Parashat Bamidbar
June 5, 2024
Geri Bloch, Former High School English Teacher
I stare at the over 100 year-old document on the screen in front of me. There are the names of family members, my forebears, who sailed across the ocean to land in the “Goldene Medina” of the Lower East Side. After he married in 1888, my great-grandfather took his bride from the cacophony of cultures in Manhattan to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he began his business of making “orthopedic shoes.” The census record stirs my soul. The names on that sheet of paper were those of my people, my own family, and the “members of the tribe” that escaped pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. If they had not made that journey, I most likely would not be here. My gratitude is boundless. I think about the strength of my great-grandmother who traveled alone to New York in the 1880s, having been orphaned in Germany. I wish I had known her, but she died a few years before I was born. The census reveals the history of a family, of a group of people, of a nation. And so does Parashat Bamidbar.
God speaks to Moses on Sinai: “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms. Associated with you shall be a man from each tribe, each one the head of his ancestral house.” Though I understand the need for a census and a delineation of the jobs that the Levites will perform, I do find the listing of thousands of men so b-o-r-i-n-g. Of course, we know that the Israelites are in the wilderness as penitence for the sin of the creation of the golden calf. I am aware that this is a sacred text, but after rereading this chapter of Torah, I wish that it had a little more oomph to it! Yet, in thinking about those 603,550 kvetchy Israelites with which Moses had to deal, I realize that this chapter is more than numbers.
The Sinai wilderness is teeming with scrubby bushes, some trees, obviously much brown sand, venomous black snakes, and scorpions. This is a desolate landscape, but it is the place, the midbar, the wilderness, where God is determined to turn these former slaves into a holy nation. They have left a rich empire, an empire that had the trappings of wealth and beauty; however, the Israelites had little to show for their back-breaking work. God would take them to the promised land, a land flowing with “milk and honey,” but to arrive at that place of beauty, they had to be taught to accept the decorum and dignity of Torah, the majesty of God-given ritual from Kohanim who wore magnificent garments, and a moral code that would give them parameters for lives filled with the goodness of God.
It is no coincidence that Parashat Bamidbar is usually chanted on the Shabbat before Shavuot, the holiday where we celebrate God’s gift of the Torah to the Jewish people. Each year, we are supposed to feel, think, and pray as if we are “standing at Sinai.” Rabbi Gordon Tucker in his essay, “Reliving Revelation,” asks us to see the Israelite encampment as if we had an aerial view of it. Tucker writes, “What would you see? According to our text you would see a holy site at the center (the Mishkan), so sacred that it is off limits to all but a select few. And emanating from the altar at that center is a column of smoke that never goes out (as Lev. 6:6 requires). Surrounding that holy precinct are Moses and Aaron and the remainders of the clans of the religious leaders of the people. And finally, in an outer concentric circle, you would see the various tribes of the Israelites, constituting the goy kadosh, the holy people of which Exodus 19:6 spoke. . . The Israelite camp was constructed to be a replica of Mount Sinai on the day of revelation.”
The central concept around which the Torah is taught is to remember that “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” But the second part of that concept is to remember the gift of Torah, the rules and regulations that were to turn the Israelites into the holy nation God desires. Each year, as we spend the night of Shavuot studying, our “standing at Sinai” becomes a symbolic act that adds to our holiness as a nation. This year, we are in a desert of heartbreak stemming from October 7th, yet we will once again “stand at Sinai” thinking of those 603,550 Israelites seeing the smoke rise, noting the beauty of the Mishkan, observing the gleam of the gems on the Kohen Gadol’s breastplate, and listening to Moses speak. And as we study, we will pray for the hostages in captivity and their grieving families.
The Sinai wilderness is teeming with scrubby bushes, some trees, obviously much brown sand, venomous black snakes, and scorpions. This is a desolate landscape, but it is the place, the midbar, the wilderness, where God is determined to turn these former slaves into a holy nation. They have left a rich empire, an empire that had the trappings of wealth and beauty; however, the Israelites had little to show for their back-breaking work. God would take them to the promised land, a land flowing with “milk and honey,” but to arrive at that place of beauty, they had to be taught to accept the decorum and dignity of Torah, the majesty of God-given ritual from Kohanim who wore magnificent garments, and a moral code that would give them parameters for lives filled with the goodness of God.
It is no coincidence that Parashat Bamidbar is usually chanted on the Shabbat before Shavuot, the holiday where we celebrate God’s gift of the Torah to the Jewish people. Each year, we are supposed to feel, think, and pray as if we are “standing at Sinai.” Rabbi Gordon Tucker in his essay, “Reliving Revelation,” asks us to see the Israelite encampment as if we had an aerial view of it. Tucker writes, “What would you see? According to our text you would see a holy site at the center (the Mishkan), so sacred that it is off limits to all but a select few. And emanating from the altar at that center is a column of smoke that never goes out (as Lev. 6:6 requires). Surrounding that holy precinct are Moses and Aaron and the remainders of the clans of the religious leaders of the people. And finally, in an outer concentric circle, you would see the various tribes of the Israelites, constituting the goy kadosh, the holy people of which Exodus 19:6 spoke. . . The Israelite camp was constructed to be a replica of Mount Sinai on the day of revelation.”
The central concept around which the Torah is taught is to remember that “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” But the second part of that concept is to remember the gift of Torah, the rules and regulations that were to turn the Israelites into the holy nation God desires. Each year, as we spend the night of Shavuot studying, our “standing at Sinai” becomes a symbolic act that adds to our holiness as a nation. This year, we are in a desert of heartbreak stemming from October 7th, yet we will once again “stand at Sinai” thinking of those 603,550 Israelites seeing the smoke rise, noting the beauty of the Mishkan, observing the gleam of the gems on the Kohen Gadol’s breastplate, and listening to Moses speak. And as we study, we will pray for the hostages in captivity and their grieving families.
A census gives us numbers. Each of those numbers, whether 3,000 years ago or 100 years ago, does not give us a complete picture of the humans who stood or who will be standing at Sinai next week. Let us do our best to listen to the voices of history so that we may stand at Sinai in perpetuity.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Shavuot Sameach.