I would like to share with you something by Rashi, the foremost commentator on both the Bible and the Talmud. Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yizchaki, who lived from 1040 to 1105 in France - his commentary is full of Old French translations of difficult words - and is traditionally the first commentary on the Bible that the student tends to look at. When studying the Talmud, Rashi's commentary is even more important, as he is often the only way to get through any number of seemingly impenetrable passages.

The two parshas we read this week, Nitzavim and Vayelech, take place during the last days of Moshe's life. The entire book of Deuteronomy has been a kind of summing up for Moshe, and with these two parshas we approach the end, in which he speaks his last words to the Jewish people and appoints Joshua to take over as leader of the nation. It is in connection with this latter task, that of naming Joshua as his successor, that Moshe and God seem to have a little disagreement.

Often, people ask me about the Biblical and Rabbinic roots of Zionism. Questions such as 'Is it a Mitzvah (commandment) to live in Israel?', or 'Haven't Jews always lived in the Diaspora, after all, the Babylonian Talmud, the textual cornerstone of Jewish life and law, was written in Babylon, wasn't it?, why is it important to live in Israel?', and 'Moses never even got to Israel, the Torah was given in the desert, lots of religious Jews live and have lived outside of Israel, right?', are asked all the time.

One of the most difficult and troubling of all the laws in the Torah appears in this week's parsha - the law of the 'ben sorer u'moreh' - the wayward and rebellious son. This is what it says in the 21st chapter of Deuteronomy: "When a man has a son who is wayward and rebellious, who does not listen to the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and they warn him, but he does not listen to them. His father and mother shall seize him and bring him to the elders of his town, to the gate of his place.

This week's parsha, Shoftim - Judges -  contains a lot of material concerning the government of the original State of Israel; how the king must behave, how to set up a court system, how to run an army, how to set up a legislative system, and more.

The parsha this week, Pinchas,  begins with God praising and rewarding Pinchas for an act he committed at the end of last week's parsha; the killing of Zimri ben Salu, one of the heads of the tribe of Shimon, and Kozby bat Zur, a Midianite princess.

As I'm sure many of you know, in addition to reading in the synagogue the weekly Torah portion, there is a tradition to follow that reading with a short selection from one of the books of the prophets. Typically, this section, called the 'haftarah' or 'leave-taking' (the idea being that it is a kind of epilogue or coda to the Torah reading) is connected in some thematic way to the Torah portion. This week I would like to talk about parshat Chukat together with its haftarah.

This week we read the story of Korach, who is traditionally seen as an arch-villain, the archetypal rebel against Moshe and Aharon, who were the 'establishment' of the Jewish people. When we look at it carefully, however, Korach's complaint against the hegemony of Moshe and his brother, who between them and other members of their family run the entire show in the desert - has a compelling ring to it: "You've taken too much! For the entire community, all of them, are holy, and God is in their midst.

In this week's parsha we have one of a number of stories in the Torah about the kvetching and complaining that the people of Israel were guilty of during the time they were in the Sinai desert, traveling from Egypt to Israel. The story, in chapter 11 of Numbers, goes like this: