Bamidbar
Sefer Bamidbar is also known as Chumash HaPekudim by Chazal (Yoma 68b) because it features numerous censuses of Am Yisrael, each male between ages twenty and sixty being counted. The census was a counting of coins, not a physical “head count,” according to Rashi (ibid.), one “Beka Lagulgolet” (Shemot 38:26), literally one half-shekel per “skull.”
A half shekel, Beka, is a measure of weight, around a fifth of an ounce. About seven years ago archeologists discovered a Beka stone weight from the period of the 1st Temple, just north of the City of David, in Emek Tzurim, Israel.
That is a strange way to refer to a person, a “skull”(?). In our decrepit modern day and age, such terminology might be considered “politically correct.” Instead of having to differentiate between gender and age, you say “per head.” For example, if you are having a wedding, the caterer wants to know how many people will be attending and they give you a price – “per head.” “Per head” I can understand, so why doesn’t the Torah rather say Beka LaRosh? A head is a living, breathing “head.” A skull is something you find on a (dead) skeleton! Why does the Torah use the word “skull?” The censuses in the Torah were of people who were alive at the time, not those who were long deceased.
According to the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabba 1:4), the reason HaKadosh Baruch Hu counted Am Yisrael numerous times, is out of His love for us. When someone has something precious, like a pocket full of diamonds, he constantly counts them. On the other hand, when was the last time you counted how many matches there were in a matchbox? (The Midrash uses the example of wheat bushels and straw.)
If the census was a labor of love, the term Beka Lagulgolet seems incongruous. A Beka also means a crack, a rift. How does HaKadosh Baruch Hu count Am Yisrael? By counting how many “cracks in the skull” they had?! It just doesn’t seem fitting. So, obviously HaKadosh Baruch Hu didn’t count how many cracks in the skull Am Yisrael had, there is something much deeper at work here.
Examining the numerous appearances of the root “Beka” in the Torah, we find links to the Flood, Dor HaPalaga, Avraham chopping wood for the Akeidah, Eliezer’s presents to Rivka, the splitting of the Red Sea, and others. In its various appearances in the Torah, Beka is a rift, a gap, a space – between two realities.
It is like a divide between two hemispheres, like those in the brain. Scientists have identified different functionalities between the two hemispheres in the brain. The left hemisphere is involved in logic, sequencing, mathematics, facts, linear thinking, etc. The right hemisphere is involved in imagination, intuition, feelings, creativity, etc. There is a clear dividing line between the hemispheres called the cerebral fissure. Although there is a physical/functional division between the left/right sides of the brain, there is communication between them and symbiosis.
These are paralleled in Kabbalistic literature by the concepts of gvurah on the left (representing the Torah, the analytic, logical, thinking side) and chesed on the right (representing the emotional, creative, empathetic side).
This physical characteristic is echoed in the surrounding skull by cracks separating right from left, the sagittal/mesopic sutures. It is not incidental that the Torah uses the term Beka Lagulgolet, because this is exactly what each and every one of us has in our heads, a left side and a right side, divided by a Beka. This is the same structure as the Menorah in the Mikdash, with three stems on either side of a central stem, mirror images of each other and the Lechem HaPanim, two stacks of smiling faces opposite each other, like two hemispheres in the brain.
What does all this come to teach us?
When HaKadosh Baruch Hu created our world, on the sixth day it says (Bereishit 1:31) “And G-d saw everything He had made and it was very good.” I can understand light, Heaven and earth, the sea and the land, the flora, the fauna, the planets, the animals, man … they were all good. But what about some of the stuff that doesn’t “appear” to be so good, like darkness, like one of the angels created on the second day – the satan, like hell? How can these things be good?
The Torah is teaching us that HaKadosh Baruch Hu’s Creation consists of opposing realities, light and dark, good and bad … and that situation is very good! If our world did not have opposite poles, it would not be very good. We need the opposites, because in their absence the world would have no purpose.
If there were no opposing poles, we would not be human, we would be like angels. What is the difference between humans and angels? Angels are static. They are extremely elevated beings, but they have no upward (or downward) mobility. They remain their entire lifetime exactly as HaKadosh Baruch Hu created them. Humans on the other hand are fluid, they fluctuate, they have mobility. It can be downward mobility until we reach the lowest depths, or it can be upward mobility until we reach the highest heights, that can exceed even that of the angels. Adam HaRishon immediately after he was created, was more elevated than the angels, he was the pinnacle of Creation.
In order to have mobility, you need two opposing poles and you need free choice, to choose between them. Without those two mechanisms there is no mobility.
The world is a perfect world specifically because it contains diametrically opposed poles. The tension between them creates motion and mobility, which in their absence would not exist, the world, and we, would stagnate and die. When HaKadosh Baruch Hu counts us, He counts our potential to achieve perfection, as we did at Har Sinai, when we received the Torah.
Parshat HaShavua Trivia Question: Which Levite family was not given wagons?
Answer to Last Shiur’s Trivia Question: In the blessings in Bechukotai, how many enemies will five Israelites be able to chase away? Ten thousand enemies.