Bamidbar: Counting on Faith

Numbers.  It sounds like a CPA’s dream.  In Hebrew we call it Bamidbar, which means “wilderness.” The older name for the book is Sefer ha-Pekudim, the Book of Gatherings.” While this new book of the Torah does contain the tallies of Jews in the desert it reaches far more deeply than just a census.

For example. The first born in many families, maybe all, excites the parents.  This introduction of new life is so novel, it borders on the sublime.  God tells each family that they must redeem their first-born. Why?  Precisely because each family pins hopes and aspirations on this child.  Who knows if they will be blessed with another?  Great pains are taken to find just the right name that will help determine the character of the child.  Love is lavished on him.  Blessings are pronounced and his every cry is attended.  

Then God tells us, “He is not yours.”

The family must then redeem the child from God teaching a powerful and profound lesson about ownership and possession.  Such redemption announces that even life is tentative and that we need to be mindful that there is a greater power than us.

To this day we practice Pidyon ha-Ben, the exchange of silver to redeem the first-born.

For example. The Children of Israel must pass through the midbar, a brume of clouds, sun, rocks, sand and scorpions in order to obtain their objective of the Promise Land.  They trekked for forty years through that barren landscape.

Is this not kike our lives? We grow, challenge, make foolish mistakes, pay handsomely for them, and then finally grow to the stature of maturity? It is our own sojourn through a personal wilderness that eventually makes us worthy of entering our promised land. How long did we wander?  Twenty years? Fifty?

For example.  Each family among the numbers was responsible to help transport the Mishkan, Tabernacle, and its various appurtenances. They carried the holiest items where the Jewish people talked to and worshipped God.

How often we become carried away by trivialities!  We lie awake at night worrying over bills.  We stress about our children or parents.  We argue endlessly about the same things day after day, (which is usually about who wields power).  The Torah is gently reminding us that these things should not be the focus of our attention.  There is something far for worthy and meaningful.  Carrying the mishkan or cleaning the shul is far more meaningful and rightly prioritizes life’s demands.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Davar Acher

The Torah reading for this week, the fourth book of the Bible, contains a census. The details of the parasha are parceled out deliberately as the Torah means to clearly delineate each of the tribes. The tribes are painstakingly separated both in name and in fact. Imagine the twelve tribes sorted out by their relationship to one of the sons of Jacob. Each took their place next to their sisters and brothers and cousins. Then under a specific banner they were singly counted. Every name is mentioned. Then they were supposed to march tribe by tribe into the Promised Land of Canaan.

What was supposed to happen and what actually happened are two different tales. In fact, the Israelites were bothered by their new freedom. Yes, bothered. The change from slave to freeman was too great a transition for them to make. That is why the complaining about water and food and the missing elements from Egypt began almost immediately after liberation. Perhaps the biggest act of rebellion was when the people bought the “lie” of the spies. The quarreling over whatever the issue was not at the heart of the problem. The real problem was a lack of trust.

Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno commented that had the Jews accepted the direction from God; had they believed and maintained their belief in the God that liberated them, fed them, gave them Torah they would have marched right into Israel. The enemies of the land would have scattered at the sight of them carrying their tribal banners. Instead, doomed to wander for a full generation, the Israelites entered Canaan under Joshua in a different fashion.

When the next generation of Israelites crossed into Canaan they were not counted. The names were not specified. Only the heads of the tribes are mentioned in the Book of Joshua. Why the difference? Because, tells Sforno, the Israelites lost something when belief left them. Instead of defining themselves through God, Torah and trust they defined themselves by other external criteria. They worried about the Canaanites. They agonized over food. They argued about water. The identity of the Israelites came from disbelief.

An analogy. When Adam and Havvah met the snake in the Garden, the snake convinced them that the fruit of the forbidden tree was better for them than the other one. They took it. With that act, the two primal beings were sent into exile. Much later, Moshe would confront the nemesis of the Jewish people, Pharaoh, and defy him. Moshe showed the power of God as he exercised control over the serpents of Pharaoh. He grabbed the tail, trusting in God, and the snake became a staff. This act of faith was the beginning off the end of the exile for the Jewish nation.

The snake is an emblem of trust or disbeleief. No wonder later generations conceived of the snake as the yetser hara, the evil side, because it had the power to sway humanity into exile...but it also had the power to redeem it.

We can transform any act into something else with the necessary tool of faith. In fact, the gematria – numeric value – of snake is the same as messiah. In other words, an end to the ultimate exile will be granted when we each take the serpent by its tail - an act of faith.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the Kotzker Rebbe, was a challenging Hassidic master. The Kotzker demanded an absolute, personal search for truth. Listen to his words:

"If I am me because you are you, and you are you because I am me, then I am not me and you are not you. But if I am me because I am me, and you are you because you are you, then I am me and you are you."

In the final analysis, we must be accountable individually. We are responsible for ourselves. When we have the necessary ingredient of life, faith, God counts us, loves us, and declares, “Now you are a whole person.”




Haftarah Insight:
Hosea does not give up. Faced with a painful life - a woman, his wife, who abandons him and the desolation of having been abandoned for another - Hosea maintains his faith. Despite all she does, Hosea believes in the power of love, return and redemption. In much the same way, Hosea teaches us that God does not give up on us. He still loves, believes in our potential and awaits our return. "You are the children of the Living God!" the prophet proclaims.

A Matter of Law:From this Torah parsha we derive the idea that people are never to be counted. If a census needs to be taken we use the method devised by the Torah itself, we count possessions - shekels here - not souls. The law is extrapolated to even refusing to count the presence of ten for a minyan.