Edited and Adapted from Ari’s Grill & Torah series.
Why Does the Torah Start with Separation?
So, an exciting week this week. This week we’re starting a new book, Bamidbar, which literally in English means “the desert.” It’s starting our traveling for 40 years through the desert till we get to the promised land, the land of Israel.
And what’s interesting — you would think that the first part of this book, which is going to be filled with trials and tribulations of the desert — there’s no water, there’s no food, there’s danger around, there are animals, people are having personal, physical, and emotional problems being stuck in the desert for 40 years — you would think the first thing you’d talk about would be unity. How to keep unity within the nation. All the laws between man: thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, everything that will keep society in line.
But Numbers — why is it called Numbers? Well, the whole first portion is talking about the numbers of the nation of Israel. The whole first parsha is separating the nation of Israel. They’re calling out the different families. They’re giving them flags. “You’re part of this group, you’re part of that group.” Literally separation. And then they do what seems like the worst thing you can possibly do in a society you’re trying to build: they put the Kohanim up here, they put the Leviim up here. What about equality? What about unity? Why make any classes? Why are there different classes according to God?
Why does that come before the basic laws between man? Why does it come before “thou shall not steal,” before “you can’t lend money with interest”? The first thing it talks about is separating the nation of Israel — the tribe of Reuven, the tribe of Shimon, the tribe of Levi — and it numbers the people in each tribe. Doesn’t that cause friction between the tribes? We saw that happen with Jacob and his sons. Jacob gave favoritism to Joseph, and that started a big wheel of trouble. So now God is doing it?
Different Does Not Mean Less
I think the mistake we’re making is that we’re looking at what God did through twenty-first century glasses. We think equality means everything has to be the same. But when I say you’re not equal, it doesn’t mean I’m better. We’re just not the same.
Before you can get to all the laws between people, you have to set up society. Everybody has to have their job, and I can’t be jealous of the next guy’s job — because if I am, the work I need to take care of won’t get done. When they were carrying the Tabernacle, they literally split up the work by families. If everyone is worried about someone else’s job and jealous of them rather than taking pride in their own work, that’s how the Tabernacle falls apart.
This is our mistake in the twenty-first century. When I say someone is not equal, you hear that one is better or worse. That’s not what’s being said at all. The Levites are up there, the Kohanim are up there — that doesn’t mean they’re better people. It gives them bigger responsibility, and you have to understand that difference. Different does not mean less. Different just means different.
Women are different than men. I can’t have a baby. I can’t have a life growing inside me. Does that mean women are better? In that case, they certainly are, at that. But the point is, being jealous of it doesn’t help. So what HaKadosh Baruch Hu is doing in this parsha is setting up society: “Look, there are jobs, there are things everybody has to do.” The Kohanim and the Leviim have their job. The Yisraelim, the regular people, have their job. That doesn’t mean they’re worse. They just have a different job. The Kohanim and Leviim deal more with things close to the Tabernacle and Temple — that’s true — but it doesn’t make them better people. It gives them greater responsibility.
Why Does Every Number Matter?
Now, what’s really interesting is that the Torah in Bamidbar literally puts numbers on all the tribes. It gives you the exact count of people in each tribe. Why is that important? Why does it matter how many individuals are in each tribe?
I think the answer is this: it’s not that the number itself is what matters — “twenty-three thousand, whatever, whatever.” No. The importance is that every individual counts. The tribe is not the tribe without every single individual.
There is a painful contrast here. Our enemies also numbered the Jews — they didn’t want to miss a single one. They numbered them on their arms. This counting is the opposite: God has numbered the tribes to send the message that every single individual in that tribe is important. Every single one.
Think about Israel’s Memorial Day. The number of fallen — twenty-three thousand four hundred and forty-five — people say that number and it blurs. But each one is a person with their own story. The numbers matter because they remind us that the klal, the general population, is one nation — but that “one” cannot survive without every single individual. Therefore the numbers are important.
It seems mundane in a world like ours, where it’s iPhone and iPad and i-everything, and we don’t even look at the general public, only at ourselves. That’s one side of the coin.
The other side of the coin is someone who says, “I’m not important. I’m no one. I shouldn’t do anything because I can’t do anything.” That’s the second mistake, and it’s just as bad as the first.
In Judaism we say: if I am not only for myself, then who am I? But if I am not for myself, then who will be for me? Every single individual has a responsibility to fix the world, to make it a better place, to tell the truth. That responsibility rests on everyone’s head — not just the leaders. There are some religions that believe it rests only on the holy people, the priests. Not in Judaism. Not at all.
When God calls the nation of Israel, He speaks of the idea of a Kohen, a Goy Kadosh, a holy nation. The numbers are important. Not if it were just general — then it would simply say “the tribe of Reuven, the tribe of Shimon.” The fact that it gave numbers makes the point that the tribe is nothing without the individual. Nothing without the individual.
So what we learn from here is: no matter where you are in life, whatever your job is, even if you have no money and no position — you have responsibility in this world. That’s why the tribes are given numbers.
Flags, Borders, and the Structure of Society
And the flags — the flags do not separate. They simply tell you where you belong. Not even in a bad way. Each tribe has its responsibility, its role. They just establish borders. And today, borders are what’s missing. I’m not talking about physical borders of the country. I’m talking about borders of society. Those are missing — being blurred on purpose across every walk of life. Borders are very important, from the borders of morality to the borders of everything else.
