Sefer Bamidbar concludes with a verse that reads: "These are the commandments and the judgments which the Lord commanded by the hand of Moshe to Bnei Yisrael in the plains of Moav by the Jordan near Yericho." What is the significance of the location in which these commandments were given, and to which commandments does this verse refer?
Parashat Masei, which concludes Sefer Bamidbar, has two main subjects: first, a summary of the journeys of Benei Yisrael, the Jewish nation, in the wilderness; second, the final preparations for entering the land.
The law of the "go'el ha-dam – avenger of blood," according to which a private act of killing, committed by a private individual and not within the framework of a public court of law, is justified – and perhaps even desirable – raises some perplexing problems.
There are a number of riddles in Parashat Masei that we will attempt to address in this shiur: What is the significance of the glaring omissions in the list of journeys? What can we learn from the description of the borders of the land? And what do we see about the Torah's laws from the mitzva to establish cities of refuge?
