Parashat Shelach (Numbers 13:1-15:41)

This week's Torah reading begins by recounting the spies being sent into the land of Canaan on behalf of the Children of Israel. Joshua, Caleb and ten other qualified leaders were chosen from each of the twelve tribes and sent into the land of Canaan ahead of the Children of Israel in order to scout out the land and report back their findings. Their job was to spy out the land, as it says in Numbers 13:2, "Send men to spy out the land of Canaan ..." As we know, ten of these twelve men came back with an evil report that slandered the land God had promised to them. That evil report delayed their entrance into the Land of Promise by forty long years.

At the end of the portion we read about how the Children of Israel are to make tzitzit—ritual fringes/tassels—on the corners of their garments. Even to this day religious Jewish men wear a special garment with these tassels attached to it as a normal part of their daily attire. The commandment is as follows:

Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels ("tzitzit") on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. (Numbers 15:38-39)

Parashat Bamidbar - Numbers 1:1-4:20

There is a distinct way of reading the Scriptures that is evident when we begin to peel back the layers of religious and cultural sediment that has accumulated in our minds. One of the ways to do this is by returning to the original language of the Torah. A prime example of this is found in the book of Numbers. In Christian tradition, the book of Numbers is so named because of the first four chapters which seems to be written by the Israelite Census Bureau. It appears to be entirely preoccupied by the numbers of the various tribes and subgroups within the Children of Israel. From the opening lines of, "Take a census of all of the congregation of the people of Israel by clans..." (1:2) until the end of chapter four, it appears that the Torah has little to offer us other than its obsession with the number of people in the various camps within Israel. But are numbers the only thing the Torah is trying to communicate to us in this parashah? 

There's a vast difference in how the Torah is read, depending on your perspective. For the casual reader, making it through the first four chapters of the book of Bamidbar is nothing less than an endurance test. If we are oblivious to the big picture whose details are now being offered by the Torah, our current reading can seem like a waste of time. However, if we can zoom out and see the bigger picture that the Torah is trying to paint for us, then everything begins to come into focus. Let's briefly zoom out to take a look at one perspective of this.