Bamidbar Chapter 1 – Transcript

Bamidbar Chapter 1: The Census of Israel

Introduction: Why Read the Census?

So today we’re reading the first chapter in Bamidbar. It’s a long chapter in terms of the amount of pesukim, but also a lot of information in terms of numbers and names and things like that which are important. We can discuss maybe why these things might be important to the peshat, but I think it’s kind of simple to understand why it’s important.

The question is really more: why is it relevant? Why was it kept for us to read all the time, every year, or whenever we read it? That’s the question. For the time, it’s pretty obvious that censuses are very important. Every country, every functioning government and every functioning society has to have some way of organizing itself. Especially, as we explained, this is them organizing the journey through the desert to go to Eretz Yisrael. There needs to be—we need to know who is going to lead it, who is on top, who is on the bottom, who is on the side. These are important things.

The Importance of Yichus

They also have important legal, or we could say what’s called yichus, important implications for knowing who you are in terms of who you could marry, who you can’t marry, in terms of genealogy. Yichus being a very important thing for people to understand themselves. One of the answers to “who you are” is to say: I am the son of so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, and so on.

That’s probably the reason why these things were kept ledorot. Of course, entire books like Divrei HaYamim in Tanakh are about tracing these genealogies further down. Pretty sure that people, as far as they could, have always cared about knowing how to ascribe themselves, to trace their genealogy up to the Shevatim, up to these people that went on to Israel.

These are considered the paradigmatic generation where the order of the tribes was set, where each person, where they live in Eretz Yisrael, was set. Sefer Yehoshua gives us the names of the places where everyone settled. So these are important historically. For us, after a very long time, we don’t really know how to connect to that, but it’s not really hard to understand in a simple way why these things would be important. Although it still doesn’t make it entirely less boring to us when we read it. Simply, of course, if you get into really tracing things through, you’ll always find interesting things.

In any case, we will just be telling you what it says, what it talks about.

The Date and Time

The first pasuk is the one that gives us the date and time for all of this, and that’s important. As we said, one of the big ways in which all of this is organized is by this chronology, and therefore they all have this date and time of when the story happened, where we’re up to in the story. Specifically, this is where the story counts months and years from Yetziat Mitzrayim, which is what starts all the story, what organizes this whole story.

So bachodesh hasheini, the second month, the first day in the second month, in the second year from Yetziat Mitzrayim. So we understand that we’re after hakamat haMishkan. The first year was when the Yetziat Mitzrayim itself happened, right, and all that. And the second year, in the first month—we call this, in the first month is when the Mishkan was set up. And now we have, in the second month, after we assume all the festivities are done, everything died down, now we have this story of the census.

The Command Structure

We have it framed as a command and then the carrying out of that command—a very popular framing in the Torah, especially in parshiyot to do with Kohanim and so on. A very popular framing: this is the framing, it gets the command from Hashem to do this.

Now, se’u et rosh (picking up your head) is just an idiom for counting, because you count heads, right? One person. We don’t count hands because each person has two hands, so we have to count their heads. But also, of course, if you remember the story of Pharaoh, it has two meanings, it has double meaning, and there is some implication in that symbolism, in that language. But anyways, literally it just means this.

Organizational Units

And they’re counted by their families, by their father’s houses. As we’ve seen already, for example in Parshat Bo, a Beit Av is a level of society. It’s a part of the societal structure that people belong to their Beit Av, which might be the same as mishpachot or maybe not. Maybe mishpachot are a higher level, but it’s a unit. It’s a part of the important units in which the society was organized. So we have to know to which one each belongs.

Who Was Counted

And only the males were counted, only from 20 years and on. It doesn’t say here until when. And of course, 20 years is the military age. And also what’s really considered—we saw last week, right? We saw last chapter in Sefer Vayikra, we saw the law of Arachin, which very clearly also describes 20 to 60 as being the prime years of a person’s life.

So up to 20—20 is the age of adulthood in the Torah. It’s very interesting because everyone knows the Bar Mitzvah is when you’re 13. That age is not mentioned anywhere in the Torah. It’s not biblical, so to speak; it’s rabbinic. And the Torah she’bichtav, we only find the age of 20 as being the age of gedurah, the age of being counted as an adult for military purposes and things like that.

Of course, Chazal have some sources, they have ramazim for their age, but it’s not explicit anywhere. And I think that when Chazal say that in Beit HaMikdash they only managed from 20 years old and on, I think that this is really sourced in the fact that in the Torah she’bichtav we don’t find any other age as the age of adulthood.

The Leadership

Okay, in any case, this is them being counted. Moshe and Aharon—so also seems to be important. This is another question to notice all the time: what is Aharon’s role? Of course, Aharon is the Kohen, but in some sense it seems here, and we’ll see later in the end of the book with Aharon and Elazar, the Kohen doesn’t only have a role in the Mikdash; he also has a role in the leadership of the entire people.

