so difficult to imagine this, because it is nearly impossible to think about something that you have never experienced before – just try thinking of a color that doesn’t exist.

It turns out, Har Sinai wasn’t so small after all.

Young children are taught many songs before Shavuos, including the classic where Har Sinai cries that it is not tall or wide enough to host Matan Torah. But in the end, “From all the mountains, Hashem chose Sinai” - specifically because it was so unassuming. The lesson is that true Kabbalas HaTorah can only be achieved by those willing to submissively adhere to a Divine set of laws and humbly respect the opinions of others. This is why Hashem chose to transmit the Torah on the lowest of all the mountains (Sotah 5a).