The fourth book of the Torah, Bamidbar, literally means “desert.” It covers the main events of the forty-year period of wandering through Sinai and the Arava into what is Jordan today, before reaching the East Bank of the River Jordan. In mystical terms words have significance on many different levels. The most obvious example is the Hebrew root SFR which…
Parsha BaMidbar
Numbers
It seems strange that a crucial book of the Torah should be called BaMidbar, in the desert. The simple answer is that the books of the Torah were not originally given names and when somewhere some two thousand years ago, the rabbis decided to do so, they simply used the first Hebrew noun of the book as an easy handle.…
Perseverance
This book covers the forty years that the Children of Israel spent in the wilderness until the old generation died out and a new one was ready to march into the land. It starts with all the pomp of organizing the Israelites into units and subdivisions, administered by its hierarchies, given their positions and marching orders in preparation for the…