And then, besides for this, Moshe and Aharon being on top, we have the leaders of each mateh, each shevet, each tribe, being also the leaders. And each one of these—ish means each one, right? Ish is how the Torah says each man, each one. So each tribe has many Batei Av or many mishpachot, as we’ll see their names later. And the nasi of the shevet, the head of the tribe, is the head of all the Batei Av in that shevet.

The List of Tribes

Okay, and we have here the list of Shevatim. I’m not going to read out the names; everyone could read them themselves. Reuven, Shimon, Yehuda, Yissachar, Zevulun, and two Shevatim of Yosef. There’s always in these numbers—always Yosef is counted as two: Ephraim and Menashe. And Levi is not counted. We’ll see an explicit ta’am for that, but there’s a logic where there’s always 12 tribes. And so if we count Levi, we count Yosef as one. If not, then Yosef is counted as two.

But over here, the reason for that is because Levi is not counted as part of the tribes. He doesn’t get a part of the land, he doesn’t participate in the war, at least not in the way that all the others do. And therefore we have Ephraim and Menashe as two tribes. This is the more factual split of the tribes. Ephraim and Menashe in reality had their own tribal structures going on. We could read in the whole Tanakh, we see that Levi sort of has like its own class. It doesn’t really like one more tribe.

So that’s the order. It keeps on changing. I don’t know the reason why there’s—every time there’s, we’ll see the order here has some kind of logic later, but in general, every time it’s a different order.

Rashei Alufei Yisrael

These are the 12 leaders of the 12 tribes, and these have another title: alufei Yisrael. Alufei Yisrael means thousands of Yidden. Thousands is, as we’ve seen several times, a military organizational level, probably because there’s a thousand people, but like means something like a unit or a division. So they’re also the leaders of these alafim.

Of course we discussed the Parshat Yitro, the sarei alafim, sarei me’ot is the highest. The sarei alafim—there isn’t anything beyond that besides for the nesi’ei hashevatim, which are obviously higher than that. But they’re also rashei alufei Yisrael. So that’s why I’m saying that it means not only one thousand, but the leaders of the thousands, which is the way in which they were organized, apparently, for going to war and so on.

The Execution of the Command

So that’s the mitzvah. Maybe I should have put this in the quote once. In any case, this is the reason I don’t do it—it’s too much sometimes. But anyways, this is part of the mitzvah.

And then we have the ma’aseh, the kiyum. Moshe does it, takes these people. And maybe it’s important also that these people are in the command, they’re in the order, they were made up. Not Moshe made up who to take; it was part of Hashem’s order to have these people be the leaders. And he takes these people and along with everyone else, and they get them all together the same day, the same day he was commanded, the same day he did it.

And we say they linked, they traced themselves toward their families, to their place of Av, by count of names. I think this just means the way they counted it, like people would write down their name or say their name, and that was how it was counted. So not like by just counting numbers—counting names. And they did that as Hashem commanded Moshe.

So that’s the end of this part. Like there’s a full story here: there was a command, part of the command was who should do it, and they did it.

The Results

Now the second part of the story is giving us the results of this command. So you could also read it chronologically. I’m saying that it’s also to have a complete story, but you could just read it chronologically: they did it, and here are the results of what they did.

And here we have for each of it, more or less, a formula. It changes a tiny bit, and the formula—I don’t have a reason for words that are different one from one to the other, but more or less there’s a formula, and this formula gets repeated 12 times for each one.

The pasuk is not worried about spacing. It doesn’t just say numbers; it gives a formula for each one. This is not because they couldn’t write. In Sefer Devarim, for example, we have lists that are literally just lists without any connecting words in between. But this is for the completion of the book. That’s the simple meaning: for the literary completion of the book, it’s nicer to have things. Even if it’s repetitive, it’s nicer to have it like this. And you could like sing it when you read it, so it becomes like a song.

There’s Reuven, and he gets the title of the bechor. He has—that’s the nusach, that’s what you say for every one. In total they have 46…

The Literary Formula of the Census

I’m saying that it’s also to have a complete story, but you could just read the chronology. They did it, and here are the results of what they did. And here we have, for each of it, more or less, a formula. It changes a tiny bit. And the formula, I don’t have a reason for words that are different from one to the other, but more or less, there’s a formula. And this formula gets repeated 12 times for each one.

The posuk is not worried about sparing ink. It doesn’t just say numbers. It gives a formula for each one. This is not because they couldn’t write in Sefer Devarim, for example, we have lists that are literally just lists without any connecting words in between. But this is for the completion of the book. That’s the simple meaning. For the literary completion of the book, it’s nicer to have things, even if it’s repetitive, it’s nicer to have it like this. And you could sing it when you read it. So it becomes like a song.

