Instructions for counting the omer are found on our Omer Overview Page. You can find the specific blessing for today at chabad.org.

We’re dedicating a new Sefer Torah on the first day of Shavuot. In honor of this joyous occasion, we’re using the counting of the Omer to take a whirlwind trip through the Torah

Today’s portion is Matot, Masei from the book of Numbers. Today’s insight was generously provided by Howard S.

Verses of note: Numbers 31:9-18

What caught your attention in this parashah?

The Israelites conquer Midian and take captives and booty. Upon their return, Moses orders them to slaughter most of the captives — every male child and every non-virgin woman. However, they can keep the rest of the young women; one can well imagine the purpose. As some of you know, part of my job involves research on the Islamic State terrorist group. On the surface, the slaughter, the capture of booty, and the retention of young women seems not far from what we see them do.

What’s one explanation for these verses?

On Passover, it is as if we ourselves participated in the exodus from Egypt. So it must be as if it is we ourselves who participated in the settling of the promised land and the conquests that preceded it and accompanied it, including the conquest of the Midianites and the subsequent slaughter of every male child and non-virgin woman. Yet today, we would view these actions as abhorrent. How can we think about this?

Perhaps we justify it by saying it was G-d’s command, and therefore justified, full stop. Yet some group’s today commit atrocities in the name of G-d and we condemn them, so we must assume they are getting false commands or worshipping false gods. They certainly would not see it that way, and this would not serve to convince anyone except ourselves. Perhaps we justify it by saying the crimes of the Midianites were so terrible that this was a just punishment. But all male children and non-virgin women? This suggests collective punishment, potentially of innocents. And then there is the issue of the virgin women … Perhaps this was the only way to ensure the safety, security, and ritual purity of the new Israelite nation. In some ways, ethnic cleansing works, or at least population exchanges, as in Greeks and Turks in the formation of modern Turkey, and Muslims and Hindus in the formation of India and Pakistan, both events with human suffering. But perhaps the best way to view this as an event from a different time, not applicable to our own, but one that shows the full range of what humans are capable of — that we and our actions are complex and it is better to know that complexity than not, and that present-day atrocities we see are not inhuman, but are in fact part of the complex human experience.