Parashat Bamidbar 5778: Everyone Counts - Rabbi Leeor Dahan

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Leeor Dahan’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

in the Midrash, it's called the Book of Numbers. In Hebrew it's called the Sefer HaPekudim, the Book of the Accounting. And we stop and think about it, why is it called the Book of the Accounting? I mean yes, it's true, Parshat Bamidbar deals mostly with the accounting. Yes, it's a significant amount of counting going on in Parshat Bamidbar, but at the same time we have so many other parshiot, the whole Chumash talks about so many different stories, different things, events that happened. We have the event of Korach, we have the event of the Meraglim. We have so many event of the Meraglim. We have so many things taking place, and to sum it all up in the in the title of Numbers, of Pekudim, is a little bizarre. It's a little bit strange that that's how we would, you know, label the whole Chumash. And if you if you stop to think about it, why why does the Torah, why is it that the Torah kind of seems to be wasting so many pesukim on describing exactly how how many people were from Shevet Shimon, how many people were from Shevet Reuven, and many people were from Shevet Reuven, and it goes through and through these lists. You say to yourself, I'm living 3,000 years later. I don't have anything to do with the numbers of how am I supposed to learn from this? What am I supposed to take home from this week's parsha, where the Torah doesn't waste a single letter in any parsha, and certainly not in our parsha. Yet it is described and it's a focus point, and this whole label of the Humash is about the counting of Am Yisrael. And that's a question that Rashi addresses in the very beginning of this week's parashah. He says that the

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1. 0:31in the Midrash, it's called the Book of Numbers. In Hebrew it's called the Sefer HaPekudim,…
2. 4:09numbers. And that is called in halakha the vash bemanyan. Anything that is counted that's not…
3. 7:48the world for how profitable and how beneficial the products will be of the fruits are…
4. 11:24moving in and uh another family moved in and the father also was coming to Bet…
5. 15:00that is attached to another letter? Sifrei Torah is also pasul. Every single letter has to…
6. 18:33because each shevet had their own talents and had their own strengths, and they had to…
7. 22:06much time on my hand, be able to learn Torah, and everything would be great." How…
8. 25:38run, who ended up benefiting far more? The rest of the greater because says it doesn't…
9. 29:13what we see time and time again in the society we live in, those that run…
10. 32:47I'm not going to be who Hakadosh Baruchu doesn't want me to be. Says Hakadosh Baruchu,…

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