This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 7:41 pm
Shabbat Ends: 8:29 pm

Torah Message:

A Yiddishe Kop

“The sons of Naftali, their offspring according to their families…” (1:42)

In a certain country, being caught gambling was a serious offense.

It so happened that one day a certain priest was playing poker with his friends the rabbi and the imam. Suddenly the door flew open and a policeman rushed in. The policeman rushed over to the priest and said, “Gotcha! You were playing poker!” “No I wasn’t” protested the priest. “Would you swear that you weren’t playing poker?” “Absolutely,” said the priest. “So swear!” And he did.

Next, the inspector turned to the imam: “You were playing poker!” “No I wasn’t” protested the imam. “Would you swear that you weren’t playing poker?” “Absolutely,” said the priest. “So swear!” And he did.

Next the policeman turned to the rabbi, “You were playing poker!” “No I wasn’t” protested the rabbi. “Would you swear that you weren’t playing poker?” “Listen”, said the rabbi, “If this fellow swears that he wasn’t playing poker, and this fellow swears that he wasn’t playing poker, who was I supposed to be playing poker with?”

With this old and not particularly funny joke, we can understand the following anomaly in this week’s Torah portion.

“The sons of Naftali, their offspring according to their families…”

When enumerating all the other tribes, the Torah employs the prefix “For…”. As in: “For the sons of Asher… forty-one thousand, five hundred.” (1:41). Only with the tribe of Naftali does the Torah omit the “For”.

Why?

The present counting of the tribes of Israel was designed to establish the number of each tribe by itself, for, as Rashi points out, the grand total of all the Jewish People was already established that year, and that number was unchanged. Thus, once the other tribes had been counted and only the tribe of Naftali remained, their number was already known by a simple sum of deduction. Therefore, it was not necessary to use the prefix “For”.

That’s what you call a “Yiddishe Kop”.

• Sources: Panim Yafot in Mayana shel Torah