Holy Times. The Pasha of Amar contains a chapter dedicated to the festivals of the Jewish year.

There are five such passages in the Torah, two, both in the Book of Exodus, are very brief.

They refer only to the three pilgrimage festivals, Pessik Shvors and Sukkis.

They don't specify their dates, merely their rough position in the agricultural

year, nor do they mention the specific commands related to the festivals. So that leaves three

other accounts, one in our parasha, a second one in Numbers 28-29, and a third in Devarim,

Chapter 16. And what's striking is how different they are.

This isn't, as critics maintain, because the Torah is a composite document, but rather because

it comes at its subject matter from multiple perspectives, a character of the Torah mindset as a whole.

So the long section on the festivals in Sefer Bermidba in the Book of Numbers is wholly dedicated to the special Musaf, the additional

sacrifices brought on holy days, including Shabbat and Roche-Khodesh. A memory of this is, of course,

preserved to this day in our Musuf prayers for those days.

Those are the holy times from the perspective of the tabernacle, the temple and later the synagogue.

The account in Devarim is about society. Moses at the end of his life told the next generation

where they'd come from, where they were going to, and the kind of society they were to construct.

It was to be the opposite of Egypt. It would strive for justice, freedom, and human dignity.

One of DeVarum's most important themes is its insistence that worship be centralized by Makomashiyah Shem Yivhahar in the place that God will choose,

which of course turned out to be Jerusalem.

The unity of God was to be mirrored in the unity of the nation, something that couldn't be

achieved if every tribe had its own temple, sanctuary or shrine.

And that's why when it comes to the festivals, De Vharim speaks only of Pesachshvus and Sukhers, and or shrine. And that's why when it comes to the festivals, Devarim speaks only of

Pesachshvus and Sukhs and not Rosh Hashanam Kippur, because only on those three festivals was there

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