Yom Yerushalayim: A Lesson in the Street
Now I want to talk a little about Yom Yerushalayim — Jerusalem Day — which was two days ago.
I went to celebrate, as I do every year. Near Sha’ar Shchem — where there were three terrorist attacks over the past year — Jews were walking through and celebrating one of the gates of Jerusalem. What are we celebrating? I’m celebrating that we can walk freely through Jerusalem. I’m celebrating that 50 years ago there was a wall that the Jordanians put across mid-Jerusalem — Jews could not enter the Old City. I’m celebrating freedom.
I say again: the reason we’re celebrating is that for most of the year, as a Jew, you can’t freely walk through most of Jerusalem’s gates. Sha’ar Arayot, the Lions’ Gate, where the IDF liberated Jerusalem — if I walk through it the way I am, with my kippah and my tzitzit, I will be attacked.
Now I want to be clear about something. Some of the kids misbehave. And if I ever see someone hitting, attacking, spitting, or doing anything to an Arab simply because he’s an Arab, he’s going to have to deal with me. I will jump in. That behavior is unacceptable to me in the slightest. This is not what the march is about. This is not what the celebration is about.
I had conversations with Arabs and Muslims there. Some were very civil, and they realized they couldn’t prove me wrong. Others were violent and screaming — but actually, the most violent people were the left-wing activists from overseas. The Muslims I spoke with were largely calm.
I was even on Al Jazeera. They asked me: “Is it nice that this march is only for Jews?” I said, “The march is not only for Jews.” I wish the Arabs would dance with us through the Old City of Jerusalem. Think about it for a second. What we’ve built — the Jewish people in Jerusalem — the train, the medical services, every service there. When have the Arabs in Jerusalem ever had it so good?
I met an interesting sheik in the Old City. He was walking by, and I stopped him. “Marhabaan, how are you?” in Arabic. We started talking. He told me he was Palestinian by birth — nothing nationally, and he doesn’t want to be anything nationally. He doesn’t accept the Palestinian national narrative. He said he was born in Palestine — that’s fine. Jews were born there, Christians were born there. But he said that doesn’t give anyone a national claim. A peaceful, loving man.
And I turned to one of the Arabs and said, “Why aren’t you dancing with us? You live in Jerusalem. You have services you never dreamed of having. You should be dancing with us.”
He laughed. I said, “Why are you laughing? You have freedoms that your brothers and sisters across the Middle East can only dream of. You should be dancing with us.”
One man on the way in said to me: “You know what would happen to me if I danced with you?” Even the moderates who understand there’s nothing wrong with Jews celebrating in the Old City cannot join us if they wanted to — because they’re scared for their lives.
The conflict is based on fabrications. It is based on a national claim that Israel took an Arab country called Palestine. That never happened. I said to them: “Give me the year where Israel took an Arab place called Palestine.” Nothing. Zero. One girl showed me that her great-great-great-grandfather was a Muslim from the Turkish period. I said: “Wonderful — he was here, but that doesn’t give you a national claim. That gives you a right to live here in peace, but not a national claim.”
I truly believe that Arabs who want peace should be dancing with us.
The conflict is based on fabrications, and every conversation I had confirmed that they simply didn’t have the facts. You cannot scream and curse at people. You have to explain the knowledge. And even when someone knows the truth and is still lying, I talk to them — not because I’ll convince them, but to teach everyone else listening to the conversation. It’s so important to get the information out there.
The Desert Is Our Training Ground
And so, what does this say to us, the Jewish people?
This week’s parsha is Bamidbar. What is a desert?
A desert is a place where there’s no water, no hope. You look out and you see nothing but brown. No life, no resources. An empty land. And we were there for 40 years. That was our training ground.
Our training ground was 40 years in the desert, and if we made it through that dead desert, we know we made it through by HaKadosh Baruch Hu — by the grace of God. No matter what problems we have, no matter how dark things look — we made it through the desert. And we made it through Egypt too. At least there was a society there. Yes, they were killing us, but there was something. In the desert, there’s nothing. It was so bad that the nation of Israel said, “Let us go back to Egypt.”
So what we learn from the desert — and perhaps this was our training ground for the land of Israel — is never lose hope. Never lose hope, ever, ever, ever.
There are rules in the Torah for taking care of strangers, of people who aren’t Jewish. And to the Arabs, to the Muslims, to the Christians, to everyone who lives in this country who is not Jewish — I say: choose life. Dump your leaders who are pushing a national Palestinian agenda. They don’t want what’s good for you. They want you to fight, they want you to explode, they want you to die. I don’t. I want you to live. I want you to live a beautiful life — in the Jewish land of Israel, the Jewish state of Israel.
And yes, the Jewish state. That doesn’t mean we’re going to kick you out. We are not like your brothers and sisters across the Middle East, where the Jewish population has gone to zero and Christians are being slaughtered. No. A Jewish country means we have Jewish ideals. And the Jewish ideal regarding a ger toshav — a resident non-Jew — is ultimate respect. If you have one pillow in the house, you give it to them.
So don’t be afraid of the words “Jewish state.” It is your leaders who are inciting you to violence. And look where it has brought you — over 69 years of fighting. For what?
Come and live. Live under the Jewish state, and be happy.
Shabbat shalom from the beautiful, beautiful rolling hills of Judea, Israel.