Shnayim Mikra

On the first day of the month of Iyar in the second year of the Exodus, G-d spoke to Moshe in the Sinai wilderness and told him to take a census of the Jews, counting males from the age of 20. Moshe was to be assisted by the Tribal leaders, who are then named. (The most famous among them is Nachshon ben Aminadav of the Tribe of Judah.) Moshe and Aharon gathered the designated leaders and they reviewed everybody's documents, taking the census as they had been instructed.

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*(This synopsis title isn’t from the Torah; it’s from the US Constitution.)

This aliyah gives the Tribe-by-Tribe tally of the census results. All told, there were 603,550 males from the age of 20 and up in the twelve Tribes (counting Ephraim and Menashe as two Tribes and not including Levi).

Moshe was instructed not to include the Tribe of Levi in the general census since they had a special role. They (and they alone) were to be responsible for assembling and disassembling the Mishkan (Tabernacle) during its travels. The other Tribes would set up their own camps under their own banners, but the Levites were to make their camp around the Mishkan and guard its sanctity.

G-d detailed for Moshe the layout of the camp. Each division would have a unique banner and they would camp equidistantly from the Mishkan. On the east would be the division of Judah, including the Tribes of Issachar and Zebulon. When the camp traveled, they would lead.

On the south was the division of Reuben, joined by the Tribes of Simeon and Gad. They marched second when the camp traveled.

On the west was the division of Ephraim, joined by Menashe and Benjamin. They marched third.

Finally, on the north, was the division of Dan, joined by Asher and Naftali. When the nation traveled, they brought up the rear.

The people fulfilled these instructions.

The Torah tells us that Aharon had four sons but two of them, Nadav and Avihu, died childless. This left only Elazar and Itamar to serve as kohanim alongside their father. G-d told Moshe that the Levites would assist with matters pertaining to the Tabernacle. They would be responsible for all utensils of the Mishkan, but only the kohanim could perform the actual service.

The Levites were replacing the first-born sons, who were originally supposed to fill this role. All first-borns are sanctified to G-d because He spared them during the final plague in Egypt. (See parshas Bo, Exodus chapter 13, for the mitzvah of pidyon haben.)

G-d had Moshe take a separate census of the Levites. Levi had three sons: Gershon, Kehos and Merari. They had fathered three familes that bore their names. While the males of the rest of the nation had been counted from the age of 20 and up, the Levites were counted from a month old and up.

The family of Gershon numbered 7,500. They were given the job of assembling, dissembling and maintenance of the Mishkan's various drapes, roofs, hangings, curtains and the courtyard enclosure. They camped on the west side of the Mishkan.

The family of Kehos totaled 8,600. They were responsible for the Aron, the Table, the Menorah and the two altars, plus all the utensils and the partition (the Paroches). These Levites camped on the south side of the Mishkan; they reported to Aharon's son Elazar.

The family of Merari were 6,200 all told. They were placed in charge of the beams, pillars and bases of the Mishkan and the courtyard enclosure, along with the related utensils. They camped on the north side of the Tabernacle.

Moshe and Aharon made their camp on the east side of the Tabernacle. Only designated kohanim were allowed to set up camp there. (Moshe was the functional equivalent of a kohein.)

There were 22,000 Levite males above the age of one month. (Really, there were 22,300, but 300 of them were first-borns themselves, so they were not actually "exchanged" for the first-born males of the other Tribes, as we will see in the next aliyah. See Talmud Bechoros 5a.)

After tallying the Levites, G-d told Moshe to take a census of the first-born males of the other Tribes from the age of one month and up. There were 22,273. 22,000 were "exchanged" for Levites, but that left 273 who had to be redeemed from service. They had to give 5 shekels a head for the 273 to the kohanim, the same way we give a kohein 5 silver shekels as part of a pidyon haben. Moshe collected 1,365 and turned it over to the kohanim.

G-d told Moshe to take a separate census of the family of Kehos, counting those between the ages of 30 and 50. Their job would be, when the camp travels, to transport the Aron, Table, and Menorah, with all their related utensils. Before they could do so, the kohanim would have to remove the partition (Paroches) and wrap the various vessels. They would also have to remove all the ashes from the altar and cover it before it could be moved. Only after the kohanim were finished could the family of Kehos transport the furniture of the Mishkan.

As mentioned, the family of Kehos was placed under the direction of Aharon's son Elazar. Elazar was responsible not only for the furniture, but also for the oil used to light the Menorah, the incense, the flour offerings and the anointing oil.

G-d gave Moshe and Aharon some "good advice" to protect the lives of the family of Kehos: they were not to come for the Mishkan furniture until the kohanim were finished wrapping it. To do otherwise is to court destruction.

