Introduction to Parashat Hashavua
Yeshivat Har Etzion

PARASHAT BEMIDBAR

The Census of Israel

By Rav Michael Hattin

INTRODUCTION

Dear readers: this week marks the annual donation drive of the VBM. I would like to take this opportunity to urge all of you who are integral members of our learning community to contribute as generously as you can. As we shall see in our study this week, the dual themes of contribution and communal identification are inextricably intertwined.

Sefer Bemidbar describes the journey of the people of Israel from Mount Sinai towards the Promised Land. As its preliminary parashiyot make clear, a prerequisite for that journey to be concluded successfully and without mishap is for the sprawling Israelite camp to be arranged, structured and tightly organized, in a spatial as well as in a conceptual sense, around the precious core of the Mishkan. This ordering, of course, necessitates a census of the people first of all, and it is with this numbering of the tribes that the book opens:

But while the book opens with a census of the tribes, it quickly becomes apparent that the purpose of the count is not simply to ascertain the number of fighting men on the eve of their entry into the land, but also to allow for the planned and well-thought-out division of the camp into coordinated quadrants of roughly the same size. It thus transpires after all of the tribes have been independently counted and the number of all of the adult males together has been calculated, that four ensigns are then assigned to each three-tribe unit in turn (Chapter 2).

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CAMP

The Yehuda group, for instance, consisting of the tribes of Yehuda, Yissachar and Zevulun, is stationed on the eastern flank of the Mishkan and consists in total of 186,400 members. It is balanced by the grouping of Efraim to the west that consists also of Menashe and Binyamin, and numbers 108,100. The Reuven group to the south, allying that tribe with Shim'on and Gad, numbers 151,450, while the ensign of Dan to the north that includes Asher and Naftali, consists of 157,600 adult males of military age. The total number of adult Israelite males, reported in Chapter 2:32, is simply the combination of these four numbers: 186,400 + 108,100 + 151,450 + 157,600 = 603,550.

The schematic structure of the Israelite camp is completed by the inclusion of the three families of Gershon, Kehat and Merari. These clans together comprise the tribe of Levi that was otherwise left out of the general census, and their role in the service of the Tabernacle is decisive. When the Israelite camp is in transit, these families are responsible for the conveyance of the various building and cultic elements of the Mishkan; when the Israelite camp comes to rest, the Levites reassemble those elements once again. And while the Israelite camp is stationary, these families are arranged as a taut and protective u-shaped inner ring around three sides of the hallowed precincts. Their spatial arrangement around the Mishkan, detailed in Chapters 3 and 4, is also introduced – like that of their Israelite counterparts – by a census of their numbers. As for the fourth and eastern quadrant of that inner ring, corresponding to the outer ensign of Yehuda, it is occupied by the families of Moshe and Aharon themselves, the prophet and the priest. The families of these two, and especially the descendents of Aharon who are the Kohanim, fittingly serve as sentinels guarding the approach axis to the Mishkan, for the holy enclosure is entered from the eastern side.

The effect of the whole, then, consisting textually of the lengthy opening chapters of the book, is to cohesively link the numbering and the organization of the Israelite camp to the nucleus of the Mishkan that spatially lies at its center and ontologically serves as its focal point. There can be no national success, the narratives imply, no realization of the settlement dream in the fertile new land beckoning just beyond the barren wilderness, unless the centrality of God and His instruction are acknowledged and embraced.

AN EARLIER CENSUS RELATING TO THE MISHKAN

Our parasha, however, is not the first time that the Torah has cohesively linked the fortunes of the Mishkan with a census of the people of Israel. In fact, the very same connection was first introduced when the subject of the Tent of Meeting was initially broached. Immediately prior to the announcement to the people that they were to erect a house for God's glory, more than half a year before the opening events of Sefer Bemidbar, Moshe was informed that Israel was first to be counted:

This contribution of silver was later utilized in the fashioning of the pillar sockets as detailed in Shemot 26:15-30 and again in 36:20-38. Recall that the walls of the Mishkan proper consisted of a series of heavy acacia wood boards that could be ingeniously fabricated together by a series of bars and hoops or else disassembled into single transportable elements as necessary. When each one of these rectangular boards stood joined to the others, then its base consisting of two square pegs was inserted into two corresponding silver sockets. Thus the acacia boards could be stabilized, while some allowance could be provided for less than perfectly flat terrain. Since no other use of silver in the construction of the Mishkan was documented in the narratives, it stands to reason that the half-shekel contribution must have been used for this purpose. This implication is later spelled out explicitly in Parashat Pekudei, where the tally of the Mishkan's precious metals is recounted:

A STARTLING COINCIDENCE?

The calculation is straightforward. Each talent of silver consists of 3000 shekels in weight. The one hundred talents enumerated in Shemot 38:25 are therefore equivalent to 300,000 shekels or 600,000 half-shekels. The remaining 1775 shekels equal 3550 half shekels, so the total number of half shekels collected, one half shekel per person, is therefore 600,000 + 3550 = 603,550. This number corresponds to the adult male population. It thus emerges that while no formal census of the Israelites is recorded in the Torah prior to the events of our parasha, and certainly no breakdown of that population into individually counted tribal units, a counting in fact took place on the eve of the Mishkan's construction.

