The Significance of the Census - Drawing Down the Light by Harking Back to Our Roots
In this week’s parsha a census is conducted that counts the entire nation of Israel. God tells Moshe Rabbeinu to count the Levites separately for, “... וְהָיוּ לִי הַלְוִיִּם/… the Levites shall be Mine.” (Bamidbar 3:12) Why did God single out the Levites? Why did He make them His? The Midrash, addressing this question, says that whoever brings God close, God, in turn, brings that person close to Him.[1] After the sin of the golden calf, the Levites brought God close to them. In response to Moshe Rabbeinu’s call, “Whoever is for God, come to me! All the children of Levi gathered around him.” (Shmos 32:26) God, in turn, brought the Levites close to Him.
In this week’s parsha a census is conducted that counts the entire nation of Israel. God tells Moshe Rabbeinu to count the Levites separately for, “... וְהָיוּ לִי הַלְוִיִּם/… the Levites shall be Mine.” (Bamidbar 3:12) Why did God single out the Levites? Why did He make them His? The Midrash, addressing this question, says that whoever brings God close, God, in turn, brings that person close to Him.[1] After the sin of the golden calf, the Levites brought God close to them. In response to Moshe Rabbeinu’s call, “Whoever is for God, come to me! All the children of Levi gathered around him.” (Shmos 32:26) God, in turn, brought the Levites close to Him.
The Chiddushei HaRim points out, though, that the Levites
were not the only ones who resisted the temptation to sin. In fact, most of the nation did not
participate in the idol worship. Why,
then, did God bring particularly the Levites close to Him? The Chiddushei HaRim notes, that there is a
big difference between passively not sinning and actively taking a stand. According to the Chiddushei HaRim, Chazal are
teaching us this difference. The
Levites, by gathering around Moshe made a clear declaration that they rejected
the idol worship and were for God alone.
They actively drew Him near to them.
While it is certainly true that most of the rest of the nation did not
participate in the idol worship, neither did they do the much more difficult
thing and actively take a stand against it.
Therefore, in response to the Levites coming close to God, God drew them
near to Him as well.
The Sfas Emes takes this concept a step further. We should not infer from the Midrash and the
Chiddushei HaRim’s interpretation that a relationship with God is binary –
either one has a relationship with God or one does not. Rather, our relationship with God is a
continuum. God relates to each of us
according to the level of our faith in Him.
The stronger our faith, the closer He draws us to Him. We find this concept in the first Midrash[2] of this week’s parsha. The Midrash quotes a pasuk in Tehillim (36:7),
“צִדְקָתְךָ כְּהַרְרֵי־אֵל מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ
תִּהוֹם רַבָּה .../Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains; Your
judgments are like the vast deep …” The
Midrash says that the first part of the pasuk is an allusion to the righteous,
whereas the second part of the pasuk alludes to the wicked. The righteous who believe that God rules over
every aspect of Creation, large and small alike, merit seeing the hidden light
in everything. The prophet Yeshaya (29:15)
says that the wicked do their deeds in darkness and say, “... מִי רֹאֵנוּ וּמִי יֹדְעֵנוּ/Who sees us and who
knows of us?” They do not believe that
God sees their actions. Correspondingly,
the truth is kept from them as we find in Iyov (38:15), “וְיִמָנַע מֵרְשָׁעִים אוֹרָם
.../Light is withheld from the wicked.” And
as the second part of the pasuk above states, “… Your judgments are like the
vast deep …” We see, then, that whether
God allows us to come close to Him, to feel His presence, depends upon our
belief that His presence is with us.
When we believe His presence is here in our lives, in everything, He
allows us to experience it. If, on the
other hand, we do not believe it, then God withholds His truth from us.
We find the same idea in a Midrash[3] from parshas Naso. The Midrash says that whoever increases the
glory of Heaven, increases respect for himself as well. On the other hand, whoever decreases respect
for Heaven by increasing is own honor, actually decreases his own honor while
the honor of Heaven remains the same.
What is the meaning of this Midrash?
How does the honor of Heaven remain the same if, by our actions, we decrease
it?
This Midrash is based on the same concept that we’ve
explained. Whether God’s presence is
revealed or hidden is dependent on the intent we imbue in our actions. If we know and believe that we are a tool, an
agent of God in this world, that we are not our own masters but rather, are
doing the will of God, then God’s kingdom becomes more manifest; it becomes
clearer that everything is from God. By
striving to fulfill God’s will through our actions, by believing that God is
with us, we increase the honor of Heaven and as a result our own esteem
increases as well. This is the meaning
of the Midrash mentioned earlier on the pasuk, “צִדְקָתְךָ כְּהַרְרֵי־אֵל .../Your
righteousness is like the mighty mountains …”
The righteous see God in everything.
They draw the honor of Heaven into this world, into nature.
