Parahsat: Bamidbar

Parahsat: Bamidbar
Torah Reading: Numbers 1:1–4:20

“Take a census of the whole Israelite company by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head”.

— Numbers 1:2

While in Hebrew the book is called “B’midbar” — in the wilderness — the English name of numbers describes the beginning of the book, in which Moses is told to take a census of the people, or at least the males of fighting age. The ostensible purpose of this census is to know how many men are available to fight in the military for the Israelites, but there is more to it as well. God doesn’t just want Moses to count the number of people but wants Moses to have a list of names. God wants to be sure that the men are sent off to fight aren’t just nameless warriors, but that Moses and the commanders know who each man his and who his family is. This is an important reminder that those we send to fight in ancient days and modern days aren’t just nameless, faceless, soldiers, but that they are individual people with families, with spouses, parents, children, and lives off the battlefield. When we remember this, we consider more carefully whether or not a certain set of hostilities is truly for defense or if it has some other purpose for which we should reconsider the sacrifice of life that is inevitable in any military action.

— Rabbi Daniel Plotkin