The perceptive reader will have of coursed noticed another link between the two accounts, the one of Sefer Shemot that details the Tabernacle's fabrication as a function of the census of Israel, and ours of Sefer Bemidbar that again associates the numbering of the people with the matter of the Mishkan: the number reported for both counts, though the two censes were separated in time by more than half a year, is EXACTLY THE SAME! Both at the time of the tally of silver that took place when contributions were initially being gathered for the Mishkan's construction some time in Tishrei of the first year after the Exodus, as well as at the time of the census of the people that opens our Book and took place about seven months later in "the second month (Iyar) of the second year," a figure of 603,550 adult male Israelites was reported!

It is of course highly, unlikely according to any known statistical models of natural increase and mortality, for the number of a large population to remain ABSOLUTELY static over a period of half a year. Inevitably, people die and others are born, some reach the census age of twenty while others who had been counted previously pass on. A population may remain quite stable in number but surely cannot remain utterly unchanged! The commentaries address this very issue in Sefer Shemot and begin by eliminating the obvious solution.

RASHI'S READING

Let us first consider Rashi's uncharacteristically lengthy remarks:

RASHI'S EXPLANATION: TWO REFERENCE POINTS

Rashi begins by rejecting the simplest explanation for the matter, namely that both accounts of the census refer to the same event. After all, the Torah clearly assigns different time frames for both episodes and they could not therefore be describing a single occurrence. In fact, Rashi argues, the answer is to be found in understanding the nature of the calendar year, for Jewish tradition recognizes a number of "new years," much as the secular system arbitrarily designates various days as "new years" with respect to matters such as the calendar count, national independence or taxation.

Thus, Rashi explains, while the Exodus serves as the reference point for the counting of the calendar year, so that with onset of Nissan a new year is automatically reckoned to have begun, with respect to birthdays the reference point is Tishrei, the anniversary of the Creation of the world. The first count of the people took place in Tishrei of the first year of the Exodus, after the debacle of the golden calf had been overcome by the people's teshuva. It was at that time that God forgave them, and Israel marked that solemn milestone by beginning the collection drive for the Mishkan. The half shekels of silver were collected, and the number of the people was calculated.

The building of the Mishkan occupied the Israelites for the better half of a year, and it was not until the next Nissan, almost a full year after the Exodus, that its dedication was celebrated. This inauguration was marked, according to Shemot 40:2, on the "first day of the first month" (of Nissan). But because the month of the Nissan – the month of the Exodus – is the reference point for the Biblical calendar year, this dedication was reckoned to have taken place "in the second year" (Shemot 40:17). At the same time, avers Rashi, a new calendar year for the purposes of taking of a census had not yet elapsed, for that year is counted according to Tishrei. Thus both censes took place during the same year! Though separated by more than six months, both enumerations took place in the SAME CENSUS YEAR and the total tally was therefore the same.

RASHI'S ASSUMPTION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

Rashi, of course, make one very large assumption, and that is the remarkable assertion that individual birthdays are of no consequence in determining the age of twenty, at least insofar as the counting of the people of Israel is concerned. All that matters is the age of the person on the first of Tishrei, even when the census takes place on an entirely different date. If a man is twenty at that time, then he is reckoned in the census as an adult that goes out to battle. But if he is nineteen, though he may yet turn twenty during the succeeding months that precede the census date, then he is NOT counted among the people. There thus seems to be a curious phenomenon of a birthday that is not a birthday in the narrow sense of the term (for here, being "twenty years old" is not a function of the actual date of birth) but only an instrument for one's inclusion in the official population registry that is in accordance with the first of Tishrei.

The implications of Rashi's reading are full of meaning: Though we tend to regard our birthdays as profound statements about our individuality, there is another dimension to our age that pertains to the people of Israel as a whole. I am counted among the people of Israel in accordance with a standard date, the first of Tishrei, which is a milestone that is itself intrinsically connected to the building of the Mishkan. Though the people had left Egypt during Nissan, embarking on their new mission as God's own, they soon succumbed to the wiles of the golden calf and were estranged from Him. It was not until that first Tishrei that restoration occurred, in the form of the people's sincere repentance and God's merciful forgiveness on Yom Kippur. Out of that profound experience of self-transformation and reconciliation, the building of the Mishkan commenced, for on the morrow of Yom Kippur the people began to contribute their offerings.

In our national consciousness, then, the month of Tishrei is forever linked with drawing closer to God (as it still is until this very day), and therefore whenever we are called upon to ascertain our number as a people, we do so in accordance with that month. For Rashi, then, the link between the counting of the people of Israel and the Mishkan is not serendipity, neither in our Parasha nor earlier in Sefer Shemot. It is rather a statement that our life as a people, though we may be in exile and the concrete Mishkan may be no more, must always revolve around the devotion to God and to His Torah that both the spatial organization of Israel's encampment as well as the unique temporal qualities of their census, indicate so emphatically.

Shabbat Shalom

For further study: see the lengthy commentary of the Ramban on Shemot 30:12, in which he assails Rashi's interpretation and provides two others of his own. These alternate explanations, however, require more unlikely assumptions!