There’s Reuven, and he gets a title, the bechor. He has, toldot Yisrael, l’mishpechotam, l’veit avotam, and the niggun. That’s what you say for every one and totaled they have 46,500 people. Then Shimon, with the same megillah, has 59,300 people. Then Gad has, with the same megillah, 54,650 people.

Observations About the Numbers

There’s also an interesting thing to note that all these numbers are equal besides full hundred, besides for a few that are 50. Then, as people have noticed, it was probably rounded somehow. But it’s also interesting why some of them have 50s. Maybe they didn’t round to 50 and it happens to have been that these were the ones that had only 50s or so on.

Yehuda, same thing, has 74,600 people. There’s also significance here to notice who has the bigger tribes. Of course, that makes a big difference. We can see that Yehuda is the biggest over here in this group in general.

Yisachar has 54,400. Zevulun has 75,400. There’s also numbers that keep on coming back, like 400, right? 54,400, 75,400. We had 400 before also, if I remember. No, 53.

For Ephraim, we have 40,500. For Menashe, we have 32,200. For Binyamin, we have 53,400. That’s another 400. There’s certain numbers between 1 and 10 that don’t happen here, and some that do.

For Dan, there’s 62,700. For Asher, there’s 41,500. For Naftali, there’s 53,400. Those are the elect, and that’s all of them.

These are the counts, the census, that Moshe and Aharon did, along together with these 12 leaders of the tribes. Altogether, if you count all together, you get 603,550, not including Shevet Levi, who were not loyal—they were not counted, not included in this census.

The Special Status of Shevet Levi

And here, it’s a little backwards, because this should have been said before. But I think also, this is for the completion of the story. The story is organized in a logical order, more than a chronological order, because obviously, Moshe needed to have been told not to count the Leviim already before, otherwise, he would have done it, because they’re also part of the eidah. Or maybe he understood it himself. But I think it’s really because now we’re starting to talk about the Leviim, and we’re going to see when we talk about them two or three times. We have a mitzvah. And again, we have this framing of a command and a fulfillment. I think that’s what it’s for, although, because otherwise, that second thing, the ka’asher tzivah, doesn’t make sense.

So there’s a command that says, don’t count Levi. Lo tifkedu, et rosh shevet Levi, lo tisa. Maybe these two things mean the same thing. Maybe they have some difference in meaning.

The Role of the Leviim

And number two, what will they do? And these two things seem to have been connected. Because the census, as we said, the census is not just knowing how many people. It’s really giving them a job. And I think that the job given to all the people is, al Yisrael, to put them in the army. And therefore, what it’s saying here is the Leviim are not going to be part of the army. They’re going to have a different job, which is, in some sense, part of the army. Because the Mishkan is traveling with them, with the machaneh.

But their job will be, hafked es ha-Leviim al Mishkan ha-eidut v’al kol keilav. They will be in charge of the Mishkan and the vessels of the Mishkan. They will carry it, and they will serve it, and they will also encamp around the Mishkan. They’re watching it, right? It’s the mishmeret ha-Mishkan. They’re literally the watchers of it in a literal sense, but also in the sense of honor and so on. And they will also be the ones taking it apart and putting it together. So there’s a list of things that they do. They carry, they serve, they encamp together with it, and they put it up and down.

And anyone else will be put to death—v’hazar hakarev yumat. Someone who’s not a Levi cannot be allowed to enter, cannot be allowed to touch. And we’ll see stories specifically about this later. But that’s the law, and that’s why Shevet Levi has their own category here.

The Encampment Structure

And then, so that’s what the Levi will do. And now the Bnei Yisrael, all the other Bnei Yisrael, all encamp, each for his machaneh, each for his degel, each for his flank. Or something like that, it means. I don’t know if it means literally a flag, but the flag is what symbolizes that. And l’tzivotam, to their armies, right?

The Leviim will be around the Mishkan, v’lo yihyeh ketzef. So part of the job of the Leviim is to make sure that the Yidden don’t touch the Mishkan, because then there would be a ketzef, then there would be anger on the Yidden. But the Leviim are in charge of watching that this doesn’t happen.

Summary of the Structure

So this is the order. So there’s like, in general, three parts in this tzivui, right? There’s the not counting the Levi. There’s what they will do, and where they will live, and where the Yidden will live, where everyone else will encamp. And we have this report of them doing what Moshe has told them to do. And I think this probably should be said to refer to this. Just this is the completion of this little series of this little envelope here. There’s a mitzvah and a tzivui, although maybe it goes on what we said before. But it already was, ka’asher tzivah Hashem et Moshe, in the beginning for the census. So this is probably for this second part.

And that’s the end of chapter one.