This week’s haftarah comes from the second chapter of Hosea. Pesachim 87b-88a offers necessary background, telling us Hosea was the oldest and greatest of four prophets who functioned in his time, the others being Isaiah, Amos, and Micah.

The Talmud also stresses his early attachment to justice. In their view, God came to Hosea saying “your sons have sinned.” Hosea responded that God should drop them and take another nation. To teach him his error, God commands him to marry a prostitute, Gomer b. Divlayim, and they have three children.

Once his family has been formed, God reminds Hosea that Moses separated from his wife as he became more advanced in prophecy, yet Hosea was still staying with his wife. Hosea protests that he could not abandon the woman who has borne his children, nor the children themselves (the source of Moses’ right to do that is an important question for another time).

This was the response God sought, much like Jonah and the plant. In both cases, the human has become attached to a relationship at the same time that he is advocating God’s abandoning one that has stood for generations. In the Rabbis’ reading, Hosea understands and accepts the point, and prays for the Jews to be saved.

The Talmud’s reconstruction explains why our haftarah leads into the rebuke with two verses of comfort. It is Hosea’s prayer for the Jews, his understanding that mercy must always serve as background, that allows him to administer the warnings God “really” wanted him to deliver. The comforting verses say the Jews will be uncountable (the connection to our Torah reading, it would seem), will once again be known as God’s children, that the Jews of the two Kingdoms will gather, make a single head, and leave their exile to return to Israel. (That all the Jewish people would ever agree on one leader may be the most utopian part of the vision).

The Uncompromising Prophet

In this reading, Hosea’s prophecy, and life, was deeply affected by his stance in his original conversation with God. Until that point, his book might have started with the rebukes of chapter 2, our haftarah. It was only when Hosea responded so strictly that God decided to show him the lesson of marriage and children, after which he was ready for his real work as a prophet.

One explanation of this is that Hosea’s comment showed God pressing matters that needed prophetic attention before even getting to his true mission. Related to that, we might suggest that even prophets can only hear that part of God’s infinite messages for which they are ready. If so, the Talmud was telling us of the personal lesson Hosea needed to learn before he could deliver God’s message. That his needs shape the Word that comes down to us is both a sign of his greatness and a sobering reminder of the limitations of even our greatest prophets.

The Rest of the Section

The rest of the haftarah consists of rebukes we all know. God complains that the Jews have not been faithful, in part by turning to other nations for assistance and ascribing the good in our lives to sources other than God. God announces that He will withhold those goods, which will (eventually) bring us to realize the many bounties God bestows upon us.

The Sages stress that this punishment is solely concerned with eliciting obedience. Berachot 7a cites R. Yohanan saying in the name of R. Yose that internal submission to God is as good as several external punishments. Berachot 35a contrasts verse 11, which says that grain belongs to God, to the verse in Shema that says “you shall gather your grain.”

The Talmud’s answer, that the grain is ours only when we do God’s will, highlights the point of our haftarah: The road to freedom, wealth, and blessings beyond all imagining, is through honest and sincere submission to God’s Will.

The Hard Way to Renewal

God then says that the Jews will need to return to the desert, to be spoken to and enticed by God. Exodus Rabbah 2;4 draws the obvious parallel to the original Exodus, seeing our future redemption, like our past, as starting in the desert. The prediction that our nation can only get back to focusing properly on God in a desert is a sad comment on us. A mature people would attach to the true and necessary even without being taken to a place where all competing factors have been removed.

We can hope that this and similar prophecies—such as Jeremiah 3;14, which says that God will gather us back one from a city, two from a family, describe only the most likely outcome (not the necessary one). That leaves us to hold on to the possibility we will find a way to waken ourselves and our brethren, to hear God’s messages properly and appropriately, before it is too late.

Forging a Complete and Unbreakable Bond

The end of the haftarah predicts a day when Jews will no longer call God baali, but ishi. The plainest sense of the text is that the Jews will no longer use the term baali even as a praise for God, since it reminds us of a form of idol worship that once tempted us away from devotion to God.

Similarly, in the next verse God promises to so fully remove the mention of Baal from the Jews’ lips that they will not even remember the name of the idols they used to worship. It is only then that God will promise to keep us safe from all forms of danger—animals, vermin, sword-- to allow us to reside in Israel without fear.

At that point, Hosea speaks the three verses we say when wrapping the tefillin around our fingers, that God will betroth us to Him forever, with righteousness, justice, kindness, and empathy. The order seems clear: we reject idol worship, God helps us remove it from our lips and memories, and then we can forge a complete, lasting, and unbreakable bond, based on the qualities we know (from Scripture) to be the ones God values.