On the other hand, a person who believes that he is the
master of all his actions, who acts to increase his own honor, is akin to an
idol worshipper since he removes God from the equation. In this case, the glory of Heaven remains as
it was – hidden. The Zohar[4] mentions the exact same idea
on the pasuk, “שִׁחֵת לוֹ לֹא
בָּנָיו מוּמָם .../Corruption is not His; it is His children’s flaw …” (Devarim
32:5) The Zohar explains that our
corruption prevents blessing from reaching us.
Since blessing does not reach us, we are flawed. God remains hidden.
The notion that we have the power to draw God’s glory into
the finite, that God becomes revealed in this world as a result of our actions
and thoughts is mentioned by the Chiddushei HaRim. In the first pasuk of this week’s Haftara,
God told the prophet Hoshea (2:1), “וְהָיָה מִסְפַּר בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל כְחוֹל הַיָּם
אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יִמַּד וְלֹא יִסָּפֵר .../The number of the children of Israel
will be like the sand of the sea which cannot be measured nor counted.” The Midrash[5] points out the contradiction
in this pasuk. The pasuk starts by relating
to “the number of the children of Israel” and ends by asserting that “it cannot
be measured nor counted.” The Midrash
answers that first God showed Hoshea the Jewish nation through their
significant numbers until finally He showed the prophet that we will reach
astronomical proportions. First there
was only one Jew – Avraham Aveinu. Then there were two, Avraham and
Yitzhak. Then there were the three Avos
followed by twelve tribes, seventy souls who went down to Egypt, 600,000 males who left Egypt
and finally, he compared them to the sand and the stars which effectively have
no number.
This resolves the contradiction but what is the point of
it? What is the Midrash teaching
us? The Chiddushei HaRim[6] explains that “no number”
represents the infinite. It represents
God’s presence. Numbers represent the
finite, nature. God told Hoshea that the
nation of Israel has the ability to reveal the level of “no number” of the
infinite within the level of “number” within the finite; we can elevate the
physical, the finite to a higher level, to a level on which God is revealed in
nature.
For this reason, the beginning of this week’s parsha records
the date on which God commanded Moshe Rabbeinu to take a census of the
nation. Why is the date of God’s
instruction mentioned specifically by the mitzvah of the census? We live in the physical which is governed by
time. Numbers, as we have seen connotes
the physical. The Torah is teaching us
that our main mission is to draw the light of the Torah and holiness into time,
into the physical.
This Midrash teaches us how.
We do it by harking back to our roots, to our forefathers. This is the reason for the census. It highlights the fact that although we are
many, we come from one. The census
reminds us of our roots. This is why God
tells Moshe Rabbeinu, “שְׂאוּ אֶת־רֹאשׁ
כָּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל .../Take a census of the entire community
of the children of Israel …” (Bamidbar 1:2) The literal translation is, “Take the heads
of the entire …” רֹאשׁ/Head connotes רֵאשִׁית/first. It indicates that although we are many, we
must connect to those who came before us.
This is hinted at, also, by the way the census was conducted. The pasuk[7] tells us that they declared
their lineage according to their families and their paternal houses. This was not a simple head count. Each Jew is part of a family, a paternal
house. Each one of us has a father who
has a father who has a father in an unbroken chain leading back to our first
father Avraham Avinu.
This is the meaning of the pasuk in Tehillim (131:2), “אִם־לֹא שִׁוִּיתִי וְדוֹמַמְתִּי
נַפְשִׁי כְגָמֻל עֲלֵי אִמּוֹ .../I swear I compared my soul to a just
weaned baby next to his mother …” We
need to relate to our forebears like a just weaned baby relates to his
mother. A just weaned baby yearns for
his mother and understands intuitively that she is his source. So too, must we relate to our ancestors in
this way. We need to feel, just like the
baby, that we stem from our forebears.
The holy Rav of Parshischa explains that we connect to our
roots, to our forefathers, to our heritage, through our actions. When our actions relate back to our roots,
back to our forefathers, we merit infinite blessing. We find this concept in Tana D’vei Eliyahu
Raba (25). The prophet Eliyahu
teaches us that each Jew must say, “מָתַי יַגִיעוּ מַעֲשַׂי לְמַעֲשֵׂי אֲבוֹתַי אַבְרָהָם יִצְחָק
וְיַעֲקֹב/When will my actions reach the level of the actions of my
forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.” Does Eliyahu HaNaviactually expect us to reach
the level of the Avos? The Rav of
Parshischa answers that the word יַגִיעוּ/reach
has the same root as נְגִיעָה,
the Hebrew word for “connection” or “touch.”
The prophet is not teaching us that we should aspire to reach the level
of our forefathers. Each generation is
different and we cannot compare the actions of one generation to the actions of
another. Rather, he is teaching us that
our actions must connect with and relate to the actions of our forefathers. We’ve connected with the Avos when we strive
to emulate them. By connecting to our
forefathers through our actions, we ultimately connect to the Source of life
and draw God’s light into the physical world.
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