Bamidbar

This week we find ourselves in the wilderness, Bamidbar, starting the fourth book of the Torah. We’re schlepping with our clan, and it’s now time to take a census, to determine the military strength of the tribes. Tribe by tribe, we read how many men were counted. As I do each week, I read each word of the parasha. This week’s portion is filled with numbers, a subject I was never good at in school. So I was about ready to put down the reading with numerical overload, when a number popped out at me. The total of those counted came to 603,550. I wondered if that number appeared anywhere else in our history with any significance. So I went to the ultimate Jewish scholar, Reb Google, and typed the number into the search box. Without hesitation, I was taken to a book authored by my beloved teacher, Dr. Ron Wolfson. In his book, “The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven,” Ron notes that there is a wonderful commentary that points out that when you count the individual letters of each word in the Hebrew Bible, there are exactly 603,550!  I would imagine that lower numbers are more likely to intersect with each other. But when you get up into the thousands, what is the likelihood of this happening? And so my inquisitive mind started wondering about a possible connection.

The survival of our people as they made their way across the wilderness relied on physical strength. They were bound to cross paths with those seeking to destroy them. So it was incumbent upon our ancestors to set themselves up in positions of strength. In essence they were creating their stature against whatever their paths might cross.

The letters of the Hebrew alef-bet appear on the surface to have little significance, all jumbled up to create words, phrases, sentences, and thoughts. However, etched with purpose, ink on parchment, with blessings uttered by a sofer (or scribe), the letters take on a life of their own, connecting the generations by a common thread. We learn of the journeys of those on whose shoulders we stand, we absorb the lessons and spiritual strength by which to live our lives. 

If a letter is pronounced wrongly, it can make the difference between declaring the oneness of God (as in אחד), or the “otherness” of God (as in אחר). The last letter in each word looks similar, but with one small stroke by the sofer, we are led towards God or away. Switching the order of two letters in another word can also mean a difference between good health (בריה) and good beer (בירה). 

Letters are a crucial part of the kabbalistic theory of creation. The Sefer Yetzirah (the Book of Formation, or Book of Creation) says God created the world in part by using the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. ... Each letter and word created both matter and other letters and words, giving rise to language and the universe at the same time.

Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi of Congregation Chevra T’hilim, the oldest Orthodox synagogue in San Francisco, shares a Talmudic story about King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, who isolated 72 rabbinic sages in 72 separate houses without revealing the purpose. He then went and visited each one separately and demanded that they translate the entire Torah of Moses into Greek, now known as the Septuagint. The rabbis, who were concerned that a literal translation would betray the intent and oral tradition of numerous Torah passages, were puzzled. Without being able to communicate with each other — which was the king’s goal — they could either translate literally but leave the Torah open to wrong and even dangerous misinterpretation, or translate it as the tradition had been passed down from Moses. If their translations weren’t all the same, King Ptolemy would be convinced the sages were frauds and the translation inaccurate. So God miraculously inspired each of the 72 rabbis to independently make the same exact changes in the translation.

The first change was right in the beginning of Genesis. A straight translation of the first verse would render the following: “In the beginning created God.” The word God is the third word in the verse. The first word, bereishit (in the beginning), might — to a Hellenistic pagan ruler who routinely defied humans —   prove that another deity created God. So all 72 sages were inspired to translate identically as follows: “God created in the beginning,” which, in the Hebrew, meant that the first letter was Aleph, not Bet.

Why then couldn’t our Hebrew Torah begin with an Aleph? Why just the Greek version? One of the answers given in Kabbalah is that we must always be aware that we are not starting Torah at the beginning, we always arrive at Bet, stage two. For there are two dimensions to the Torah: There is the Torah of logic and reason — and then there’s the Torah of transcendence where we mere mortals attempt to understand and integrate the will and reason of the Creator of the world into our minds and hearts.

That is why the first page of every tractate of the Talmud begins with Daf Bet, page two; the first page is blank. If we believe we know how the beginning started, then we assume there has to be an end as well, for all beginnings have endings. However, the Torah reflects God Himself, the Ein Sof, the Infinite. By starting with Bet, we are aware that there is a beginning that precedes us in time, space and consciousness.

This is also the reason why, before we study Torah each day and any time we receive an aliyah to the Torah, we make the blessing in the present tense: Notein haTorah, Who gives Torah. For every time we encounter God, we need an access code to be able to connect to the omnipotent giver of Torah; the code is the Aleph. The Aleph is the timeless faith that we have that our connections and fidelity to the Torah aren’t based on logic and reason.

So, back to the 603,550. While that number is a singular unit – a group, it is also 603, 550 units of one. Each one of the number counts. No one of those created in God’s image is more or less revered in God’s eye. As we struggle with those in our circle who do not see eye to eye with us, let us remember that each of us counts, each is accountable to the other, and it is incumbent upon us to treat ourselves with kindness as well. For when we do, we will naturally mirror that behavior to those around us, to those beyond our gates, and ultimately to God. Welcome to the wilderness – let’s make it bloom together.